A29687:417
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 the fifteenth and last place, to provoke you to labour after holiness, consider, the stinging Argument in the text, viz. That without it no man shall see the Lord: The expression is exclusive; now, to see, is an Hebraism, and implies both vision and fruition; now without holiness, no man, be he high or low, noble or ignoble, rich or poor, &c. shall ever come to a blessed acquaintance with God here, or to a glorious fruition of God hereafter.1 O friends, if it were so great a misery to Adam to be cast out of Paradise, and so great a punishment to Cain to be cast out of his fathers family (which was the only visible Church of God on earth) and such a sore affliction for the Lepers in the Law to be shut out from all converse with men, and so great a trouble and torment to Absalom to be banished his fathers Court, and so great a hell to Jonah to be seemingly cast out of Gods sight, and so great a tribulation to John to be confined to the Isle o• Patmos? O! how great a misery, how great a punishment, how great an affliction, how great a trouble and torment, how great a tribulation, how great a hell will it be for all unholy persons for ever and ever to be banished the Court of heaven, and to be shut out from the presence of the Lord,2 and from the glory of his power? If it were such an unspeakable grief and misery to the Primitive Christians (as indeed it was) to be debarred of one another's society and company, by being confined to Isles, and Mines, and strong holds: O then, what an unspeakable grief and misery will it be to all unholy persons to be for ever debarred of the blessed society of God, Christ, Angels, and Saints, and to be everlastingly confined to the strong holds of hell, and to the society and company of that damned ⟨p. 229⟩crew who will be still a cursing and a blaspheming of God, and adding to one another's torments! O Sirs, it is the sight of God in heaven, wherein mans happiness and blessedness doth consist; it is the fruition of God in heaven, that is the life, the honour, the crown and glory of Angels and Saints: Heaven it self would be but a low thing, yea it would be but magnum nihil, a great nothing, without the sight and fruition of God there. Now without holiness there is no seeing of God, there is no possessing or enjoying of God, there is no possibility of ever obtaining a part or portion in God. Ah friends, without holiness all is lost;