A29687:443
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.
Fourthly, Take heed of flatterers: Ah! how good might §4many men have been, who are yet exceeding bad, had they not sold their ears to flatterers; flatterers are soul-murderers, they are soul undoers, they are like vain Chirurgeons that skin over the wound, but kill the Patient; flattery is the very mother of folly, and the very nursery of all impiety; flatterers will cry up those for religious, who are only superstitious, and those for wise men, who are foolish, and those for knowing men, who are ignorant, and those for virtuous men, who are vicious, and those for holy men, who at best are but civil, and those for happy men, who are (certainly) miserable; flatterers dare call the proud happy, and bless them whom God has curst, they dare call evil good and good evil, they dare call darkness light and light ⟨p. 286⟩darkness, they dare say that that man has grace that has none, yea they dare swear that such and such shall be saved, though for the present they live as if they were resolved to be damned; they dare take upon them to tell you that such and such mens names are written in Heaven, and that such and such belong to the election of Grace, though their lives speak them out to be void of all Grace. Ah, how many a man has been kept off from the thoughts of holiness, and from the ways of holiness, and from the love and liking of holiness, by flatterers who have flattered them, that doubtless they are in the favour of God, and that certainly God did not make men to damn them, and that without all peradventure they have an interest in Christ, and that there is no question but that their hearts are as good as the best, and that their conditions are good, and their souls happy; yea, they are so confident of their happiness that they dare venture a going to hell, if ever such should go to hell whom they fondly flatter; they dare pawn their souls and their salvation on't, that such shall never miscarry; and by these flatteries they harden men in sin, and arm them against holiness: flattery is that sweet poison that has destroyed many a soul; witness Rehoboam, Ahab, Herod, Nero, Alexander, &c. So true is that of the wise man, Prov. 26. ult. A lying tongue hateth those that are afflicted by it, and a flattering mouth worketh ruin.
Fourthly, Take heed of flatterers: Ah! how good might