A10945:170
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
Treatise 1 › Chapter 7: What desire breeds faith.Treatise 1 › Chapter 7: What desire breedes faith.
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.
CHAP. 7. What desire breeds faith.
CHAP. 7. What desire breedes faith.
But seeing it were both long to stand in prescribing remedy against all these lets, and the way for all, hath been set down to come by faith already: I will therefore briefly stir up and advise such as are in good way, and have made some good entrance, that they may see what to take heed of, and what to embrace, and to seek faith by the means, and in the manner which before I have set down, and a little to strengthen them after they have attained to any true measure of it. Wherein it is to be marked (because I before highly commended a good desire) that a naked and bare desire of salvation, now and then stirred up in §Kmen, is not to believe, as many think, although without any ground: But seeing such as have a desire sometime, are they for the most part, whom God doth make believers (for while men are void of that, there is little hope to be conceived of them) I will therefore show (for the help of them who do anything look after true happiness) what desire it ought to be, and whereto it groweth if it be true and sincere, that it may not deceive them. For we may ⟨p. 35⟩§Afind many, who have sometime desired it earnestly, and yet never obtained it, as Balaam, that a man could hardly have showed any difference betwixt their desiring of it, and the desire of such as have attained to it indeed, for that instant. But in time it hath appeared, that it was but sudden, or of short continuance, and failed before it obtained that which it sought: as by them who in the Gospel are said to have joyed in that which they desired to hear, 1but it vanished; whereas the desire of the other cannot be satisfied without it: but mourneth, and longeth for it, and pineth for sorrow when any thing cometh in the way, to weaken the hope, which was conceived of it, till that be removed, which hindered them from that benefit. Therefore such must know