A20762:1375
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. 4 That the evening must be spent •n religious exercises.
§. Sect. 4 That the euening must be spent •n religious exercises.
In the evening of the Lords Day we are not to surcease our Christian and religious exercises, but after we have at supper refreshed our bodies with the use of Gods creatures, and our souls with holy conferences, we are to spend some time in singing of Psalms, and in reading the Scriptures, or other religious and profitable writings. After which duties performed, all in the family ought to join together in hearty and effectual prayer (not thinking themselves excused from private duties, because they have been at the public exercises of Religion) wherein as we are to acknowledge other sins and imperfections, so those especially we have showed the day past in our cold, formal, weak, and negligent performance of the duties of Gods service. And as we are to crave other blessings, so especially that the Lord by his grace and holy Spirit will bless unto us the means of our salvation, and Ministry of his Word, whereof we have been partakers on that Day, writing the things we have learned in our memories and hearts, and enabling us to put them in practice, and to make use of them in the whole course of our lives. And finally, as we are to praise God for all his other mercies, so particularly for giving us time to sanctify his Sabbaths, and suffering us to enjoy the blessed light of his Word and Gospel, for granting us liberty with such peace and safety, to tread in his Courts, and to make our suits and supplications known unto him, with assurance to have them heard and granted. And thus having finished ⟨p. 401⟩this holy exercise, and the time of sleep approaching, we must prepare our selves thereunto with such religious Meditations, as on other days were prescribed, the which at this time are to be done with extraordinary zeal and devotion; and so commending our souls and bodies into the hands of God, we are to desire him that he will watch over and sanctify us so with his grace and holy Spirit, that we may spend the night also in an holy Rest, being freed from worldly, carnal, and sinful dreams, and having our phantasies and thoughts, our hearts and affections, both sleeping and waking, taken up and exercised in good and godly Meditations: