A77608:211
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 will it be a reproach to his free-grace, to pardon thee? Could God be just in justifying such ungodly ones, and shall he be unjust in justifying of thee? Did not their unworthiness and unfitness for mercy, turn the stream of mercy from them? No. Why then, O despairing soul, shouldst thou fear that thy unworthiness, and unfitness for mercy, will so stop and turn the stream of mercy, as that thou must perish eternally for want of one drop of special Grace and Mercy.
Again, tell me, O despairing soul! Is not the Grace of God free-grace, is1 not mans salvation of free-grace. By grace ye are saved, Ephes. 2. 8. Every link of this golden chain, is Grace. It is free-grace that chose us, Rom. 11. 5. Even so then, at this present time also, there is a remnant according to the election ⟨p. 161⟩of Grace. It is free-grace that chooses some to be Jewels from all eternity, that chooses some to life, when others are left in darkness. The Lord Jesus Christ is a gift of free-grace; Christ is the greatest, the sweetest, the choicest, the chiefest gift that ever God gave; and yet this gift is given by a hand of love. God so loved the 2world, that he gave his only begotten Son, &c. Here is a sic without a sicut, God 3so loved the world; so freely, so vehemently, so fully, so admirably, so unconceivably, That he gave his only Son. His Son, not his servant, his begotten Son, not his adopted son, yea, his only begotten Son. I have read of one that had four sons, and in a Famine being sore oppressed with hunger, the Parents resolved to sell one for relief; but then they considered with themselves which of the four they should sell: they said, The eldest was the first of their strength, therefore loth they were to sell him; the second was the very picture of the Father, and therefore loth they were to part with him; the third was like the Mother, and therefore they were not