A77608:251
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 fifth Motive to work you to1 trample upon your bosom sins, is, Wisely to consider that it is your duty and glory to do that every day, that you would willingly do upon a dying day. Ah, how would you live and love upon a dying day? how would you admire God, rest upon God, delight in God, long for God, and walk with God upon a dying day? how would you hate, loath, and abhor your bosom sins upon a dying day? how would you complain of your bosom sins, and pray against your bosom sins, and mourn over your bosom sins, and watch against your bosom sins, and fly from all occasions that should tend to draw you to close with your bosom sins, upon a dying day? Ah doubting souls, would you not for all the world gratify your bosom sins upon a dying day, and will you gratify them on other days; which for any ⟨p. 215⟩thing you know to the contrary, may prove your dying days? Thrice happy is that soul that labours with all his might, to do that at first that he would fain do at last; that doth that on every day, that he would give a thousand worlds to do on a dying day. No way to Assurance like this; no way to joy and comfort, like this; no way to rest and peace, like this; no way to the Kingdom, to the Crown, like this. I earnestly beseech you trembling souls, when you find your spirits running out to bosom sins, that you would lay your hands upon your hearts, and thus expostulate the case: O our souls, would you thus dally and play with sin upon a dying day? would you thus stroke and hug sin upon a dying day? would you not rather show all the dislike and hatred that is imaginable against it? would you not tremble at sin more then at Hell, and abhor the very occasions of sin, more then the most venomous Serpent in all the world? would you not rather suffer the worst and greatest punishments, then to smile upon a darling sin upon a dying day? Yes. O would you fain ⟨p. 216⟩do this upon a dying day; why not then every day? why not then every day, O our souls?
The fifth Motive to work you to1 trample upon your bosom sins, is, Wisely to consider that it is your duty and glory to do that every day, that you would willingly do upon a dying day. Ah, how would you live and love upon a dying day? how would you admire God, rest upon God, delight in God, long for God, and walk with God upon a dying day? how would you hate, loath, and abhor your bosom sins upon a dying day? how would you complain of your bosom sins, and pray against your bosom sins, and mourn over your bosom sins, and watch against your bosom sins, and flie from all occasions that should tend to draw you to close with your bosom sins, upon a dying day? Ah doubting souls, would you not for all the world gratifie your bosom sins upon a dying day, and will you gratifie them on other days; which for any