A20762:1145
A guide to godliness or a Treatise of a Christian life showing the dutiesA guide to godlynesse or a Treatise of a Christian life shewing the duties
A guide to godliness or a Treatise of a Christian life showing the duties wherein it consisteth, the helps enabling & the reasons persuading unto it the impediments hindering the practise of it, and the best means to remove them whereunto are added divers prayers and a treatise of carnal security by John Douname Bachelor in Divinity and minister of Gods Word.A guide to godlynesse or a Treatise of a Christian life shewing the duties wherein it consisteth, the helpes inabling & the reasons parswading vnto it ye impediments hindering ye practise of it, and the best meanes to remoue them whereunto are added diuers prayers and a treatise of carnall securitie by Iohn Douname Batcheler in Diuinitie and minister of Gods Word.
London: printed by Felix Kingstone and William Stansby for Ed, 1622
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. 7 How to avoid the faults commonly committed between buyers and sellers.
§. Sect. 7 How to auoid the faults commonly cōmitted betweene buyers and sellers.
All which faults among buyers and sellers, which so intolerably reign in these times, would easily be avoided; if, as we profess, we would prefer Justice and charity before deceit and self-love, and accordingly would labour to mortify the one as hurtful and pernicious, and magnify the other as most excellent and profitable, both for the setting forth of Gods glory, and the furthering and assuring of our own salvation. If we would but consider that God is present, and beholdeth all our dealings, and will one day, as a righteous Judge, call them to account, to reward them if they be upright and just, or to punish 1them, if they be wicked and deceitful. If finally, when we come to sum up our gettings in our Trades at the years end, we would put all our gains in the one Scale, and our souls which we have hazarded to everlasting loss, by our unjust, untrue, and deceitful dealing, into the other, and consider how light they be in comparison of it, which, as our Saviour hath taught us, cannot be counterpoised by the 2weight and worth of the whole world. And so much concerning our dealings with one another in contracts and bargains; the which I thought necessary to be in some brief manner handled in this Treatise, because all Christians almost are often employed in them, and many, ⟨p. 328⟩whose callings consist in trading, do spend the most part of their lives in it: As also, because the corruptions of the times are so many and grievous, so backed with the multitude, and countenanced with custom, that they are scarce thought to be any sins, insomuch as many, which otherwise fear God, are often overtaken with them, either through ignorance, walking according to the common course, for want of better direction; or being compelled (as they suppose) with urgent necessity to do as others do; because there being so few which do as they should, and such multitudes which use fraud and deceit; if they should in their trading and dealings use truth and justice, simplicity and honest plainness, they should (as the Prophet complaineth of his times) become