A29687:112
The crown & glory of Christianity, or, Holiness, the only way to happiness discovered…The crovvn & glory of Christianity, or, Holiness, the only way to happiness discovered…
The crown & glory of Christianity, or, Holiness, the only way to happiness discovered in LVIII sermons from Heb. 12. 14, where you have the necessity, excellency, rarity, beauty and glory of holiness set forth, with the resolution of many weighty questions and cases, also motives and means to perfect holiness : with many other things of very high and great importance to all the sons and daughters of men, that had rather be blessed then cursed, saved then damned / by Thomas Brooks ...The crovvn & glory of Christianity, or, Holiness, the only way to happiness discovered in LVIII sermons from Heb. 12. 14, where you have the necessity, excellency, rarity, beauty and glory of holiness set forth, with the resolution of many weighty questions and cases, also motives and means to perfect holiness : with many other things of very high and great importance to all the sons and daughters of men, that had rather be blessed then cursed, saved then damned / by Thomas Brooks ...
London: printed for H. Crips, 1662
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
First, What is this holiness without which no man shall see the Lord? I answer there is a sixfold holiness.
First, There is a Legal holiness: Now a Legal holiness consists §1in an exact, perfect, and complete conformity in heart and life to the whole revealed will of God; and this was the holiness that Adam had in his innocency: and this holiness was immediately derived from God, and was perfect. Adam knew the will of God perfectly (so far as it was revealed to him) and had a divine principle in him of perfect conformity to that blessed will. Adams holiness was as co-natural to him, as unholiness is now to us: and had he stood fast in that glorious condition, we had all been as naturally holy from the womb, as now we are sinful.1 Adams holiness was as natural, and as pleasing, and as delightful to him, as any way of unholiness can be natural, pleasing and delightful unto us. But this holiness which was Adams choicest sparkling gem of beauty, and his weightiest crown of glory, is by Satan's policy long since fallen off from Adams head; now if this Legal holiness were the holiness meant in the text, then woe to man that ever he was born; for then no man should ever see the Lord.2 For by Adams fall all men ⟨p. 6⟩are gone out of the way, and there is none legally righteous, no not one. Now if we look upon man as fallen from that holiness which was his greatest honour, dignity and excellency,3 he is become a pile of dust, a puff of wind, saith one, a dream of a shadow saith another, a shadow of smoke, saith a third: a poor silly flea, a worm, a little foul, a curious nothing; yea, man fallen from his primitive glory is become a very vanity, saith the Prophet, Psalm 39.5