A77608:177
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.
and this fills the soul with joy & peace. Faith hath an influence upon other graces; it is like a silver thread1 that runs through a chain of Pearl; it puts strength & vivacity in to all other virtues; it made Abraham to rejoice, and it made Noah sit still & quiet in the midst of a deluge. Faith is the first pin that moveth the soul, it is the spring in the Watch that sets all the Golden Wheels of Love, Joy, Comfort, and Peace a going. Faith is a root of Grace, from whence springs all the sweet flowers of joy, & peace. Faith is like the Bee, it will suck sweetness out of every flower, it will extract light out of ⟨p. 114⟩darkness, comforts out of distresses, mercies out of miseries, wine out of2 water, honey out of the rock, and meat out of the eater. 1 Pet. 1. 8. Whom having not seen, ye love, in whom though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable, and full of glory. Upon the Exercise of Faith, their hearts are filled with joy, with unspeakable joy, with glorious joy. Faith sees in Christ (Plenitudo abundantiae, 3and plenitudo redundantiae) a fullness of abundance, and a fullness of redundancy; and this fills the heart with glorious joy. Ah Christians, believing, believing is the ready way, the safest way, the sweetest way, the shortest way, the only way, to a well-grounded assurance, and to that unspeakable joy and peace, that flows from it, as the effect from the cause, the fruit from the root, the stream from the fountain. There is such assurance, and such joy, that springs from the fresh, and frequent actings of Faith, that cannot be expressed, that cannot be painted; no man can paint the sweetness of the honey comb, the sweetness of a cluster of Canaan, the sweetness of paradise, ⟨p. 115⟩the fragrancy of the Rose of Sharon. As the being of things cannot be painted, and as sweetness of things cannot be painted, no more can that assurance, and joy, that flows from believing, be painted or expressed; it is too great, and too glorious for weak man