A77608:188
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 fifth and last Reason, Why the Reas. 5 Lord is graciously pleased to give his people some sense of his love, and some assurance of his favour in Ordinances, is, That they may have wherewithal to silence, and stop the mouths of wicked and ungodly men, whose words are1 stout against the Lord; who say, it is in vain to serve God, and what profit is there in keeping his Statutes and Ordinances, and in walking mournfully before the Lord of Hosts. Now the2 Lord causes his face to shine upon his people in Ordinances, that they may stand up, and bear him witness before the wicked world, that he is no hard Master, that he reaps not where he sows not. In Ordinances he kisses them, and there he gives them his love, and makes known his goodness and glory, that his Children may from their own experiences, be able to confute all the lies and clamours of wicked men against God and his ways. And blessed be God, that hath not left himself without witness, but hath many thousands ⟨p. 129⟩that can stand up before all the3 world, and declare, That they have seen the beauty and glory of God in his Sanctuary, that they have met with those joys and comforts in the ways of God, that do as far surpass all other joys and comforts, as light does darkness, as Heaven does Hell: That they have met with such heart meltings, such heart humblings, such heart revivings, such heart cheerings, as they never met with before, in all their days. Ah, say these Souls, One day in his Courts, is better then a thousand years elsewhere. O! we had rather with Moses, loose all, and be whipped and stripped of all, then lose the sweet enjoyments of God in Ordinances. O! in them, God hath been Light and Life, a Joy and a Crown to our Souls. God is tender of his own glory, and of his Children's comfort; and therefore he gives them, such choice aspects, and such sweet visits in Ordinances, that they may have Arguments at hand to stop the mouths of sinners, and to declare from their own experience, that all the ways of God are ways of pleasantness,4 and that all his paths drops ⟨p. 130⟩