A77608:207
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.
CHAP. III. Containing the several Hinderances and Impediments that keep poor souls from Assurance, with the Means and Helps to remove those Impediments and Hinderances.
Now the first impediment1 and hinderance to Assurance, that we shall instance in, is, Despairing thoughts of mercy. O these imprison the Soul, and make it always dark night with the Soul; these shut the windows of the Soul, that no light can come in to cheer it. Despairing 2thoughts make a man fight against God with his own weapons; they make a man cast all the Cordials of the Spirit against the wall, as things of no value; they make a man suck poison out of the sweetest promises; they make a man eminent in nothing, unless it be in having hard thoughts of God, and in arguing against his own Soul, and happiness, and in ⟨p. 156⟩turning his greatest advantages into disadvantages, his greatest helps into his greatest hinderances. Despairing3 thoughts of mercy, make a man a beast; yea, below the beast that perisheth. Pliny speaks of the Scorpion, that there is not one minute wherein it doth not put forth the sting, as being unwilling to lose any opportunity of doing mischief: Such Scorpions are despairing souls, they are still a putting out their sting, a rangling with God, or Christ, or the Scripture, or the Saints, or Ordinances, or their own Souls. A despairing soul is (Magor Missabib) a terror to himself, it cannot rest, but like Noah's Ark is always tossed here and there, it is troubled on every side, it is full of fears and fightings. A despairing soul is a burden to others, but the greatest burden to it self, it is still a vexing, terrifying, tormenting, condemning, and perplexing it self: Despair makes every sweet4 bitter, and every bitter exceeding bitter, it puts Gall and Wormwood into the sweetest Wine, and it puts a sting, a cross into every cross. Now whilst the soul is under these despairing