A77608:248
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 third Motive to provoke you1 to crucify your bosom sins, be they what they will, is, Seriously to consider the very great damage that your souls have already sustained by your bosom sins. Saul by casting an amorous2 eye upon Agag, lost his Crown and Kingdom. Samson by dallying with his Delilah, lost his strength, sight, light, liberty, and life. But what are these losses to thy loss of Spiritual strength, to thy loss of communion with God, to thy loss of the Spirit of Light, Life, Liberty, and Glory, to thy loss of Joy unspeakable, and Peace that passes understanding, and to thy loss of those fresh and sparkling hopes of glory, that were once sparkling in thy Brest? Mark Anthony was so far bewitched with his Cleopatra, that in the heat of the battle of Actium, when the Empire of the world, his life, and all lay at stake, that he fled from ⟨p. 211⟩Augustus to pursue her, to the ruin and loss of all. So, many there are so bewitched to some Cleopatra, to some darling sin, or other, that they pursue the enjoyment of them to the loss of God, Christ, Heaven, and their Souls for ever.
The third Motive to provoke you1 to crucifie your bosom sins, be they what they will, is, Seriously to consider the very great damage that your souls have already sustained by your bosom sins. Saul by casting an amorous2 eye upon Agag, lost his Crown and Kingdom. Samson by dallying with his Delilah, lost his strength, sight, light, liberty, and life. But what are these losses to thy loss of Spiritual strength, to thy loss of communion with God, to thy loss of the Spirit of Light, Life, Liberty, and Glory, to thy loss of Joy unspeakable, and Peace that passes understanding, and to thy loss of those fresh and sparkling hopes of glory, that were once sparkling in thy Brest? Mark Anthony was so far bewitched with his Cleopatra, that in the heat of the battle of Actium, when the Empire of the world, his life, and all lay at stake, that he fled from ⟨p. 211⟩