A77608:357
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.
Thirdly, That Knowledge that accompanies salvation, is experimental Knowledge; it is knowledge that springs from a spiritual sense and taste of holy and heavenly things. Cant. 1. ⟨p. 334⟩2. Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth; for thy loves is better then wine. The Spouse had experienced the1 sweetness of Christs loves; his loves, says she, is better then wine. (Though wine is an excellent creature, a useful creature, a comfortable and delightful creature, a reviving and restorative creature;) and this draws out her heart, and makes her insatiable in longing, and very earnest in courting not a kiss, but kisses, not a little, but much of Christ: Her knowledge being experimental, she is impatient and restless, till she was drawn into the nearest and highest communion and fellowship with Christ. So in Verse 13. A bundle of myrrh is my well-beloved 2unto me; he shall lie all night betwixt my breasts. Myrrh is marvellous sweet and savoury, so is my well-beloved unto me, says the Spouse, I have found Jesus Christ to be marvellous sweet, and savoury to my soul. Myrrh is bitter3 to the taste, though it be sweet to the sm•ll; so is my well-beloved unto me, says the Spouse, I have found him to be bitter and bloody to the old man, to the ignoble and worser ⟨p. 335⟩part of man. And I have found him to be sweet and lovely to the New Man, to the Regenerate Man, to the noble part of man, I have found him to be a bitter, and a bloody enemy to my sins; and at the same time to be a sweet and precious friend unto my soul. Myrrh is of a preserving nature, it is hot and dry in the second degree, as the Naturalists observe; so is my well-beloved unto me, says the Spouse, O I have found the Lord Jesus4 preserving my soul from closing with such and such temptations, and from falling under the power of such and such corruptions, and from fainting under such and such afflictions, &c. Considerable to the same purpose is that of