A10933:904
A commentary upon the whole book of Judges Preached first and delivered in sundry…A commentary vpon the vvhole booke of Iudges Preached first and deliuered in sundrie…
A commentary upon the whole book of Judges Preached first and delivered in sundry lectures; since collected, and diligently perused, and now published. For the benefit generally of all such as desire to grow in faith and repentance, and especially of them, who would more clearly understand and make use of the worthy examples of the saints, recorded in divine history. Penned by Richard Rogers preacher of Gods word at Wethersfield in Essex.A commentary vpon the vvhole booke of Iudges Preached first and deliuered in sundrie lectures; since collected, and diligently perused, and now published. For the benefit generally of all such as desire to grow in faith and repentance, and especially of them, who would more cleerely vnderstand and make vse of the worthie examples of the saints, recorded in diuine history. Penned by Richard Rogers preacher of Gods word at Wethersfield in Essex.
London: printed by Felix Kyngston for Thomas Man, 1615
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.
For by that time that cruel enemies, domesticall or foreign, (I mean in the world) have oppressed them, as both may easily be: or suites, debt, 1suretyship, or prison have molested them (which commonly fall out to be) or the unruliness and disobedience in children, the unfaithfulness and lewdness of servants, and the unpeaceableness and unappeasablenesse in neighbours and landlords, with great injuries offered by them, shall vex them; together with sickness and other calamities which meet with them; I say, when some of these, as moths in a garment, have eaten into them, the beauty of their estate is decayed, and consumed: in these cases, I say, they are altered and changed, as if they had never been the persons. So that as Elimelech by famine was constrained to change his dwelling, and good David by his own son was almost driven from his kingdom; even so, and much more, when sundry of the forementioned ways shall afflict bad men, do they not show the uncertain hold that they have (and yet they have no hold of any better) of the things which are in greatest price here among men, together with the reproaches and disgraces that befall them? that I say ⟨p. 340⟩nothing of sundry kinds of death to cut them off from all: and are sufficient proofs of that which I say. So that we have good cause to bear a low sail, 2even when we be at the highest, and to think we have little, when we have the most. And to look for our change in our prosperity, and to make heaven our habitation against we go hence, and the earth with the pomp and beauty of it, but as small and uncertain riches. Indeed all the glory of these things must have his end: yet commonly where God is not provoked much, there is no unseasonable change of mens prosperity into misery: but a kindly enjoying it with Gods good liking: though sometime God afflict thus for other ends, as Job, &c. And because many of Gods dear ones provoke him to turn their blessings and delight temporal, as in wife, children, goods, beauty, strength, &c. into sorrows, and punishments, which must be so, or else it would be worse with them:
For by that time that cruell enemies, domesticall or forraigne, (I meane in the world) haue oppressed them, as both may easily bee: or suites, debt,