A20762:2221
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. 2 The second reason, taken from Gods love towards us.
§. Sect. 2 The second reason, taken from Gods loue towards vs.
The works also of God do yield unto us most effectual reasons, to persuade us unto all duties of a godly life, but especially his manifold and inestimable benefits, which he hath vouchsafed to bestow ⟨p. 681⟩upon us, whether we consider the Fountain from which they all spring, or the blessings and benefits themselves, which as streams do issue and flow from them. The fountain of them all, is his divine and incomprehensible love, whereby, of his free grace and mere goodness, 1he hath loved us from all eternity, without any respect of our deserts and worthiness. The which he hath manifested, when as we were dead in our sins, and the children of wrath as well as others, when we 2were weak and of no strength, having not so much as any power to desire 3his favour and mercy, to free and deliver us out of our woeful misery. When as we were like poor impotent infants, new borne, whose Navel was not cut, and who wallowed in the filthy and bloody 4gore of our natural corruptions, no eye pitying us, nor having any friend, that was able to help us, or to wash us clean from our corruption. For even then when we were helpless and hopeless, this love moved him to take compassion on us, and to say unto us whilst we were in our blood, You shall live. And when we were so deep stained, yea, even in-grained in the filthy dye of our sins, that all the waters in the world could not make us clean, he in this incomprehensible love, gave his Son to the death, that we might be washed in the Laver of his precious blood, and so purged from our crimson and scarlet sins,