A29687:385
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.
as ever you would be famous and glorious, be holy; as ever you would outshine the Sun in splendour and glory, labour to be holy. Many have ventured their names, their estates, their liberties, their lives, yea their very souls to enjoy a lovely Bathsheba, 1a fair Helena, a beautiful Diana, a comely Cleopatra, &c. whose beauties have been but clay well coloured: O how much more then should you be provoked to labour and venture your All for holiness, that will imprint upon you that most excellent and most exquisite beauty, that will to the grave and to glory with you; yea that will render you not only amiable and excellent in the eyes of men, but also lovely and comely in the eyes of God! I remember Bernard writing to a noble Virgin that was holy, tells her, that others were clothed with purple and silk,2 but their consciences were poor and beggarly; they glistered with their Jewels, but were loose in their manners; but you, (saith he) are without meanly clad, but within shine exceeding beautiful, not to humane, but to divine eyes; both in the eyes of God, Angels and men,3 none shine and glister so gloriously, as those that are holy. Unholy souls are foul souls, ugly souls, deformed souls, withered souls, wrinkled souls, they are altogether unlovely and uncomely souls. I have read of Acco an old woman, who seeing her deformity in a glass, run mad. Should God but show unholy men their deformity in the glass of the Law, it would either make them spiritually mad, or else it would make them fall in love with holiness; that so they might be made comely and lovely, by being made pure and holy. But,
as ever you would be famous and glorious, be holy; as ever you would outshine the Sun in splendor and glory, labour to be holy. Many have ventured their names, their estates, their liberties, their lives, yea their very souls to enjoy a lovely Bathsheba, 1a fair Helena, a beautiful Diana, a comely Cleopatra, &c. whose beauties have been but clay well coloured: O how much more then should you be provoked to labour and venture your All for holinesse, that will imprint upon you that most excellent and most exquisite beauty, that will to the grave and to glory with you; yea that will render you not only amiable and excellent in the eyes of men, but also lovely and comely in the eyes of God! I remember Bernard writing to a noble Virgin that was holy, tells her, that others were cloathed with purple and silk,