A29687:224
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.
For look as the moral mans sins are not so great as others, so his punishments shall not be so great as others. This is all the comfort that can be afforded to a moral man, that he shall have a cooler hell then others have: but this is but cold comfort. Moral honesty without piety is as a body without a soul, and will ever God accept of such a stinking sacrifice. Surely no.
Fifthly, If real holiness be the only way to happiness; if §5men must be holy on earth, or else they shall never come to a fruition of God in heaven; then this truth by way of conviction looks sourly and sadly upon all Neuters, who divide their hearts between God and Mammon,1 who halt ⟨p. 80⟩between God and Baal, 2who divide their souls between heaven and earth, between Religion and their lusts. Like the Samaritans, who both worshipped the Lord, and the Assyrians Idols too. A Neuter is a monster; he hath two tongues, two minds, and two souls: he hath a tongue for God, and a tongue for the world too; he looks up to God and saith Certainly thou art mine; he looks down upon the world, and saith Surely I am thine; He hath a mind to be religious, and a mind to save his own stake in the world too. He hath a soul reaching after the happiness of another world,3 Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his, saith Balaam: and he hath a soul strongly reaching after this evil world too,4 as if heaven and happiness were wrapped up in it. As you may see in the same person, he loved the wages of unrighteousness: he loved it as his portion, he loved it as his life, he loved it as his happiness, he loved it as his all; he loved it as his soul, yea, he loved it above his own soul, for he damned his soul to gain it. It is true, when he was under a divine restraint, he professed that he would not curse the people of God for a house full of Gold; but when he was from under that restraint, his heart was so set upon the unrighteous reward, that he would have curst them for a handful of gold. The Neuter (as the Romans paint Erasmus) hangs between heaven and earth; He is neither fit to go to heaven, nor yet worthy to live on earth. If Meroz was to be certainly curst, to be bitterly curst, to be universally curst (as the Hebrew phrase, cursing curse ye Meroz imports, in