A77608:149
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.
Parents do by experience feel such soundings, such meltings, such rollings, such sweet workings of their affections, and bowels, towards their children, that for their lives they cannot to the life describe to others what it is to be a Father, to be a Mother; what it is to have such rollings of bowels towards children. Assurance is that white stone that none knoweth,1 but he that hath it, Revel. 2. 17. To him that overcometh, will I give to eat of the hidden Manna, and I will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth, saving he that receiveth it. White stones were in great use among the Romans. 1. In white stones they used to write the names of such as were victorious and Conquerors; so in that Text, To him that overcometh, will I give a white stone. ⟨p. 77⟩2. They used to acquit the innocent2 in Courts of Justice, by giving them a white stone; and so here the white stone points out absolution and remission. 3. They used to give a white stone to those that were chosen to any places of honour; so the white stone of assurance 3is an evidence of our Election, of our being chosen to a Kingdom that shakes not, to riches that corrupt not, and to a crown of glory that fades not. And thus much for this sixth Proposition, viz. That the certainty and infallibility of a Christians assurance cannot be made known to any but his own heart.
Parents do by experience feel such soundings, such meltings, such rowlings, such sweet workings of their affections, and bowels, towards their children, that for their lives they cannot to the life describe to others what it is to be a Father, to be a Mother; what it is to have such rowlings of bowels towards children. Assurance is that white stone that none knoweth,1 but he that hath it,