A20762:1558
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. 9 That we must chiefly esteem, choose, & affect the duties of godliness, according to their worth and excellency.
§. Sect. 9 That we must chiefly esteem, chuse, & affect the duties of godlinesse, according to their worth and excellency.
The fifth rule is, that in our judgements we esteem, in our wills choose, with our affections desire and embrace, and in our actions practise and exercise Christian virtues and duties, according to their worth and excellency, profit and necessity; keeping (as much as in us lieth) a due proportion between them, in our judgements esteeming and preferring, in our wills choosing, in our affections loving and desiring, and in our actions seeking after, and practising every good grace and duty in their due time and place, preferring in our estimate, choice, desires and practice, the chief and principal virtues and duties, before the mean, and the mean before others that are inferior unto them. Not that we may neglect the least grace of God or Christian duty, or so regard the greatest and most excellent, as that we dis-esteem the least and meanest; for as our Saviour saith, Whosoever breaketh one of these least Commandments, and shall teach men 1so, he shall be called the least (that is, none at all) in the Kingdom of heaven; but that we must, when they may all stand together, give the priority and precedency, in judgement, desire, and practice to the chiefest, both in time and earnestness of endeavour, spending our first and best time, the fervour of our zeal, and chief vigour and strength both of body and mind about them; or if we are brought into such straights of necessity, that all cannot be done, but some must necessarily be omitted, that then the lesser give place to the greater, till we can get fit opportunity of performing both. Thus we must prefer Theological virtues, as faith, affiance, hope, charity, humility, and the fear of God before those which are humane and civilly Moral, as temperance, chastity, civill justice, alms-deeds, and such like; and generally our duties towards God, before our duties towards our neighbours and our selves, the Commandments of the first Table, before those of the second, a due proportion being observed, Moral duties being compared with Moral, degree with degree, as the greatest with the greatest, middle with middle, and least with least; more desiring, and zealously endeavouring to get the chief graces, and perform the religious duties of Gods service, then those which merely concern our selves or our neighbours.