The Christian warfare wherein is first generally showed the malice, power and politic stratagems…The Christian warfare wherein is first generally shewed the malice, power and politike stratagems…

TO THE GODLY, ZEALOUS, AND SINCERE PROFESSORS OF GODS TRUE RELIGION, SIR JOHN SCOT, Sir THOMAS SMITH, and their Ladies; Master ROBERT CHAMBERLAIN Esquire, and Mistress ANNE CHAMBERLAIN his wife, his well-beloved and most respected friends: I. D. wisheth the fruition of all the true comforts of this life, and eternal happiness in the life to come.

TO THE GODLY, ZEALOVS, AND SINCERE PROFESSORS OF GODS TRVE RELIGION, SIR IOHN SCOT, Sir THOMAS SMITH, and their Ladies; Maister ROBERT CHAMBERLAINE Esquire, and Mistris ANNE CHAMBERLAINE his wife, his welbeloued and most respected friends: I. D. wisheth the fruition of all the true comforts of this life, and eternall happinesse in the life to come.

Manifold (right Worshipful) and most dangerous are the temptations and assaults of our spiritual enemies, whereby they labour to hinder the salvation of Gods elect, and to increase the greatness of their hellish dominions, by withdrawing (if it were possible) Gods servants from their subjection and allegiance, and making them their slaves and perpetual vassals. To this end they take indefatigable pains, going continually about seeking whom they may devour; sometimes like roaring Lions, compelling by violent force, and sometimes ⟨image 3⟩like old Serpents, alluring and deceiving with treacherous policies. Neither do they rest in the time of our rest, but waking and sleeping they set upon us, one while enticing us to swallow the poison of sin, with the sugared baits of worldly vanities, and another while driving us into their snares of perdition, with the sharp pricking goads of misery and affliction. Before us they set carnal pleasures, deceiving riches, and vain honours, to allure us to come into the broad way that leadeth to destruction: and behind us they hold the three-stringed whip of loss, shame, and punishment, to keep us from going back, and to hasten us with winged speed to run forward in this hellish journey. Neither do they greatly care what path we choose in this common way of perdition; whether the spacious way of security and presumption, or the strait path of horror and desperation, whether the toiling way of unsatiable covetousness, or the soft fair way of bewitching pleasures, whether the open way of worldliness and atheism, or through the hidden thickets of hypocrisy and dissimulation: in a word they regard not in what way we walk, so we go forward in the ways of sin, for though they seem divers and contrary one to another, yet they have all the same end, meeting together in hell and destruction. And howsoever they cannot with all their malice, power and policies attain unto their desires, by bringing Gods elect and faithful ones to perdition and endless misery; because God their heavenly father who hath taken upon him their protection, frustrateth all their subtle policies with his all-seeing wisdom, and withstandeth all their might with his almighty