Notes on *Heaven on Earth*
Heaven on Earth: A Treatise on Christian Assurance, Thomas Brooks, 1654, (Banner of Truth)
Main Idea/Takeaway
Assurance is the gift not of having grace but of knowing you have grace, and though it is not required for salvation, it is the highest experience of salvation this side of heaven.
Interaction
Brooks' dedication. (9-13)
Assurance is explained in short. (14)
“State of grace” “Reflex act of gracious soul” Assurance is not to have grace but to be sure you have grace. This assurance is not required for salvation, it is the highest experience of salvation this side of heaven. (15)
The believer prays Rom. 8:15 not on the basis of his strong faith, but because it’s just true. God is "Abba Father”. (30)
See Owen on waning analogy.(36)
But does it? What is meant “living purely upon Christ””Holy art” contentment. (38)
In this way, when we preach the glory of Jesus we are preaching for the assurance of his people.(39)
Only ultimately is this the case. If a lash is something other than a lash in its moment then it's not a lash. Lashes become lessons. (82)
So assurance should be pursued, but not as a thing itself. Not in a shortcut kind of way. We must pursue it through holiness, i.e., "grace & holiness for communion with God and conformity to God. (87)
How is the experience of acting grace different from the experience of assurance? (150)
What is the "actings of grace?" Availing oneself to the means of grace? Appropriating the grace of God in experience? That is, to live in the knowledge of grace, that I am loved by God because of God alone? (150)
Table of Contents
Epistle to the Saints
Preface: The Nature of Assurance
I. Proofs that Believers May in This Life Attain Unto A Well-Grounded Assurance Of Their Everlasting Happiness and Blessedness
II. Weighty Propositions Concerning Assurance
III. Hindrances and ImpedimentsThat Keep Poor Souls From Assurance; With the Means and Helps to Remove Those Impediments and Hindrances
IV. Motives to Provoke Christians to be Restless Till They Have Obtained A Well-Grounded Assurance of Their Eternal Happiness and Blessedness
V. Ways and Means of Gaining a Well-Grounded Assurance
VI. The Differences Between a True and a Counterfeit Assurance, Between Sound Assurance and Presumption
VII. Answers to Several Special Questions About Assurance
Favorite Quotes by Chapter
Epistle to the Saints
"I could wish it better for your sakes, yet such as it is I do in all love and humility present you with, desiring the Lord to make it an internal and eternal advantage to you." (10)
"Assurance is a believer's ark, where he sits, Noah-like, quiet and still in the midst of all distractions and destructions, commotions and confusions." (11)
"The life of a Christian is rather via (journey) than vita (life), a step towards life rather than life." (12)
"Books may preach when the author cannot, when the author may not, when the author dares not, yea, and which is more, when the author is not." (12)
Preface: The Nature of Assurance
"The being in a state of grace will yield a man a heaven hereafter, but the seeing of himself in this state will yield him both a heaven here and a heaven hereafter; it will render him doubly blest, blest in heaven, and blest in his own conscience." (14)
"Now assurance flows from a clear, certain, evident knowledge that I have grace, and that I do believe. Now this assurance is the beauty and top of a Christian's glory in this life." (14-15)
"To have grace, and to be sure that we have grace, is glory upon the throne, it is heaven on this side of heaven." (15)
I. Proofs that Believers May in This Life Attain Unto A Well-Grounded Assurance Of Their Everlasting Happiness and Blessedness
"The Bible is a Christian's magna charta, his chief evidence for heaven. Men highly prize, and carefully keep their charters, privileges, conveyances, and title-deeds of their lands; and shall not the saints much more highly prize, and carefully keep in the closet of their hearts, the precious Word of God, which is to them instead of all assurances for their maintenance, deliverance, protection, confirmation, consolation, and eternal salvation." (18)
"Faith, in time, will of its own accord raise and advance itself to assurance. Faith is an appropriating grace; it looks upon God, and saith with David, "This God is my God for ever and ever, and he shall be my guide unto the death," Ps. 48." (21)
"We must not only strive after assurance, but we must strive and shew all diligence to the attaining of that rich and full assurance which will scatter all fears and doubts, which will make a soul patient in waiting, courageous in doing, and cheerful in suffering, and which will make a heaven in a man's heart on this side heaven, and make him go singing into paradise, in despite of all calamities and miseries." (25)
"How can they rejoice and glory in God, that do not know whether he will be an everlasting friend or an everlasting enemy to them, whether he will always breathe out love or wrath upon them?" (28)
"Christians, are not your mercies greater than your miseries? Yes. Are your greatest sufferings comparable to the least spark of grace or beam of glory revealed in you or to you? No. Will not one hour's being in the bosom of Christ recompense you for all your trouble and travail? Yes?"
"Joy and rejoicing is a consequent and effect of assurance." (29)
"How can they rejoice and glory in God, that do not know whether he will be an everlasting friend or an everlasting enemy to them, whether he will always breathe out love or wrath upon them?" (29)
"Joy and rejoicing is a consequent and effect of assurance." (29)
"Luther: " The whole Scripture." saith he, " doth principally aim at this thing, that we should not doubt, but that we should hope, that we should trust, that we should believe, that God is a merciful, a bountiful, a gracious, and a patient God to his people." (32)
II. Weighty Propositions Concerning Assurance
"Christians, this you are always to remember, that though the enjoyment of assurance makes most for your consolation, yet the living purely upon Christ in the absence of assurance, makes most for Christ's exaltation." (38)
"Now though this full assurance is earnestly desired, and highly prized, and the want of it much lamented, and the enjoyment of it much endeavored after by all saints, yet it is only obtained by a few. It is a mercy too good for most men's hearts, it is a crown too weighty for most men's heads. Full assurance is optimum maximum, the best and greatest mercy; and therefore God will only give it to his best and dearest friends." (39)
"It is one mercy for God to love the soul, and another mercy for God to assure the soul of his love." (39)
"It is one thing to be an heir of heaven, and another thing for a man to know or see himself an heir of heaven." (39)
"It is one thing to be an heir of heaven, and another thing for a man to know or see himself an heir of heaven." (39)
"Assurance is requisite to the well-being of a Christian, but not to the being; it is requisite to the consolation of a Christian, but not to the salvation of a Christian; it is requisite to the well-being of grace, but not to the mere being of grace. Though a man cannot be saved without faith, yet he may be saved without assurance." (41)
"God loves to act in such ways of grace towards his suffering ones, as may stop the mouths of their enemies, and cause the hearts of his friends to rejoice." (70)
"This soul will never be quiet, till it sees God face to face, till it be quiet in the bosom of God. The more a saint tastes of God in an ordinance, the more are his desires raised and whetted, and the more are his teeth set on edge for more and more of God." (78)
"Afflictiones benedictiones, afflictions are blessings. God's corrections are our instructions, his lashes our lessons, his scourges our schoolmasters, his chastisements our admonitions!" (82)
"Prayer crowns God with the honor and glory that is due to his name; and God crowns prayer with assurance and comfort. Usually the most praying souls are the most assured souls." (84)
"Praying souls, remember this. It is but weakness to think that men shall reap as soon as they sow, that they shall reap in the evening when they have but sowed in the morning." (90)
III. Hindrances and Impediments That Keep Poor Souls From Assurance; With the Means and Helps to Remove Those Impediments and Hindrances
"The only ground of God's love is his love. The ground of God's love is only and wholly in himself." (96)
"If thou has anything to say, say it to my Christ; he is my comfort and crown, my joy and strength, my redeemer and intercessor, and he shall plead for me." (105)
"Why, then, O doubting souls, will you make your sense and feeling the judge, not only of your condition, but of the truth itself? What is this but to dethrone God, and to make a god of your sense and feeling?" (109)
"A heart that is full of the world, is a heart full of wants." (115)
"The pleasure and sweetness that follows victory over sin is a thousand times beyond that seeming sweetness that is in the gratifying of sin." (120)
"It is not a man's whining and complaining over sin, but his mortifying of sin, that will make his life a paradise of pleasure." (120)
"He that shuns not the occasions of sin, tempts two at once, Satan and his own heart; he tempts Satan to tempt him to taste of forbidden fruit, and he tempts his own heart to feed upon forbidden fruit." (125)
IV. Motives to Provoke Christians to be Restless Till They Have Obtained A Well-Grounded Assurance of Their Eternal Happiness and Blessedness
"Assurance is that heavenly crystal that quickens souls, and that casts a beauty and a glory upon souls; and this makes the devil mad." (132)
"Ah! were their souls fully assured that God had loved them freely, and received them graciously, and justified them perfectly, and pardoned them absolutely, and would glorify them everlastingly, they could not but love where God loves, and own where God owns, and embrace where God embraces, and be one with every one that is one with Jesus." (147)
V. Ways and Means of Gaining a Well-Grounded Assurance
"Seeing that God looks not for any penny or pennyworth, for any portion or proportion in the creature to draw his love, but he will justify, pardon, and save for his name's sake, Isa. 55. 1, 2; seeing all the motives that move God to shew mercy are in his own bosom; seeing they are all within doors, there is no reason why the vilest of sinners should sit down and say, There is no hope, there is no help, Deut. 7. 7, 8; Ps. 68. 18." (155)
"Remember, reader, that a little heart-knowledge, a little experimental knowledge, is of greater efficacy and worth than the highest notions of the most acute wits. He doth well that discourses of Christ, but he doth infinitely better that, by experimental knowledge, feeds and lives on Christ. It was not Adam's seeing, but his tasting, of forbidden fruit that made him miserable; and it is not your seeing of Christ, but your experimental tasting of Christ, that will make you truly happy. As no knowledge will save but what is experimental, so let no knowledge satisfy you but what is experimental, Ps. 34. 8." (183)
"I can live only in Christ, who is my life, my love, my joy, my crown, my all in all. Oh, the hearing of Christ affects me, the seeing of Christ affects me, the taste of Christ affects me, the glimmerings of Christ affect 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, to run after Christ, to be affected with Christ, and to be wonderfully endeared to Christ." (184)
"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." (184)
"Divine and heavenly knowledge brings a man near to God; it gives a man the clearest and fullest sight 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."(188)
"No man that is saved is saved upon the account of the strength of his faith, but upon the account of the truth of his faith. In the great day Christ will not bring balances to weigh men's graces, but a touch-stone to try their graces; he will not look so much at the strength as at the truth of their graces." (215)
"The work of repentance is not the work of an hour, a day, a year, but the work of a life-time." (225)
"The daily mercies and experiences that they have of the love of Christ, of the care of Christ, of the kindnesses and compassions of Christ working more and more towards them, cannot but raise their affections more and more to him. As fire is increased by adding of fuel unto it, so is our love to Christ upon fresh and new manifestations of his great love towards us." (243)
VI. The Differences Between a True and a Counterfeit Assurance, Between Sound Assurance and Presumption
"A well-grounded assurance doth always beget in the soul an earnest and an impatient longing after a further, a clearer, and a fuller enjoyment of God and Christ." (289)
"A well-grounded assurance of a man's own eternal happiness and blessedness will make him very studious and laborious to make others happy." (292)
"So when Christ and assurance come to be set up in the soul, all the idols of Satan and a man's own heart are cast down, and cast out as an abomination." (294)
"It is impossible for a soul not to love Christ, that knows he is beloved of Christ." (296)
"Ah! this assurance causes the strong waters of consolation to overflow the soul. Assurance raises the strongest joy in the would." (296)
VII. Answers to Several Special Questions About Assurance
"Humility is both a grace, and a vessel to receive grace. God pours in grace into humble souls, as men pour liquor into an empty vessel." (309)
"Therefore, as you would have your assurance strengthened and maintained, walk humbly with your God; I say again, walk humbly, walk humbly with your God, and you shall wear the crown of assurance to your grave." (310)
"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."(312)
"Happiness lies not in any transient act of the Spirit, as assurance is, but in the more permanent and lasting acts of the Spirit." (312)
"But this is the believer's blessedness, that his condition is always good, though he doth not always see it to be good; that his state is always safe, though it be not always comfortable." (313)
"Assurance is a peculiar mercy; it is a flower of paradise that God sticks only in his children's bosoms. Assurance is a mercy-sweetening mercy; it is a mercy that puts the garland upon all our mercies." (318)
"Holiness differs nothing from happiness, but in name. Holiness is happiness in the bud, and happiness is holiness at the full. Happiness is nothing but the quintessence of holiness." (319)
"The holy soul is happy in life, and blessed in death, and shall be transcendently glorious in the morning of the resurrection, when Christ shall say, Lo, here am I, and my holy ones, who are my joy; Lo, here am I, and my holy ones, who are my crown; and therefore, upon the heads of these holy ones will I set an immortal crown. Even so, Amen! Lord Jesus." (320)
Notable Content
Nine special seasons when assurance is enjoyed: 1.) At conversion 2.) Before engaging in hard or dangerous service 3.) During times of waiting 4.) During times of suffering 5.) During “hearing” and “receiving” times 6.) During times of personal afflictions 7.) During seasons of prayer 8.) Before conflicts with Satan 9.) After conflicts with Satan.
Brooks on experimental knowledge. (183)
