A29687:223
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.
there are those that now bless themselves in their common honesty, whom at last God will scorn and cast off for want of real holiness and purity.1 Many of the Heathens were so famous for justice and righteousness, for equity, fidelity and sobriety, for civility and moral honesty, that it would put many professors to the blush to read what is written of them: and yet there was such a tincture of popular applause, of pride and vain glory, of hypocrisy and self-flattery, upon their civility and moral honesty, that for any thing we can find in Scripture to the contrary, there is cause to fear that they shall be miserable to all eternity: for all their civility and moral honesty, they were left in a damnable, I will not say in a damned condition: he that rises to no higher pitch then civility and moral honesty, shall never have communion with God in glory. Naaman was a great man but a Leper,2 Naaman was an honourable ⟨p. 63⟩man, but a Leper; Naaman was a mighty man, but a Leper; Naaman was a victorious man but a Leper; Naaman was in high favour and esteem with his Prince, but a Leper. This but he was a Leper, stained all his honour, and was a blot upon all his greatness and glory, both at Court, and in the field; both in the City, and in the Country. So it is a stain, a blot upon the most moral honest man in the world to say, he is a very civil honest man, but Christless: he is a very just man, but graceless; he is a man of much moral righteousness, but he hath not a dram of real holiness, &c. This but is a fly in the box of ointment that spoils all. Well Sirs, remember this, though the moral honest man be good for many things, yet he is not good enough to go to heaven, he is not good enough to be made glorious, Mat. 5.20. Certainly, there is nothing in all the world below real sanctity, that will ever bring a man to the possession of glory. And though it may grieve us (to speak after the manner of men) to see sweet natures, to see many moral honest men take many a weary step towards heaven, and to come near to heaven, and to bid fair for heaven, and yet after all to fall short of heaven: yet it will be no way grievous to a holy God to turn such sweet natures into hell,