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

§. Sect. 2 Of the degrees by which we must aspire to perfection.

First, we must see and feel our misery, both in respect of sin and punishment, in the looking glass of the Law, wherewith being thoroughly humbled, and utterly denying our selves in the work of salvation, we must flee unto Christ, hungering and thirsting after him and his righteousness, and then apply him unto our selves by a true faith, the which at the first (like the hand of an Infant) is weak in apprehension, but by degrees cometh to more strength. And if we proceed not by these steps, we build upon a false or sandy foundation, and our building in short time, seem it never so stately, will become ruinous; and our faith which at the beginning is in our conceit a full persuasion, will by our fearful relapse, when we come to be tried by the winds and floods of tentation, show that it was, at the best, but carnal presumption. If we would approve our selves to be good grounds, after we have received the seed of the ⟨p. 466⟩Word into good and honest hearts, we must keep it, till it have taken fast rooting in us, and bring forth fruit with patience; and not like those that are compared to the stony grounds, who incontinently as soon as the ¹seed is sown, without any prick of conscience, or sound humiliation for sin going before, do receive the Word with joy, and forthwith bring forth ²a green blade of a flourishing profession, which for want of root never cometh to bring forth fruit, but withereth as soon as the sun of persecution ariseth. We must not be like meteors, which soon after their first beginnings make the greatest show; nor like a fire of thorns, which as soon as it is kindled, giveth the fairest blaze, and maketh the most noise and crackling; both which decrease by little and little, till they disappear and be wholly extinguished; but like the morning light, which shineth ³