A10945:1774
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.
Now of the examples: and first of Job, ye will say:1 How could he cry out as he doeth in the third chapter against the day of his birth; cry out I say, yea howl, and charge God, but he must needs show himself to be overcome of the flesh? There is no doubt (I grant) but that his adversary the devil did now make full reckoning, that he should fall into very loathsome blasphemy, and utter desperation: and it cannot be denied, but that he was carried very far out of the way. But yet, as he is not to be freed from all fault; so he is not to be further charged then he gave just cause, forasmuch as the Lord himself doeth so determine the controversy in the end (whose sentence no man doubteth, but that it was most righteous:) that although he reprove him, yet §Dof his singular goodness he doth not make his fault so heinous, but chargeth his three friends as the chief provokers of him to that evil which he did, and crowneth him as it were, for that in so great a combat by his valiant wrestling he had prevailed: yet for our further edification, let us see somewhat more particularly into this action, directing our selves by that which the Lord hath said of him. I say therefore, that Job sinned many ways, but yet through humane frailty.2 For his intemperate speech proceeded not from a settled and constant purpose of the mind, but was wrung from the exceeding greatness of his grief and pain, which hindered for the time all sense and light of faith & judgement in him. For in that he thought, he could by no other means be §Edelivered from those so great evils which he suffered, but by death; it showed that he did not throughly nor sufficiently weigh the power and might of God. In that he wished either that he had never been borne, or together with his birth to have died, it must needs be granted, that it was a speech of a man little considering what he said; but which had forgotten what great mercies he had received, yea what he himself had sometime uttered (.i. If we have received prosperity from the Lord, why should we not suffer adversity?) in that he ⟨p. 512⟩earnestly wished deliverance from his sufferings, but asked it not of God, it bewrayed