A20762:1235
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. 2 How we ought to prepare our selves before afflictions come, that we may be able to bear them with patience when they come.
§. Sect. 2 How we ought to prepare our selues before afflictions come, that we may be able to beare them with patience when they come.
In which estate of adversity and afflictions, accompanied with such innumerable evils and miseries of all kinds, if we would rightly and as we ought, carry and demean our selves so as we should receive no damage to our spiritual estate, nor hindrance to our salvation; yea for the present, make our troubles and griefs more easy and tolerable; there are some things to be done before they happen, and some things when they have already light upon us. Before we are to labour in mortifying and subduing of our inordinate affections and unruly passions, that they may become in all things subject to the will of God, and in the denying of our selves and our own wills, that we may in all estates submit our persons, goods, and lives to his good pleasure, and so take up our cross and follow Christ. More especially, we must seek to moderate our fear, which aggravates our griefs, and is oftentimes more troublesome then the evil ⟨p. 357⟩feared; confine our unlimited hopes, which when they are crossed, as much afflict us, as the loss of those comforts which we truly enjoy; stint our desires according to the necessity of nature, and not leave them to the liberty of inordinate concupiscence; bridle and subdue our rash anger, which oppresseth us with weights of our own making, and maketh a mountain of every Mole-hill; mortify our melancholic discontent by a true faith, which will persuade us that that estate is best for us, in which God hath placed us; pull down our pride and haughtiness of spirit, which is one chief cause of impatience, murmuring and repining under the cross; as though we were worse dealt with then we deserve; cast away all emulation in prosperity, which in our afflictions will vex us as much in the sight of others rising, as in the sense of our own fall. Finally, we must not in our prosperity be excessive in our joy, for then in our adversity we will be as immoderate in our grief, lighting by so much the more heavily in our down-fall of sorrow, by how much we fell higher from the top of joy. Secondly, we must not feign afflictions unto our selves, nor make those