A77608:263
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.
So Satan and his factors they promise poor souls, that such and such opinions and notions, &c. will thus and thus advantage them, and advance them; but in the close, poor1 souls shall find the promised Crown turned into a halter, the promised comfort turned into torment, the promised glory turned into ignominy, the promised exaltation turned into desolation, the promised Heaven turned into a Hell. This age is full of soul-flatterers, of soul-undoers, who like evil Chirurgeons skin over the wound, ⟨p. 230⟩but kill the patient. Flattery undid Ahab, and Herod, and Nero, and Alexander. Those flatterers that told Dionysius, that his Epistle was as sweet as2 Honey, undid him; and those flatterers that told Caesar, that his freckles in his face were like the Stars in the Firmament, ruined him. And ah how many young and old in these days have been lost and undone, by those soul-flatterers that lie in wait to ensnare and deceive the souls of men. Oh that this very consideration might be set home by the hand of the Spirit, with that life and power, upon your souls, as effectually to stir and provoke you to get a well-grounded assurance of your happiness and blessedness, that so you may stand fast, like the house built upon the Rock, in the midst of all3 tempests and storms, that nothing may unsettle you, nor disquiet you, and that none may take away your Crown.4
So Satan and his factors they promise poor souls, that such and such opinions and notions, &c. will thus and thus advantage them, and advance them; but in the close, poor1 souls shall finde the promised Crown turned into a halter, the promised comfort turned into torment, the promised glory turned into ignominy, the promised exaltation turned into desolation, the promised Heaven turned into a Hell. This age is full of soulflatterers, of soul-undoers, who like evil Chyrurgions skin over the wound, ⟨p. 230⟩