A Believer’s Battle for Assurance
Commentary
Heaven on Earth is #2 of 60+ in the Puritan Paperbacks series published by Banner of Truth.
This treatise is Thomas Brooks at his best as the pastoral care of these literary, theological giants once again overwhelms the dated language. In fact, in this instance, the archaic language actually helps because it forces the reader to slow his progress and really digest the care for your soul that is being poured across the pages and time of centuries past.
In particular, chapter 5 provides over 150 pages of pure gold for the soul. This could have easily been a stand-alone book providing an amazing, scripture backed means of testing your faith. If not a stand-alone, the book would benefit from starting with this material. After all, if your faith is not real, you shouldn't have assurance. If Brooks had started with the test and then moved on to the assurance you should have considering the reality of your faith as judged by scripture, the flow would have made more sense. As it stands, the chapter was so long that one has to remember the aim of the book as a whole so as to not become distracted from the original purpose. Try to think of it more as a hub and spoke method of argument. Chapter 5 is the hub where Brooks is attempting to offer up the best litmus test whereby we may be most assured or challenged as to our own spiritual condition. All the other chapters are spokes where he fleshes out what assurance means to the believer.
If you’re like me, assurance is more of an ebb and flow. There are times where assurance is strong and times where I struggle. Brooks really helped me see that I’ve been looking at this in the wrong way. Instead of focusing inward on myself, I should be fixing my gaze on Christ and His finished work. When we do this and pursue holiness, assurance is a natural byproduct we get to enjoy along the way. In the end, this book will certainly be one I pass along to those struggling with assurance and also one I point to when confronting the common complaint against puritan writers that they are not pastoral. Once again, that serves as proof that said person hasn't actually read puritan writing or cannot comprehend what they've read. Do you struggle with assurance? If so, read this book.
Structure of the Book
The book is structured into 7 chapters:
Proofs that believers can experience assurance in this life
Propositions concerning assurance
Hindrances and impediments that prevent believers from having assurance and how to remove them
Motives for a believer to strive for assurance
Ways and means of gaining a well-grounded assurance
The differences between true and false assurance
How to strengthen assurance and regain it if you lose it
Five Key Quotes
"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."
"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 ... it is heaven on this side of heaven."
"God delays the giving in of assurance ... because their souls are so taken up and filled with creature enjoyments as that Christ is put to lodge in an out-house, or else it is because they pursue not after assurance with all their might."
"The surest and shortest way to assurance is to wrestle and contend with God for holiness ... when the stream and cream of a man's spirit runs after holiness, it will not long be night with that man."
"See to it that your hearts run more out to Christ than to assurance; to the sun than to the beams, to the fountain than to the stream, to the root than to the branch, to the cause then to the effect."
Recommended Complementary Reading
Faith Seeking Assurance by Anthony Burgess
The Christian’s Great Interest by William Guthrie
Meet the Puritans by Joel Beeke, Randall Pederson, and Fraser Jones
