A29687:130
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.
I come now to the second thing, and that is, to prove the truth of the Proposition, viz. That without men are holy, they can never be happy; without holiness on earth, none of the sons of men shall ever come to a blessed vision and fruition of God in heaven. Now this great and weighty truth, I shall make good by an induction of particulars thus.
First, God hath by very plain and clear Scriptures bolted and barred the door of heaven and happiness against all unholy ones.1 Witness 1 Cor. 6.9, 10. Know ye not that the unrighteous ⟨p. 19⟩shall not inherit the Kingdom of God? be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor Idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the Kingdom of God. Heaven is an undefiled inheritance,2 and none that are defiled can enter into the possession of it. When the Angels fell from their righteousness, heaven rejected them; it would no longer hold them: and will it now accept of the unrighteous? will it now entertain and welcome them? surely no. Such sinners make the very earth to mourn and groan now, and shall they make heaven to mourn and groan hereafter? Surely no. What though the Serpent did wind himself into an earthy Paradise, yet none of the seed of the Serpent (so remaining) shall ever be able to wind themselves into a heavenly Paradise, witness Gal. 19.20, 21. Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these, Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envying, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I also have told you in time past, that they which do such things, shall not inherit the kingdom of God. Before they go to hell he tells them again and again, that they shall not inherit the kingdom of God. By the Kingdom of God, we are to to understand the kingdom of Heaven, the kingdom of glory: now the kingdom of heaven, of glory, is called the kingdom of God; 1. Because he hath prepared it. 2.