A20762:1599
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. 7 That we must not busy our selves in other mens matters.
§. Sect. 7 That we must not busie our selues in other mens matters.
The fourth rule is, that we be not busy and curious in prying into the lives of other men, and spying out their infirmities; nor strict and severe in censuring and condemning their faults and imperfections, when we have taken notice of them. For he that undertaketh much business abroad, must of necessity neglect his own at home; he that is curious in searching and examining other mens manners, will find no time to look into his own. The which we see daily verified by woeful and lamentable experience in many Professors of these times, who spend all their zeal in censuring of others, and in exclaiming against the corruptions of the times, the disorders in the Common-wealth, the faults of Governors Civill and Ecclesiastical, the defects and blemishes of the Church, and in the mean time are cold and negligent in searching out their own sins, in reforming their own manners, and in the duties of sanctification, and of a godly life. The which, is oftentimes done, not so much out of a true mislike and hatred of others vices and corruptions (for then they would make speed to pursue 1and subdue them with greater detestation in themselves, out of a feeling experience of the manifold evils which they bring upon them) but to magnify their own zeal, which will not suffer them with any patience to tolerate such faults and corruptions, to disguise and hide their own vices, under this show of misliking others sins, and to commend themselves, and get the name of forward Christians, by dispraising those ⟨p. 472⟩who come far behind them in outward show. But if we would make any good progress in the ways of godliness, we must be more diligent in reforming our own lives, then in censuring other mens; and in using all good means, which may furnish us with saving graces, and further us in all good duties, then in spying out how far others come short in them, and in censuring them for these defects. For as it is not the way of thriving in our worldly estate, to sit still and exclaim against others ill husbandry, but diligently to follow our own business; so it is no course to grow richer in grace, and in the fruits of godliness, to censure and inveigh against others, as unthriving Christians; but carefully to look unto our own estate, and to use all good means whereby we may better it.