A77608:186
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 fourth Reason, Why the Lord Reas. 4 is pleased to give his people some sense of his love, and some tastes of Heaven in Ordinances, is, That he may fit and ripen them for Heaven, and make them look and long more after a perfect, complete, and full enjoyment of God. Souls at first conversion are but roughcast, but God by visiting of them,1 and manifesting of himself to them in his ways, doth more and more fit those Vessels of Mercy for Glory. ⟨p. 126⟩Ah Christians, tell me, do not those Holy Influences, those Spiritual Breathings, those Divine In-comes, that you meet with in Ordinances, make your souls cry out with David, As the Hart panteth after the water 2brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, even for the living God: When shall I come and appear before the presence of God? So in that Psal. 63. 1, 2. O God, thou art my God, early will I seek thee; my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee, in a dry and thirsty Land, where no water is. To see thy power and thy glory, so as I have seen thee in the Sanctuary. In these words you have Davids strong, earnest, and vehement desires; here you have desire upon desire; here you have the very flower and vigour of his spirit, the strength and sinews of his soul, the prime and top of his inflamed affections, all strongly working after a fuller enjoyment of God. Look as the espoused Maid longs for the marriage day, the Apprentice for his freedom, the Captive for his ransom, the condemned man for his pardon, the Traveller for his Inn, and the Mariner for ⟨p. 127⟩his Haven; so doth a soul, that hath met with God in his Ordinances, long to meet with God in Heaven: It is3 not a drop, it is not a lap and away, a sip and away, that will suffice such a soul: No. This soul will never be quiet, till it sees God face to face, till it be quiet in the bosom of God. The more a Saint tastes of God in an Ordinance, the more are his desires raised and whetted, and the more are his teeth set on edge for more and more of God. Plutarch faith, That