A20762:1490
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
Book 4 › Chapter 8 › Section 2: §. Sect. 2 The former point illustrated by some comparisons.
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 The former point illustrated by some comparisons.
For the course of Christianity in the Scriptures, is compared to the Kings high-way, and they who go on in it, to travellers going on in their journey towards their own Country; and therefore to be sometime seen in this way, is no sign that in good earnest we travel in it, if we sometimes go forward, and sometime backward, but rather that we are walking for recreation, and will give over when we feel any weariness. Even thieves and robbers do sometimes cross the high-way, though their ordinary haunt be in the woods and mountains, yea will travel in it for a while, that they may be thought true men, and so get the better advantage, by being unsuspected of executing their designs; but it is only the honest traveller that goeth constantly in his journey, and travelleth ⟨p. 435⟩in it from morning to night. It is compared likewise to the running of a Race, wherein none get the Garland, but they who run as they 1ought, and as runners do not sometime run, and sometimes stand still, one while hold the right course, and another while leaving it, spend their time and travel in by-ways, or in going by fits forward and backward, for so they should be Non-proficients, ridding no ground, and after much labour lost, be as far from the Goal and Garland, as they were at the beginning, when they first set forth: so none get the Garland of glory, who do not run constantly in the Race of godliness; and they who run by fits and starts, sometimes going forward, and sometime standing still, or going backward, or out of the way, become heereby Non-proficients in Christianity, and after that by much unsettled rambling up and down, they have tired themselves in this course, they are (like the blind Horse in the Mill) in the same place and case they were in the beginning; no more mortified to sin, nor richer in saving graces, no more expert and active in Christian duties, no nearer the Goal, nor surer of the Garland at the end of their lives, then when they first entered into the profession of Religion.