A10945:379
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.
CHAP. 8. How the minds and hearts of the believers are taken up usually, seeing they renounce inward lusts.
CHAP. 8. How the mindes and hearts of the beleeuers are taken vp vsuallie, seeing they renounce inward lusts.
1But to return to the renouncing of our lusts: If ye ask me what manner of persons they be who are at defiance with this unsavoury stuff, and what thoughts such have, as expel these corruptions, and have them in hearty contempt,§K seeing the mind is ever busy,2 and seldom unoccupied? I answer, that the persons are, as I have said, sinners, as others be, but sanctified: and weak, but willing to be better; and that their thoughts are according to the divers growths and ages of Gods children, *which are three. The highest degree, is old age, or the experienced estate: which yet is not the perfect age in Christ, for that shall not befall us until the ⟨p. 115⟩§Alife to come, but a firm, constant, and settled going forward unto that perfection. The second, is the middle age in christianity, in which, as young men in wrestling, we have courage against our sinful lusts; but yet like unto them; we have many foils, and are oftentimes cooled in our courage, though we sometime prevail. And in this estate, we are very fitly compared to the grain of mustard seed, after that it is shot up, and hath a blade and stalk, till it come to have boughs and branches to shelter the fowls of the air; so in this we are ever growing, though slowly: and this degree of christianity, is betwixt old age and infancy. The third is childhood or infancy, the lowest and the last, the which is principally discerned by an earnest desire of the sincere