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The Saints' Everlasting Rest - Richard Baxter

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fancied, would be enough to make them miserable, or run mad. Poor souls,<br />

what a misery will that life be, where you shall have nothing but sorrow--<br />

intense, heart piercing, multiplied sorrow; when you shall neither have the<br />

joys of saints nor your own former joys! Do you think there is one merry<br />

heart in hell? or one joyful countenance or jesting tongue? You now cry, "a<br />

little mirth is worth a great deal of sorrow." But surely a little godly sorrow,<br />

which would have ended in eternal joy, had been worth much more than all<br />

your foolish mirth; for the end of such mirth is sorrow.<br />

5. <strong>The</strong>y shall also lose all their sensual delights. That which they<br />

esteemed their chief good, their heaven, their god, must they lose, as well as<br />

God himself. What a fall will the proud ambitious man have from the height<br />

of his honors! As his dust and bones will not be known from the dust and<br />

bones of the poorest beggar, so neither will his soul be honored or favored<br />

more than theirs. What a number of the great, noble, and learned will be shut<br />

out from the presence of Christ! <strong>The</strong>y shall not find their magnificent<br />

buildings, soft beds, and easy couches. <strong>The</strong>y shall not view their curious<br />

gardens, their pleasant meadows, and plenteous harvests. <strong>The</strong>ir tables will<br />

not be so furnished nor attended. <strong>The</strong> rich man is there no more "clothed in<br />

purple and fine linen, and faring sumptuously every day." <strong>The</strong>re is no<br />

expecting the admiration of beholders. <strong>The</strong>y shall spend their time in<br />

sadness, and not in sports and pastimes. What an alteration will they then<br />

find! <strong>The</strong> heat of their lust will be then abated. How will it even cut them to<br />

the heart to look each other in the face! What an interview will there then be,<br />

cursing the day that ever they saw one another! O that sinners would now<br />

remember and say, "Will these delights accompany us into the other world?<br />

Will not the remembrance of them be then our torment? Shall we then take<br />

this partnership in vice for true friendship? Why should we sell such lasting<br />

incomprehensible joys for a taste of seeming pleasure? Come, as we have<br />

sinned together, let us pray together that God would pardon us; and let us<br />

help one another toward heaven, instead of helping to deceive and destroy<br />

each other." O that men but knew what they desire, when they would so<br />

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