A29687:99
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.
Beloved, the salvation of souls is that which should be first, and most in a Ministers eye, and that which should always lye closest and warmest upon a Ministers heart.1 O Sirs, our dear Lord Jesus was infinitely tender of the souls of men; he left his Fathers bosom for souls, he trod the Wine-press of his Fathers wrath for souls; he prayed for souls; he payed for souls; he sweated for souls; he bled out his heart blood for souls; and he made himself an offering for souls: and O what an encouragement should this be to all his faithful Messengers to woe for souls, to mourn for souls, to pray for souls, to study for souls, and in preaching to spend, and to be spent for the salvation of souls! Ah friends, there is no work, nor wisdom on earth to that of winning souls, Prov. 11.30. and He that winneth souls is wise. There is no Art, no industry to that of winning souls, of taking souls as Fowlers take Birds, as the Hebrew word ([Greek or Hebrew]) imports. Now though there is a great deal of Art required to take Birds; yet there is ten thousand times more Art required to take souls: In a word, to convert a soul is a greater work, then to sway a Sceptre,2 or then it is to pour out ten thousand Talents into the Baskets of the poor. My design in choosing this Text, is the winning of souls, it is the salvation of souls: it is the bringing in, and building up of souls. I have read of Lewis the ninth King of France, that he was found instructing his poor kitchen-boy in the way to heaven, and being asked the reason of it: he answered, The meanest hath a soul as precious as my own, and bought by the same blood of Christ: he who only went to the price of souls,3 hath long since told us,4 that a soul is more worth then a world. That I may catch some poor soul or other by a holy craft, and establish, and strengthen others in the love and liking of holiness, and in the power and practise of holiness, I have cast my thoughts upon this Scripture.
Beloved, the salvation of souls is that which should be first, and most in a Ministers eye, and that which should always lye closest and warmest upon a Ministers heart.