A20762:2179
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. 1 What a true fast is, and how it differeth from all other fasts.
The other extraordinary means of a godly life, is, an holy fast, of which it is my purpose to speak briefly, though the use and benefit of this duty is so great, that it well deserveth a more full discourse; because it is already so excellently and exactly handled in divers Treatises purposely written of this argument, and especially in one, which is called, The holy exercise of a true fast: and in another, entitled, The Christian exercise of fasting, written many years since, by the right Reverend Father and my most dear brother, that nothing material can be added unto it. And therefore I will content my self to set down, after mine own manner, some of those points briefly, which are most essential and necessary unto this exercise, (for how should I in a Chapter, express all fully, which would require a whole Treatise?) referring the Christian Reader unto those learned Treatises, if he desire more thorough satisfaction, and particular direction in any of them. And first, that we may begin with the description of this duty: A fast, as we here understand it, is a voluntary, religious and solemn action, undertaken upon some extraordinary occasion, wherein we seriously humble our selves before God, in the sight and sense of our sins, and the Judgements of God due unto them; testifying our repentance for them, and our unworthiness of his least mercies, by resting from all bodily labour in the day of our fast, and wholly abstaining from our food, and all other comforts and delights of this life, so far forth as it will stand with necessity of nature, charity, and comeliness; and much more by forsaking all our sins, and doing the works of piety and charity; that by this renewing of our humiliation and repentance, we may increase the fervency of our prayers, and strengthen our faith in this assurance, that they shall be graciously heard and granted unto us. In which description this religious fast, being principally intended as an exercise of repentance, by which it is increased, and as a help to our prayers that they may be more fervent, is sufficiently distinguished from all other kinds of fasts. As first, from the fast of necessity, for want of sustenance, or appetite to it; seeing this is voluntary and at our free choice.