A77608:131
Heaven on Earth
Heaven on earth or a serious discourse touching a well-grounded assurance of mens everlasting happiness and blessedness. Discovering the nature of assurance, the possibility of attaining it, the causes, springs, and degrees of it, with the resolution of several weighty questions. By Thomas Brooks, preacher of the Gospel at Margarets Fishstreet-Hill.Heaven on earth or a serious discourse touching a wel-grounded assurance of mens everlasting happiness and blessedness. Discovering the nature of assurance, the possibility of attaining it, the causes, springs, and degrees of it, with the resolution of several weighty questions. By Thomas Brooks, preacher of the Gospel at Margarets Fishstreet-Hill.
London: printed by R.I. for John Hancock, 1654
Title page typeset from the transcription.
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.
Again, a man may have grace, and yet want assurance, and that may arise in the second place from the exceeding littleness, and weakness of1 his grace. A little Candle yields but a little light, and a little grace yields but a little evidence: Great measures of grace carries with them great and clear evidences, but little measures carries with them but little evidence. Some Stars are so small that they are scarce discernible; So some Saints2 graces are so small, that they can hardly see their graces to be graces. A little fire will yield but a little heat; a little grace will yield but a ⟨p. 56⟩little comfort, a little evidence: A little grace will yield a man a heaven hereafter; but it is a great deal of grace that must yield us heaven here. A little stock will bring in but a little profit, a little grace will bring in but a little peace: A little Jewel yields but a little lustre, a little glory; no more doth a little grace; and therefore it is that Christians that have but a little grace, have but a little of the shine and lustre of Assurance, they have but little joy and comfort in this world. Yet that the spirits of weak Christians may not utterly faint, let me give them this hint, viz. That the weakest Christian3 is as much justified, as much pardoned, as much adopted, and as much united to Christ as the strongest, and hath as much interest and propriety in Christ, as the highest and noblest Christian that breaths, though he cannot make so much advantage and improvement of his interest and propriety as the strong Christian, who hath a greater degree of grace.
Againe, a man may have grace, and yet want assurance, and that may arise in the second place from the exceeding littlenesse, and weaknesse of1 his grace. A little Candle yeelds but a little light, and a little grace yeelds but a little evidence: Great measures of grace carries with them great and cleer evidences, but little measures carries with them but little evidence. Some Stars are so small that they are scarce discernable; So some Saints