A77608:366
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.
I neither learned wisdom, nor have the knowledge of the holy. The Evangelical Prophet Isaiah under all his knowledge1 and visions, which were very great and glorious, acknowledges himself to be a man of unclean lips, and to dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. Divine and heavenly knowledge brings a man2 near to God, it gives a man the clearest, and the fullest fight of God, and the nearer any man comes to God, and the clearer visions he hath of God, the more low and humble will that man lie before God. None so humble, as they that have nearest communion with God. The Angels that are near unto him, cover their faces with their wings, in token of humility. Divine knowledge makes a man look inwards, it anatomizes a man to himself; it is a glass that shows a man the spots of his own soul; and this makes him little and low in his own eyes. In the beams of this heavenly3 light, a Christian comes to see his own ⟨p. 351⟩pride, ignorance, impatience, unworthiness, conceitedness, worthlessness, frowardness, and nothingness. That knowledge that swells thee, will undo thee; that knowledge that puffs thee, will sink thee; that knowledge that makes thee delightful in thy own eyes, will make thee despicable in God and good mens eyes. 1 Cor. 8. 1, 2. Knowledge puffeth up, (that is, Notional knowledge, Speculative knowledge, Knowledge that ripens a man for destruction, that will leave him short of salvation; this knowledge puffs and swells a man, and makes him think himself something, when he is nothing.) And if any man thinketh that he knoweth any thing, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know, saith the Apostle. Will not that Philosopher rise in judgement against many of our high-flown Professors (who swell, who look big, and talk big, under their notional knowledge) who said under all his knowledge (which was very great) (Hoc tantum scio, quod nihil scio.) This only do I know, that I know nothing. Well, if that knowledge thou hast, be that knowledge ⟨p. 352⟩that accompanies salvation, it is a soul humbling, and a soul abasing knowledge; if it be otherwise, then will thy knowledge make thee both a Prisoner and a Slave to the Devil at once.