A10945:1607
Seven treatises containing such direction as is gathered out of the Holy Scriptures, leading…Seuen treatises containing such direction as is gathered out of the Holie Scriptures, leading…
Seven treatises containing such direction as is gathered out of the Holy Scriptures, leading and guiding to true happiness, both in this life, and in the life to come: and may be called the practise of Christianity. Profitable for all such as heartily desire the same: in the which, more particularly true Christians may learn how to lead a godly and comfortable life every day. Penned by Richard Rogers, preacher of the word of God at Wethersfield in Essex.Seuen treatises containing such direction as is gathered out of the Holie Scriptures, leading and guiding to true happines, both in this life, and in the life to come: and may be called the practise of Christianitie. Profitable for all such as heartily desire the same: in the which, more particularly true Christians may learne how to leade a godly and comfortable life euery day. Penned by Richard Rogers, preacher of the word of God at Wethersfield in Essex.
London: printed by Felix Kyngston for Thomas Man, 1603
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.
I mean by these, all sorts of worldly lusts, which are more noisome and dangerous then the evil affections mentioned before: though (one would think) we had little need to be shaken and distempered with greater then they, but rather study how to make them weakened and subdued in us. These worldly lusts, are lusts of the flesh which belong to the present state of this life and world: as the exceeding love and desire of pleasures, riches and estimation, §Eor honour, &c. For if he can fasten our delights on these, we are carried headlong, as the chariot by wild horses is overturned. I will show the danger we are in by means of these worldly lusts in two kinds: The lusts of the flesh, properly so called; and the inordinate desire of riches and cares of the world. How a true Christian may possibly be disguised by these, (I say) that he shall be thereby as another man, and sometime grossly overcome of them, I will first show, and then add some remedies against them. The first ⟨p. 452⟩is,1 when he shall be drowned in sensuality, and the sottish pleasure of the body,§F so that he is blind and impotent; and hath no power to consider, what the Scripture saith:2 Favour is deceitful, and beauty is a vain thing. And what is the cause of this? for it would not easily be believed, that a true Christian should fall so far.3 The cause is this; that he having given his heart liberty to desire stolen waters, and to count them sweet, when he should rather have loathed and cast them up as vomit, and have made a firm covenant against the nourishing of such delights; and he having given his eye leave also to feed it self with such sights: he was made utterly blind. And that being done, his prayers became feeble and weak (though sometime attempting it) to expel and drive out such sottishness; but it lodged in him,§G and made him a slave unto it. Which cannot be plainelier seen then in Sampson;4