A77608:612
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.
The second Support is this, Consider, Support 2 that though your Comfort, Joy, and Peace, doth depend much upon ⟨p. 591⟩your Assurance, yet your Eternal Happiness and Blessedness doth not depend upon your Assurance; if it did, you might be happy and miserable in a day, I, in an hour: Your Happiness lies in your Union with God, in your Communion with God, in your Interest in God, and not in your seeing and knowing: Your Interest, your Joy, and Comfort, lies in your seeing and knowing your Interest in God, but your Everlasting Happiness lies in your being interested in God. The welfare and happiness of the child lies in the interest that he hath in his Father, but the joy and comfort of the child lies in his seeing, in his knowing of his interest in his Father: It is so between the Lord and Believers. Psal. 144. 15. Happy be the people that be in such a case, yea, happy is that people whose God is the 1Lord. Among the Philosophers there were Two hundred and eighty Opinions concerning Happiness, some affirming Happiness to lie in one thing, some in another. Ah, but by the Spirit and Word we are taught, that Happiness lies in our oneness with God, in our nearness and dearness to God, and in our ⟨p. 592⟩conformity to God, &c. Mark, the2 Scripture pronounces him happy, whose hope is in God, though he want Assurance, Psal. 146. 5. Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God. Again, he is happy that trusteth in the Lord, though for the present he want Assurance, Prov. 16. 20. And who so trusteth in the Lord, happy is he. Again, he is happy that feareth the Lord, that hath set up God as the object of his fear, though he want Assurance of the love of God, Prov. 28. 14. Happy is the man that feareth always; That fears to offend, that fears to disobey, that fears to rebel, &c. Again, he is happy that believes in Christ, that rests and stays upon Christ, as the Scriptures every where testify, though he may want Assurance.