A77608:252
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 sixth and last Motive to provoke1 you to fall with all your might upon bosom sins, is, Seriously to consider that till this be done, fears and doubts will still haunt the soul; the soul will still be fearing that surely all is naught, and that, that work that is wrought upon it, is not a real, but a counterfeit work, that it is not a peculiar and special work, but a common work; that a man may have and perish. Till2 this be done, the soul can never be able3 to see grace in its own native beauty, and glory; the hugging of sin in a corner, will raise such a dust in the soul, that it cannot be able to see those Pearls of glory sparkling and shining. Till this be done, doubting souls, you will be but Babes, and Shrubs, and Dwarfs in Christianity, the hankering of the soul after sin, is the casting of water upon the Spirit, it is the laming of Grace, it is the clipping the wings of Faith and Prayer; so that the soul can neither be confident, nor fervent, ⟨p. 217⟩frequent nor constant in religious services; so that it will unavoidably follow, such souls will be like Pharaohs 4lean Kine, poor and starveling. Look as many men are kept low in their outward estates, by having a back door to some Herodians; so many doubting souls are kept low in spirituals, by their hankering after some particular sin.
The sixt and last Motive to provoke1 you to fall with all your might upon bosom sins, is, Seriously to consider that till this be done, fears and doubts will still haunt the soul; the soul will still be fearing that surely all is naught, and that, that work that is wrought upon it, is not a real, but a counterfeit work, that it is not a peculiar and special work, but a common work; that a man may have and perish. Till2 this be done, the soul can never be able