| IT was not only our interest in God, and actual enjoyment of him, which was lost in Adam's fall, but all spiritual knowledge of him, and true disposition towards such a felicity. When the Son of God comes with recovering grace, and discoveries of a spiritual and eternal happiness and glory, he finds not faith in man to believe it. As the poor man, that would not believe any one had such a sum as an hundred pounds, it was so far above what himself possessed: So men will hardly now believe there is such a happiness as once they had, much less as Christ hath now procured. When God would give the Israelites his Sabbaths of rest, in a land of rest, he had more ado to make them believe it, than to overcome their enemies, and procure it for them. And when they had it, only as a small intimation and earnest of an incomparably more glorious rest through Christ, they yet believe no more than they possess, but say, with the glutton at the feast, Sure there is no other heaven but this! Or, if they expect more by the Messiah, it is only the increase of their earthly felicity. The apostle bestows most of this epistle against this distemper, and clearly and largely proves, that the end of all ceremonies and shadows, is to direct them to Jesus Christ the substance; and that the rest of Sabbaths, and Canaan, should teach them to look for a farther rest, which indeed is their happiness. My text is his conclusion, after divers arguments; a conclusion, which contains the ground of all the believer's comfort, the end of all his duty and sufferings, the life and sum of all gospel promises and Christian privileges. What more welcome to men, under personal afflictions, tiring duties, successions of sufferings, than rest? It is not our comfort only, but our stability. Our liveliness in all duties, our enduring tribulation, our honoring of God, the vigor of our love, thankfulness, and all our graces; yea, the very being of our religion and Christianity, depend on the believing serious thoughts of our rest. And now, Reader, whatever thou art, young or old, rich or poor, I intreat thee, and charge thee, in the name of thy Lord, who will shortly call thee to a reckoning, and judge thee to thy everlasting unchangeable state, that thou give not these things the reading only, and so dismiss them with a bare approbation; but that thou set upon this work, and take God in Christ for thy only rest, and fix thy heart upon him above all. May the living God, who is the portion and rest of his saints, make these our carnal minds so spiritual, and our earthly hearts so heavenly, that loving him, and delighting in him, may be the work of our lives; and that neither I that write, nor you that read, this book, may ever be turned from this path of life; lest a promise being left us of entering into his rest, we should come short of it, through our own unbelief or negligence! |
