The Saints' Everlasting Rest - Richard Baxter

Fewer they are than the world imagines; yet not so few as some drooping
spirits think, who are suspicious that God is unwilling to be their God, when
they know themselves willing to be his people.
2. These persons are given of God to his Son, to be by him redeemed
from their lost state, and advanced to this glory. God hath given all things to
his Son, but not as he hath given his chosen to him. "God hath given him
power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as the Father
hath given him." The difference is clearly expressed by the apostle; "he hath
put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to
the church." And though Christ is, in some sense, a ransom for all, yet not in
that special manner as for his people.
3. One great qualification of these persons is that they are born again. To
be the people of God without regeneration, is as impossible as to be the
children of men without generation. Seeing we are born God's enemies, we
must be new-born his sons, or else remain enemies still. The greatest
reformation of life that can be attained, without this new life wrought in the
soul, may procure our further delusion, but never our salvation.
4. This new life in the people of God discovers itself by conviction, or a
deep sense of divine things.
They are convinced of the evil of sin. The sinner is made to know and
feel that the sin which was his delight, is a more loathsome thing than a toad
or serpent, and a greater evil than plague or famine; being a breach of the
righteous law of the most high God, dishonorable to him, and destructive to
the sinner. Now the sinner no more hears the reproofs of sin as words of
course; but the mention of his sin speaks to his very heart, and yet he is
willing you should show him the worst. He was wont to marvel what made
men keep up such a stir against sin; what harm it was for a man to take little
forbidden pleasure; he saw no such heinousness in it that Christ must needs
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