A77608:421
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 Repentance that accompanies Salvation, strikes most1 effectually, and particularly, against that sin or sins, that the sinner was most apt and prone to before his Conversion. The hand of Repentance is most against that sin, it is most upon that sin that the soul hath looked most ⟨p. 412⟩with a leering eye upon. The chief and principal sins that Israel was guilty of, was idolatry and sinful compliance; Now when God works kindly upon them, they put the hand of Repentance upon those particular sins, as you may see Isa. 27. 9. By this therefore shall the 2iniquity of Jacob be purged, and this is all the fruit to take away his sin: When he maketh all the stones of the Altar, as Chalk stones, that are beaten in sunder, the groves and images shall not stand up. Here you see, when God appears, and acts graciously for, and towards his people, they put the hand of Repentance upon their Groves and Images, these must down, these must no longer stand: The Groves and the Images shall not stand up, they shall be utterly abandoned and destroyed, demolished and abolished. So in Isa. 30. 22. Ye shall defile also the covering of thy graven Images of Silver, and the ornament of thy molten Images of Gold: Thou shalt cast them away as a menstruous cloth; thou shalt say unto it, Get thee hence. Here you see the hand of Repentance is against their Idols of Silver and Gold, and not only against their Idols, but also ⟨p. 413⟩against whatsoever had any relation to them. Now they show nothing but a detestation of their Idols, and a holy indignation against them; Get you3 hence. The hand of Repentance makes a divorce between them and their Idols, between their Souls and their especial Sins. Now they are as much in hating, abhorring, abominating, and contemning their Idols and Images, as they were formerly in adoring, worshipping, and honouring of them. So Mary Magdalen in the seventh of Luke, walks quite cross and contrary to her former self, her sinful self, she crosses the flesh, in those very things wherein formerly she did gratify the flesh. So the penitent Jailer in that sixteenth of the Acts, washes those very wounds that his own bloody hands had made: He acts in ways of mercy, quite contrary to his former cruelty: At first there was none so fierce, so furious, so cruel, so bloody, so inhumane in his carriage to the Apostles;