A77608:93
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.
Now is it not as easy a thing as it is pleasant, for a man that hath several sweet Springs in his Garden, to sit1 down, draw water, and drink. O believing souls there are Springs, there are Wells of living water not only near2 you, but in you; why then do you with Hagar sit down sorrowing, and weeping, when you should be a tasting, or a drinking, not only of the springs above you, but also of the springs within you. A man that hath3 fruit in his Garden may both delight his eye, and refresh his spirit with tasting of it; certainly we may both eye and taste the fruits of the Spirit in us, they being the first fruits of eternal life; I think none but mad souls will say, that grace is that forbidden fruit that God would have us neither4 see, nor taste; we ought not so to mind a Christ in heaven, as not to mind Christ in us the hope of glory: Christ would not have his Spouse so to mind her own blackness, as to forget that she is all fair and glorious within.
Now is it not as easie a thing as it is pleasant, for a man that hath severall sweet Springs in his Garden, to sit1 down, draw water, and drinke. O beleeving souls there are Springs, there are Wels of living water not only near2 you, but in you; why then doe you with Hagar sit down sorrowing, and weeping, when you should be a tasting, or a drinking, not only of the springs above you, but also of the springs within you. A man that hath3 fruit in his Garden may both delight his eye, and refresh his spirit with tasting of it; certainly we may both eye and taste the fruits of the Spirit in us, they being the first fruits of eternall life; I thinke none but mad souls will say, that grace is that forbidden fruit that God would have us neither4