A77608:148
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.
The sixth Proposition is this, That1 the certainty and infallibility of a Christians assurance, cannot be made known to any, but his own heart. He can say as the blind man once said, This I know, 2that once I was blind, but now I see; once I was a slave, but now I am a son; ⟨p. 75⟩once I was dead, but now I am alive; 3once I was darkness, but now I am light in the Lord; once I was a child of wrath, 4an heir of Hell, but now I am an heir of Heaven; once I was Satan's bondman, but now I am Gods freeman; once I5 was under the spirit of bondage, but6 now I am under the spirit of adoption, that seals up to me the remission of my sins, the justification of my person, and the salvation of my soul. All this I7 know, says the assured Saint; but I cannot make you know it certainly, and infallibly. if you would give me a thousand worlds. What I have found and felt, and what I do find and feel, is wonderfully beyond what I am able to express; I am as well able to tell the Stars of Heaven, and to number the Sand of the Sea, as I am able to declare to you, the joy, the joy, the unconceivable joy, the assurance, the glorious 8assurance that God hath given me. Severinus the Indian Saint, under the power of assurance, was heard to say, O my God, do not for pity so ever joy me, if I must still live, and have such consolations, take me to Heaven, &c. So say souls under the power of assurance. ⟨p. 76⟩Lord, we are so filled with joy and comfort, with delight and content, that we are not able to express it here on Earth, and therefore take us to Heaven, that we may have that glory put upon us, that may enable us to declare and manifest those glorious things that thou hast wrought in us.