A77608:209
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.
Tell me, O despairing souls, is not despair an exceeding vile and contemptible sin, is it not a dishonour to God, a reproach to Christ, and a murderer of souls, is it not a belying of God, a denying of Christ, and a crowning of Satan; it doth without doubt proclaim the Devil, a Conqueror, and lifts him up above Christ himself. Despair is an evil that flows1 from the greatest evil in the world, it flows from unbelief, from ignorance, and mis-apprehensions of God, and his Grace, and from mistakes of Scripture, and from Satan, who being for ever cast out of paradise, labours with all his art and might to work poor souls to despair of ever entering into paradise. O despairing souls, let the greatness of this sin effectually awaken you, and provoke you to labour as for life, to come out of this condition, which is as sinful as it is ⟨p. 158⟩doleful, and as much to be hated, as to be lamented.
Tell me, O despairing souls, is not despair an exceeding vile and contemptible sin, is it not a dishonor to God, a reproach to Christ, and a murderer of souls, is it not a belying of God, a denying of Christ, and a crowning of Satan; it doth without doubt proclaim the Devil, a Conqueror, and lifts him up above Christ himself. Despair is an evil that flows1 from the greatest evil in the world, it flows from unbelief, from ignorance, and mis-apprehensions of God, and his Grace, and from mistakes of Scripture, and from Satan, who being for ever cast out of paradise, labors with all his art and might to work poor souls to despair of ever entring into paradise. O despairing souls, let the greatness of this sin effectually awaken you, and provoke you to labor as for life, to come out of this condition, which is as sinful as it is ⟨p. 158⟩doleful, and as much to be hated, as to be lamented.
- 1Despair is Satans masterpiece, it carries men he adlong to hell, it makes a man twice told a child of hell; it is a Viper, that hath stung many a man to death.