A20762:2152
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. 4 Reasons persuading us to shun the society of wicked men, first, because it is a strong tentation unto evil.
§. Sect. 4 Reasons perswading vs to shun the society of wicked men, first, because it is a strong tentation vnto euill.
Besides which testimonies and examples, we may add divers effectual reasons, which may dissuade us from keeping company with wicked men. As first, because we shall be in great danger to grow in short time like unto them. For it is a strong tentation to draw us unto all evil, and it is just with God, to leave us when we wilfully rush into it. The love which we bear to their persons, will lessen daily our mislike of their sins, making us to think them at first less heinous then they are, afterwards small and venial, then tolerable and excusable, till at last we come to justify and defend them, to approve and practise them. Besides, sin is of a contagious nature, and we most apt to receive infection; in which regard, it spreadeth as fast as the plague in a City, or the rot in a flock of Sheep. For not only are the examples of the wicked of such great force, that if we keep them company, they think it a strange thing, if we do not run with them into the same excess of riot; but they are also ready to set upon us 1with persuasions, and to use arguments of worldly advantage, to allure us to accompany them in their wickedness, as Solomon teacheth us. Being 2herein like to them who are sick of the plague, that care not how many are infected by them, that so the fewer may shun their company. And this David knew to be so strong a tentation, that resolving to keep Gods Commandments, he first caused the workers of wickedness to depart from him, 3because so long as they consorted with him, he had little hope of making good his resolution. And finding not power in himself to resist it, because of the many allurements and baits of wickedness, he desireth by prayer Gods assistance: Incline not mine heart to any evil thing, to practise wicked works with men that work iniquity; and let me not eat of their dainties.