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. 5 Secondly, he guideth the godly in the time of their afflictions.

In respect also of the afflictions of this present life, godliness hath no less privileges. For first, they which carefully serve & please God, are wholly ¹delivered from them, as they are punishments of sin to satisfy Gods Justice, because Christ hath in their stead satisfied for them, & paid their debt to the uttermost farthing, and by taking away their sins through his death and sufferings, hath also cancelled the hand-writing which was against them, freed them from the curse of the Law, and all the punishments which were due unto them. Secondly, by leading of a godly life, we are freed from afflictions in the greatest part, as they are the corrections of Gods children. For howsoever sometimes the chief end, at which God aimeth in afflicting the godly, is the trial of those graces which he hath given them, that being approved, he may be glorified that gave them, and ²his gifts crowned in those that have received them; yet for the most part, sin being the occasion, even of these trials, and the cause of other ⟨p. 729⟩crosses, according to that in the Lamentations; Wherefore doth a living ³man complain, a man suffereth for his sins? Hereof it followeth, that we may escape these afflictions, if we carefully flee sin, and serve the Lord in the duties of a godly life. For though the Lord judgeth his children ⁴in this life, that they may not be condemned in the life to come; yet it is not as they are innocents (for them they should never come into judgment) but as offenders, who by their sins and negligence in his service, have deserved these, and far greater punishments. Though he chastiseth every