by Thomas Case
in ePub, .mobi & .pdf formats
THE AUTHOR WISHETH GRACE AND PEACE FROM GOD OUR FATHER, AND FROM THE LORD JESUS CHRIST.
READER,—To help the weaker sort of christians in the understanding of this more dark and difficult context, which containeth the description of our Lord's last coming; and to quicken the more slow and drowsy spirits, to a greater vigour in the pursuit of the glory which is to be revealed at that coming; have I, not without the importunity of divers friends, sensible of their need of the meanest helps, put myself upon the publishing of these more private essays calculated only for the use of my own family.
Yet since they may, by the blessing of God, be of a larger influence; and knowing that good is so much the more good, by how much it is a more diffusive good, I chose rather to adventure my name, than be guilty of sacrilege, in not casting in my mite into the public treasury of the church's service.
Being, by the good providence of God, hitherto spared and kept alive, I have looked upon it as my duty, (the death-watch every night, in my bed, sounding in my ears,) to leave some watch-word behind me, to awaken this sleepy and secure generation; wherein the most, I would it might not be said the better part, of christians have lost the sight of heaven, and are digging hard into the earth, to search whether, possibly, they might not meet with a chief good between this and the centre!
But oh, that before they go off the superfices, they would look back, to see from whence they are fallen, and repent, and do their first works, Rev. 2:5.
Behold, I am here showing you the thing which you are so eagerly pursuing; it is risen, it is not here. Oh that you would, with Moses, get up into the mount, from whence you might take the prospect of that good land, where only blessedness dwelleth.
I must confess the vision is much darkened by the dimness of the eye, and the feebleness of the hand, which drew this imperfect landscape; but this I dare be bold to say, that by the optic glass of faith, upon the knee of prayer, a man may make such a discovery of glory here, as, when he cometh down from this mount, may serve quite to extinguish all the glory of this nether world, and to fix the eye, with that proto-martyr, stedfastly looking up into heaven, to see the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God, Acts 7:55. Which, if it may he in any measure the fruit of these poor labours; let them take the praise of men, whose portion it is; while I shall, with more alacrity, leave these tents of Kedar, where my pilgrimage hath been thus far prolonged, and mount up to that full-eyed vision, where blessedness and eternity are of one length, ever with the Lord. Ambitious of that epitaph, by a learned hand, set upon the monument of that incomparable Culverwell:
What this to know, as we are known should be,
The author could not tell, but's gone to see.
And who, for that little moment, is thine, christian reader, in tears and prayers.
THOMAS CASE
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Table of Contents
The Epistle Dedicatory #1
The Epistle Dedicatory #2
To the Reader
Mount Pisgah, or A Prospect of Heaven