A29687:784
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.
God here engages himself to hold a more close, familiar, friendly, and constant conference and correspondence with Moses, then with any others in the world. Moses was blest with as clear, and with as full, and with as apparent sight of God, and communion with God, as he was able to bare and comprehend. Some of the learned are of opinion, that Christ did converse with Moses in a humane shape, as he had done with Abraham before,1 they conjecture that the Lord Jesus did very friendly and familiarly show himself to Moses with that very same face and form of humane nature, which he afterwards assumed; but this I dare not press upon you as an Article of your faith: And whether Moses had one hundred and seventy three familiar conferences with God, which none of the ⟨p. 493⟩Prophets had, lies upon those Rabbis to prove that do assert it; but this is granted on all hands, that he was a special favourite, and a man in high communion with God, and one that had very clear and eminent discoveries and manifestations of God. And so Abraham was a man of great holiness, and a man eminent in his communion with God, God owned him as a friend,2 as an honourable friend, as an eminent friend, as a bosom friend, as a peculiar friend, and as a faithful friend, and therefore he made him one of his Privy Council, and opened his heart and his secrets to him: And the Lord said, shall I hide from Abraham the thing which I do? 3Abraham is styled the friend of God by a specialty, though God had many friends, yet 'twas Abraham that was his singular friend, his darling friend, his rare friend, &c. and accordingly, God was most free, and full, and rich in the communications of his favours, and secrets to Abraham; 'twas not enough for Abraham to be of Gods Court, but he must be also of his Cabinet Council. 'Twas always a principle in morality, that sweet and intimate friendship cannot be extended to many; Friends usually go by pairs. And thus you see that the more holy any man is, the more communion that man shall have with God, and the more communion any man has with God, the more beloved shall that man be of God; the highest communion is always attended with the highest love. But,