COMPILER'S PREFACE. the hearing or reading the important sentiments contained in this book; or, after a long series of years, have found it both the counter- part and the improvement of their own divine life ; will not this be thought a considerable recommendation of the book itself ? Among the instances of persons that dated their true conversion from hearing the sermons on the Saints' Rest, when Mr. Baxter first preached them, was the Rev. Thomas Doolittle, M. A. who was a native of Kidderminster, and.at that time a scholar, about seventeen years old; whom Mr. Baxter himself afterward sent to Pembroke Hall, in Cambridge, where he took his degree. Before his going to the university, he was upon trial as an attorney's clerk, and under that character, being ordered by his master to write somethingon a Lord's day, heobeyed with great reluctance, and the next day returned home, with an earnest desire that he might not apply himself to any thing, as the employment of life, but serving Christ in the ministry of the Gospel. His praise is yet in the churches, for his pious and useful labors as a minister, a tutor, and a writer. In the life of the Rev. John Janeway, Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, who died in 1657, we are told that his conversion was, in a great measure, occasioned by his reading several parts of the Saints' Rest. And in a letter which he afterward wrote to a near relative, speaking with a more immediate reference to that part of the book which treats of heavenly contemplation, he says, " There is a duty, which, if it were exercised, would dispel all cause of melancholy : I mean, heavenly meditation, and contemplation of the things which true Christian religion tends to. If we did but walk closely with God one hour in a day in this duty, O what influence would it have upon the whole day besides, and, duly performed, upon the whole life ! This duty, with its usefulness, manner, and directions, I knew in some measure before, but had it more pressed upon me by Mr. Baxter's Saints' Everlasting Rest, a book that can scarce be over- valued, for which I have cause for ever to bless God. This excellent young minister's life is worth reading, were it only to see how delight- fully he was engaged in heavenly contemplation, according to the directions in the Saints' Rest. It was the example of heavenly contemplation, at the close of this hook, which the Rev. Joseph Alleine, of Taunton, so frequently quoted in conversation, with this solemn introduction, " Most divinely says that man of God, holy Mr. Baxter." Dr. Bates, in his dedication of his funeral sermon for Mr. Baxter to Sir Henry Ashurst, tells that religious gentleman, and most distin- guished friend and executor of Mr. Baxter, " He was most worthy of your highest esteem and love ; for the first impressions of heaven É'>
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