A14992:265
A care-cloth
A care-cloth: or a treatise of the cumbers and troubles of marriage intended to advise them that may, to shun them; that may not, well and patiently to bear them. By William Whately, preacher of the word of God in Banbury, in Oxfordshire.A care-cloth: or a treatise of the cumbers and troubles of marriage intended to aduise them that may, to shun them; that may not, well and patiently to beare them. By William Whately, preacher of the word of God in Banbury, in Oxfordshire.
London: printed by Felix Kyngston for Thomas Man, 1624
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. V. Containing the fourth reason of the point from the evil that will ensue for want of mourning.
CHAP. V. Containing the fourth reason of the point from the euill that will insue for want of mourning.
Reas. 4 Carrie your thoughts a little further,1 and let them consider of the evils, that will necessarily follow from the absence of these tears. It is certain, that no man can shun the infection of other mens sins, unless he mourn for them; as no mourner is infected, so none but mourners can be free from infection. He that grieves not for a sin that others commit, will easily be induced to commit it himself, if occasion serve, at least he will soon be drawn to like it, and think well enough of it, and then the infection hath taken the heart, and hath possessed the spirits and vital parts, as it were, of his soul, and that is enough to kill a man, though it should be kept from breaking forth in outward action. Some men, by virtue of a good constitution, escape the Plague in the hottest and forest of all plagues, and that also, though they use few or none antidotes or remedies. It is not so with our inward man, in regard of sin: For of so ill a complexion, as it were, and so unsound and healthless a constitution are all our souls, since the defiling of our nature by the first sin of Adam, that any sin almost doth easily, speedily, unavoidably, cleave unto the ⟨p. 224⟩same. The driest Touchwood or Tinder that is, doth not more readily take fire by any little spark, then our souls will catch a sin by bad example. And sin it self is so strong and vehement in the working of it, and withal so deceitful, close, and insinuating, that it doth almost insensibly convey it self into our inward bowels, even almost before we are aware: so that unless we do moisten our selves often, by the tears of godly sorrow for sin; we cannot live amongst others, that do even glow with the fire of it, but we shall also burn and glow for company; neither is there a man under Heaven so sanctified, but he shall become wicked with wicked men, if his soul mourn not for their wickedness. Lot would sure have been unclean in Sodom, if their uncleanness had not vexed his righteous soul. Therefore to prevent a mischief otherwise unpreventable to our selves, namely, the being polluted with other mens faults, let us see it a duty (and follow it) to wash our selves with tears from that pollution.