A77608:360
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.
Fourthly, that Knowledge that accompanies salvation is a heart-affecting-knowledge; it affects the heart with Christ and all spiritual things. O it doth wonderfully1 endear Christ and the things of Christ to the soul, Can. 2. 5. Stay me with flagons, and comfort me with apples for I am sick of love. O saith the Spouse, my heart is taken with Christ, it is raised and ravished with his love, my soul is burning, my soul is beating towards Christ; O none but Christ, none but Christ. I cannot live in my self, I2 cannot live in my Duties, I cannot live in external Privileges, I cannot live in outward Mercies, I cannot live in common Providences; I3 can live only in Christ, who is my Life, my Love, my Joy, my Crown, my all in all. O the hearing of Christ affects me, the seeing of Christ affects me, the taste of Christ affects me, ⟨p. 341⟩the glimmerings of Christ affects me; the more I come to know him in his Natures, in his Names, in his Offices, in his discoveries, in his appearances, in his beauties, the more I find my heart and affections to prize Christ, to4 run after Christ, to be affected with Christ, and to be wonderfully endeared to Christ, Cant. 5. 10. He is white and ruddy the chiefest of ten thousand: The knowledge that she had of Christ did so affect and endear her heart to Christ that she cannot but make use of all her Rhetoric to set forth Christ in the most lovely and lively colours. Gal. 6. 14. God forbid that I should glory in any thing, save in Christ Jesus. O God forbid that my heart should be affected or taken with any thing in comparison of Christ: The more I know him, the more I like him; the more I know him, the more I love him; the more I know him, the more I desire him; the more I know him, the more my heart is knit unto him His Beauty is taking, his Love is ravishing, his Goodness is drawing, his Manifestations are enticing, and his Person is enamouring. His lovely Looks pleases me,