A77608:156
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.
Fourthly, Christ sometimes at first conversion gives his people the sweetest manifestations of his love, to fence, and fortify them against Satan's fiery temptations, before Christ shall be ⟨p. 84⟩led into the wilderness to be tempted1 by the devil, the Spirit of the Lord shall descend upon him, like a Dove, and he shall hear a voice from heaven saying, This is my beloved Son in whom I am well-pleased, that so he may be strong in resisting, and glorious in triumphing over all the assaults and temptations of Satan; So many times at first conversion, the Lord makes out sweet manifestations of his love to the soul, that so the soul may stand fast, and not give ground; and in the sense of divine love may so manage the shield of faith, as to quench all the fiery darts of the Devil. The Lord knows that when he sets upon the delivering of a poor soul from the Kingdom of darkness, and translating it into the Kingdom of his dear Son, that Satan will roar and2 rage, rend and tear, as he did him in.3 Mark 9. 25, 26. When Jesus saw that the people came running together, he rebuked the foul spirit, saying unto him, Thou dumb and deaf spirit, I charge thee to come out of him; and the spirit cried, and rent him sore, and came out of him, and he was as one dead; in so much, that ⟨p. 85⟩many said, He is dead. No sooner did Jesus Christ look with an eye of love, pity, and compassion, upon the Boy, but the Devil in his rage, and wrath,4 falls a renting and tearing of him, as mad dogs do those things they fasten upon. This poor child had never so sore a fit as now he was nearest the cure; when rich Mercy, and Glorious power is nearest the soul, then Satan most storms, and rages against the soul. The more the Bowels of Christ do work towards a sinner, the more furious will Satan assault that sinner. Therefore Divine Wisdom and Goodness, does the more eminently shine, in giving the poor soul some sight of Canaan, and some Bunches and Clusters of that Land, upon its first coming out of the Wilderness of Sin and Sorrow. But that no soul may mistake this last Proposition, give me leave to premise these two Cautions.