A10945:1653
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.
But to say somewhat of other occasions by which the devil hindereth our proceeding in a godly life:1 if we live under abundance and outward blessings of God, enjoying health, peace, sufficiency of all things for this life, are we then free from danger on his behalf? Nay rather, then is our peril greater, when we have so many more strong allurements and deceivable provocations to set our delight upon the things of this world, then when we were §Bholden under of afflictions: for he worketh upon our hearts by occasion of these commodities (which many other do want) to puff us up with pride, and high-mindedness, and so embolden us to say, (because we have much) Who is the Lord? and to forget our selves to be mortal men,2 when we be not in poverty, wants and sorrows, like the common sort of others: and to make our riches, peace, health and such like, our strong hold. 3But these are not the one half of his sly practises, by the which he maketh prosperity (as much as in him lieth) to be our bane, even as it is to men of the world: for he subtly maketh drunken our hearts with the love of our goods, and so holdeth out the love of the christian life and the true love of God from us:4 for the one §Cof these cannot stand with the other. The particular infections which from these general diseases, the devil seeketh to bring upon our souls, and all by occasion of wealth and worldly pleasure, who so weigheth but indifferently, shall easily be brought to confess, that happiness consisteth not in the things which a man possesseth: neither that the rich man is the happy man, but is most commonly the miserable, the woeful man, and he, whom the devil doth so much the more easily draw to grievous iniquities because of his prosperity; and when he hath rocked him asleep, then he secretly murdereth and woundeth to death his soul, no less palpably then Jael did the body of Sisera.5