A20762:1370
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. 3 Of other private duties to be done on the Lords Day.
§. Sect. 3 Of other priuate duties to be done on the Lords Day.
After the finishing of which family exercises, we are to spend the rest of the time before Supper in other Christian duties, as in visiting and 1comforting those that be sick or in any other great affliction, and ministering unto their necessities if they stand in need of our help. In making peace and friendship between those who are at variance, by compounding the differences which are between them. In meditating upon the great Book of the creatures, and observing in them the infinite and admirable wisdom and goodness, power and providence of our gracious God, that we may take occasion to render unto him the glory and praise of his own works, when we see their wonderful variety and comely order, their qualities and forms, their beauty and excellency, their use and profit for the service of man. Observing likewise in them, such good properties as are worthy our imitation, and be ashamed that they should exceed us in them, who have the use of reason, and so many religious helps and means; and their ill properties, that ⟨p. 400⟩we may avoid them; taking occasion thereby to be humbled in the remembrance of our fall from our created purity and integrity, as being the principal cause of all their defects and imperfections. So also we may in this respect make good use of the Creatures, when by them we take occasion of some spiritual Meditation: As when we see their beauty, to think how infinitely beautiful he is that created them; when we consider how delightful and profitable they are unto man, to conceive thereby what surpassing excellencies God hath prepared for his own Children in his Kingdom of Glory; when we observe how serviceable they are to man, to think how much more diligent we should be in serving our great Lord and Master, who hath given both to them and us our birth and being. More particularly, when we behold the earth whereof we were made, let us take occasion to think of our own baseness, and that we shall be resolved into earth again; when we see the flowers of the field, let us think of the momentany mutability of worldly prosperity, and of