A20762:2457
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 How the world seeketh to hinder our course in godliness by afflictions and persecutions.
§. Sect. 1 How the world seeketh to hinder our course in godlinesse by afflictions and persecutions.
ON the left hand the World assaulteth us with afflictions and persecutions, that it may hinder and discourage us in the ways of godliness. For first, it loadeth us, as much as in it lieth, with crosses and calamities, even for righteousness sake, and then persuadeth us, that we serve God not only in vain, but even to our loss: and therefore that it were our best course, to take our liberty, and to live as others do, seeing we have no other rewards for all our painful service, our strictness of life, and abandoning of our pleasures, the unpleasant exercises of mortification, and denying in all things our own wills and delightful lusts, but misery and affliction. And thus David was assaulted, when he was ready to conclude, that 1he had cleansed his heart, and washed his hands to no purpose in innocency, seeing he was afflicted every morning. And with the like tentation Job was often discouraged, when as his three friends in so many places labour to persuade him, that all his former labours in Gods service were vain and of no worth, because of the extraordinary afflictions which he endured. And Jeremiah likewise was so much troubled with the sight of the 2wickeds prosperity, and the sense of his own miseries, that he breaketh out into great impatience. For the removing of which impediment, we are to know, that howsoever the world, and worldly men use all their might and malice to hinder us in our course of godliness, yet they are no ways able to do what they intend, seeing they are not the chief causes of our afflictions, but only Gods instruments who over-ruleth them at his pleasure, and so ordereth and disposeth of all our crosses and calamities which they inflict upon us, both in respect of their matter and manner, measure and time of continuance, as that they shall not any ways hurt us, but shall wholly tend to our good; not consume and destroy us, but purify and purge us (like gold in the fire) from the dross of our corruptions; not cool or quench our zeal and devotion, but rather kindle and inflame them; and finally, not hinder us at all in the duties of a godly life, but further and make us more forward and cheerful in performing them, causing us, by these many tribulations, to go more surely and safely, by the way of grace and godliness, into the Kingdom of heavenly joy and happiness.