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. 7 The third reason taken from the necessity of this exercise.

The third and last reason is taken from the necessity of this holy exercise, the neglect whereof depriveth us of all the former benefits and privileges. For thereby we lose the comfort and joy which we have in this sweet communion with God; we become insensible of our sins and spiritual wants, and so grow careless in using those good means for the mortifying of the one, and supplying of the other. We take the ready way to continue in carnal security, and to live in our sins without repentance. We lye open to the tentations of our spiritual enemies, and easily fall into their secret ambushments at unawares, by reason we never think of them, nor of the means whereby we may escape them. We are soon deceived with our own false hearts, when as we never sound their deceits unto the bottom, and give Satan leave to fill them with worldly and wicked thoughts, and with sensual and carnal desires and lusts, when as he findeth them like empty houses, swept clean, and cleared ¹of all good meditations, and garnished with sloth, vanity & security, the chief ornaments wherein he delighteth. We lose piece-meal all our spiritual armour, and not repairing the breaches which have been made by the enemies of our salvation, we lye open to their assaults, & are easily vanquished in the next encounter, whilst we never think of any approaching danger. We defraud our souls of a chief part of their food, whereby they should be nourished in all saving grace, and strengthened unto all Christian duties: we lose the heat and fervour of our zeal and devotion, which being no natural qualities residing in their proper elements, ⟨p. 539⟩cool and decline when we withdraw from them the fuel by which they are nourished. We lose the comfort of our heavenly freedom, when as we never have our conversation there, and suffer our hearts to lye grovelling upon the earth without any spiritual motions, which like the peises & plummets of a clock, do naturally descend & sink down, unless they be often pulled up with spiritual and heavenly meditations. Finally, we put out, or close up the eyes of our souls, so as they cannot look into our selves, nor into our spiritual estate, to see our miseries, that we may be humbled, nor the means of our freedom and deliverance, that we may be comforted;