A20762:1441
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. 5 That without total obedience we cannot attain to heavenly happiness.
§. Sect. 5 That without totall obedience we cannot attaine to heauenly happinesse.
Finally, unless we perform total obedience in the desire, purpose and endeavour of our heart unto the whole Law of God, we can neither attain unto heavenly happiness, nor escape hellish death and condemnation, though we embrace and practise many virtues and duties, and flee from many vices and sins. For as a Mill-stone will keep us from mounting aloft, as well as a Mountain, and the one as well as the other would cause us to sink into the bottom of the Sea, if it were fastened unto us; so if any one sin have taken such fast hold of our hearts, that we will by no means be moved to leave it, the weight thereof will be sufficient to keep us from ascending unto heavenly happiness, and to drench and drown us in the sea of perdition. So the Apostle saith, that he that liveth (not in all or many sins, but) in any one, shall never enter into the Kingdom of heaven; Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, &c. shall inherit the Kingdom of God. And the Apostle John saith, that 1every sort of sinners, as sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and liars, shall be excluded from this place of blessedness. So that as for the loss of corporal life, it is not necessary that the body should be wounded in every place, but a mortal wound in any of the vital parts, is sufficient to let in death, and give it seizure of the whole man: so is it in this case. And as particular sins deprive us of happiness, so they plunge us into death and destruction, as appeareth by that distinct enumeration which the Prophet maketh of particulars; If (saith he) he 2