A77608:337
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.
Verily1 these are such flowers of Paradise that cannot be gathered in Natures Garden; they are Pearls of that price, that God bestows them upon none but those that are the price of Christs blood. All the men in the world cannot prove by the Scripture, that these Jewels can be found in any mens breasts, but in theirs that have union and communion with Christ, and that shall reign for ever with Christ. Secondly, Know, that it is no iniquity, but rather your duty for you to suck sweetness out of these honey-combs, and to look upon these things as infallible pledges, and evidences of divine favour, and of your everlasting happiness, and blessedness. Some there be that make the witness of the Spirit (of which I shall towards the close of this Discourse speak at large) the only evidence of our interest in Christ, and deny all other evidences from the fruit of the Spirit; but this is to deny the fruit growing upon the tree, to be an evidence that the tree is alive; whereas all know, that the fruit growing upon the tree, is an infallible and ⟨p. 315⟩undeniable evidence, that there is life2 in the tree. Certainly it is one thing to judge by our Graces, and another thing to rest upon our Graces, or to put trust in our Graces: When one argues from the beams of the Sun, that there is a Sun, one would think that the most cavilling spirit in the world should lye quiet and still.
Verily1 these are such flowers of Paradise that cannot be gathered in Natures Garden; they are Pearles of that price, that God bestows them upon none but those that are the price of Christs blood. All the men in the world cannot prove by the Scripture, that these Jewels can be found in any mens breasts, but in theirs that have union and communion with Christ, and that shall reign for ever with Christ. Secondly, Know, that it is no iniquity, but rather your duty for you to suck sweetnesse out of these hony-combs, and to look upon these things as infallible pledges, and evidences of divine favor, and of your everlasting happinesse, and blessednesse. Some there be that make the witnesse of the Spirit (of which I shall towards the close of this Discourse speake at large) the only evidence of our interest in Christ, and deny all other evidences from the fruit of the Spirit; but this is to deny the fruit growing upon the tree, to be an evedience that the tree is alive; whereas all know, that the fruit growing upon the tree, is an infallible and