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

With like care we must observe a due order in our own reading, making choice of such Authors as are fittest for our own capacity and use, and so proceeding by degrees from those which are most easy, to such as ⟨p. 643⟩are more difficult, as we increase in knowledge and understanding. First, our care must be to lay a sure foundation, by reading diligently some profitable Catechism, containing the main points of Christian Religion, not thinking it to be read sufficiently, although we have gone over it divers times, till we so thoroughly understand & remember it, that we are able to give an account, though not in the same words, yet in respect of the matter and substance, of all the points contained in it, and as the Apostle speaketh, to give a reason of our faith and hope, ¹whereby we shall not only be armed against all errors and lies, when as we are able to examine all we read, according to the rule and analogy of faith, but also shall with much more ease understand all other discourses, which without this help will be dark and obscure. For want of which order observed in reading, it is pitiful to see how many that think themselves great proficients, and even able to teach others, not being thus grounded, are easily carried away with every wind of doctrine, and being themselves deceived, for want of skill to examine what they read and hear, are ready also to deceive others. So impossible a thing it is to amend such errors as are committed in the foundation, though we be never so curious in the rest of the building. But though our first care must be in laying the foundation, yet we must not rest there, but proceed and go forward, till we be built up in knowledge unto some perfection; we must not, whilst we are babes in Christ, out of pride and curiosity, affect strong meats, which are of too hard digestion for our weak stomachs, but hunger after