A77608:223
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.
Lastly, I can tell you, O despairing souls, that God hath brought some out of the very gulf of despair, out of the very belly of hell; and therefore thou mayest hope that thy sins, that are thy present burden, shall not be thy future ruin. Doth not Asaph resemble the despairing soul to the life? My soul 1refused to be comforted, I remembered God, and was troubled, I complained, and my spirit was overwhelmed. Thou holdest mine eyes waking, I am so troubled, that I cannot speak. Will the Lord cast off for ever, and will he be favourable no more? is his mercy clean gone for ever, and will his promise fail ⟨p. 174⟩for evermore. Hath God forgotten to be gracious, hath he in anger shut up his tender mercies? Now out of this gulf God delivers him, Verse 10. And I said, This is my infirmity, or, this maketh 2me sick, as it is in the Original. Here Asaph checks himself for casting the cordials, the comforts of the Spirit against the wall, and for his having such hard, sad, and black thoughts of God. And in the thirteenth Verse, he speaks like one dropped out of Heaven. Thy way, O God, is in the sanctuary, who is so great a God, as our God? Formerly the thoughts of God troubled him, and overwhelmed him; but now at last the thoughts of the greatness of God, and of his interest in God is matter of admiration and consolation to him. So Heman sighs it out thus, My 3soul is full of troubles, and my life draweth nigh unto the grave. Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps. Thy wrath lieth hard upon me, and thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves. Lord why castest thou off my soul? why hidest thou thy face from me? I am afflicted, and ready to die from my youth up, while I suffer thy terrors, I am distracted. Thy fierce ⟨p. 175⟩wrath goeth over me, thy terrors have cut me off. And yet for all this, Heman's state was good, his soul was safe and happy; he calls God in the same Psalm, The God of his salvation. So Jonah, when he was in the belly of4