A20752:438
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…
The Christian warfare wherein is first generally showed the malice, power and politic stratagems of the spiritual enemies of our salvation, Satan and his assistants the world and the flesh, with the means also whereby the Christian may withstand and defeat them : and afterwards more specially their particular temptations, against the several causes and means of our salvation, whereby on the one side they allure us to security and presumption, and on the other side, draw us to doubting and desperation, are expressed and answered : written especially for their sakes who are exercised in the spiritual conflict of temptations, and are afflicted in conscience in the sight and sense of their sins / by I. Downame ...The Christian warfare wherein is first generally shewed the malice, power and politike stratagems of the spirituall ennemies of our saluation, Sathan and his assistants the world and the flesh, with the meanes also whereby the Christian may vvithstand and defeate them : and afterwards more speciallie their particvlar temptatiions, against the seuerall causes and meanes of our saluation, whereby on the one side they allure vs to security and presumption, and on the other side, draw vs to doubting and desperation, are expressed and answered : written especially for their sakes who are exercised in the spirituall conflict of temptations, and are afflicted in conscience in the sight and sense of their sinnes / by I. Dovvname ...
London: printed for Cuthbert Burby, 1604
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.
§ Sect. 9 1We must not therefore judge of our state while the cross is upon us, for so should we condemn the generation of the just to be most wicked, then should we imagine those who have excelled in patience to be most wayward and impatience. Look upon Job who is renowned for patience, and you shall find that while the hand of God was upon him, he bewrayeth the corruption of the flesh and showeth notable impatience, cussing the day of his nativity, and wishing that he had never been borne, or else that he had presently after his birth been swallowed up in the laws of death,2 Job. 3. So chap. 6.8.9. he thus crieth out like a man utterly desperate. O that I might have my desire, and that God would grant me the thing that I lung for 9. That is, that God would destroy me: that he would let his hand go and cut me off. 10. Then should I yet have some comfort, though I burn with sorrow, let him not spare &c. Where Job seemeth to deal with God as a condemned malefactor with a just & severe judge, who seeing the anger of the judge incensed against him for his crime, hath no hope that he can by entreaty and persuasions move him to revoke his sentence of death, and therefore only desireth a mitigation of the tortures, and that he may quickly be dispatched and rid out of his pain; nam misericordae genus est citò occidere, it is a kind of mercy to be speedy in execution. So Job having no hope to be freed from his miseries, desireth only this favour at Gods hands, that he would not (as it were) corment him piece meal, but make a quick dispatch of him by laying on a greater weight of afflictions, till by their unsupportable burden the breath were pressed out of his body. And chap. 10.18.3 Wherefore hast thou brought me out of the womb? Oh that I had perished, and that none eye had seen me! 19. And that I were as I had not been, but brought from the womb to the grave. Look upon the Prophet David who was a man according to Gods own heart, endued ⟨p. 170⟩with a steadfast faith and constant patience; and you shall perceive that Gods love, and the graces of Gods spirit in him, were so shadowed with the grievousness of his present afflictions, that he could not discern them. For he complaineth like a man utterly cast off and rejected of God.