A77608:356
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.
God bids him arise and go into the City, and it should be told him ⟨p. 332⟩what he should do; and he obeys the Heavenly vision. Chap. 26. 19. Divine light makes this Lion a Lamb, this Persecutor a Preacher, this Destroyer of the Saints, a Builder up of the Saints, this Tormentor a Comforter, this Monster an Angel, this Notorious Blasphemer, a very great admirer of God, and the actings of his Free-grace, as you may see by comparing the nineth, and twenty sixth Chapters of the Acts together. So when a spark of this Heavenly fire fell upon the heart of Mary Magdalen, Luke 7. O what a change, what a turn doth it make in her; now she loves much, and believes much, and repents much, and weeps much. O what a change did Divine light make in Zacheus, and in the Jailer. Verily, if thy light, thy knowledge doth not better thee? if it doth not change and transform thee? if under all thy light and knowledge thou remainest as vile and base as ever? thy light, thy knowledge, thy notions, thy speculations, will be like to fire not on the Hearth, but in the Room, that will burn the House, and the Inhabitant too; it will be like mettle in a blind ⟨p. 333⟩horse, that serves for nothing but to break the neck of the rider. That knowledge that is not a transforming knowledge, will torment a man at last more then all the Devils in Hell; it will be a Sword to cut him, a Rod to lash him, a Serpent to bite him, a Scorpion to sting him, and a Vulture, a Worm eternally gnawing him. When Tamberlain was in his wars, one having found and digged up a great pot of Gold, brought it to him, Tamberlain asked whether it had his Fathers stamp upon it; but when he saw it had the Roman stamp, and not his Fathers, he would not own it. So God at last will own no knowledge, but that which leaves the stamp of Christ, the print of Christ, the image of Christ upon the heart. But that which changes and transforms the soul, that makes a man a new man, another man, then what he was before Divine light shined upon him.
God bids him arise and go into the City, and it should be told him ⟨p. 332⟩what he should do; and he obeyes the Heavenly vision. Chap. 26. 19. Divine light makes this Lion a Lamb, this Persecutor a Preacher, this Destroyer of the Saints, a Builder up of the Saints, this Tormentor a Comforter, this Monster an Angel, this Notorious Blasphemer, a very great admirer of God, and the actings of his Free-grace, as you may see by comparing the nineth, and twenty sixt Chapters of the Acts together. So when a spark of this Heavenly fire fell upon the heart of Mary Magdalen,