A29687:397
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.
in that way there is spiritual life, and eternal life, and natural life, and all the comforts, and sweets, and blessings, and happiness of that life, without which mans life would be but a lingering, a languishing death; yea, a hell rather then a ⟨p. 212⟩heaven unto him. And in the path thereof there is no death. There is no spiritual death, there is no eternal death, yea, there is no corporal, no temporal death to hurt or harm the them,1 to sting or terrify them, to damage or disadvantage them: for death is an out-let, and an in-let to a holy man: it is an out-let to sin, to sorrow, to shame, to suffering, to afflictions, to temptations, to desertions, to oppressions, to confusions, and to vexations; and it is an in-let to a more clear, full and constant fruition of God and Christ, and an in-let to the sweetest pleasures, the purest joys, the highest delights, the strongest comforts, and the most satisfying contentments. Death is the funeral of all a holy mans sins and miseries, and it is the resurrection of all his joys, and the perfection of all his graces and spiritual excellencies. Death to a holy man is nothing but the changing of his grace into glory, his faith into vision, his hope into fruition, and his love into perfect comprehension. The Persians had a certain day in the year in which they used to kill all Serpents and venomous creatures: such a day as that will the day of death be to a holy man. (Peccatum erat obstetrix mortis, & mors sepulchrum peccati.) Sin was the Midwife that brought death into the world, and death shall be the bearers that shall carry sin out of the world. When Sampson died, the Philistines died together with him: so when a holy man dies, his sins die with him. Death came in by sin, and sin goeth out by death: As the worm kills the worm that bred it; so death kills sin that bred it.2 Death cures all diseases, the aching head and the unbelieving heart: the diseased body and the defiled soul. At Stratford Bow were burned (in Queen Mary's days) a lame man and a blind man; after the lame man was chained, casting away his crutch, he bade the blind man be of good comfort; for saith he, Death will cure us both, it will cure thee of thy blindness, and me of my lameness. Death will cure the holy man of all natural and spiritual distempers.