A10945:205
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.
Thus, the love of these men hath constrained me, a little to go aside in lamenting ⟨p. 47⟩§Atheir misery, because I have known many of them, who having shined as lights for a season, are become misty clouds to hinder light from others: whom I also counsel to consider, that they have not been driven away from their holy profession by persecution (which if they had been,1 might have given better hope of them to their brethren, that mere weakness had hindered them) but they have gone away from their first love, and broken off their fellowship with their brethren, even in the time of the Gospel flourishing, and preached in some places with more power, then when they were in the beginning most earnestly stirred up to embrace it: yea, and some of them then forsook their good beginnings, not when Moses §Bwas gone aside from them, for the space of forty days, but whilst he was amongst them, and in the middest of their tents, calling upon them to be sound and constant, and to go forward, as he had done long before: and himself also (to Gods glory be it spoken of some) with great courage and cheerfulness of good example going before them. And therefore seeing their sin is the greater, they are to be advised to look for better assurance of their salvation, and whom they have offended, that so they may repent,2 and now take surer hold of eternal life, with the hand of their faith, rather than by so weak and small occasions to let it go. For if they had in the feeling of their sin, fear, sorrow, and other distresses for the same, been unfeignedly §Chumbled, their hearts mollified, and they resolved to seek the forgiveness thereof, and righteousness thereby, and that through the free imputation thereof by Jesus Christ: they should soundly have had their diseases healed, their sorrow and doubts expelled, and true comfort ministered from their faith in him, which would so effectually have wrought in them, and have raised such an unfeigned love to God again, that they would for no cause have been withdrawn; but rather have set themselves to grow in godliness with their brethren, then in the least manner to have returned to their former lusts of their ignorance;