A20762:2488
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
Book 6 › Chapter 7 › Section 1: §. Sect. 1 Of the worlds cruelty, in persecuting the godly.
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 Of the worlds cruelty, in persecuting the godly.
WE have showed in the former Chapters, what impediments the world, and wicked men cast in the way, to hinder our profession and practice of the true Religion, which respect their judgment and affections, their words and outward gestures: and now we are to entreat of those which respect their works and actions. And these are their contumelious and malicious handling of them, and the bitter persecutions which they raise against them, that they may either hinder them wholly from proceeding in the course of Christianity, or at least cause them to go on with much discouragement and discomfort. The which contumelies and persecutions are great and manifold; as the pursuing of them with all malice and extremity, from place to place, apprehending them as malefactors, haling them before their Judgment seats, false accusations, unjust condemnations, imprisonments, and banishments, fire and sword, tortures & punishments, executed and inflicted in the most exquisite manner which wit and malice can devise and impose. And this malicious rage of wicked men, the Prophet Isaiah in lively manner expresseth: The act of violence (saith he) is in 1their hands; Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood: their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity, wasting and destruction are in their paths. The way of peace they know not, and there is no judgement in their goings. Neither doth the world use such spite and spleen towards the most outrageous offender that ever lived, as it doth to the Saints and servants of God, for the truth sake. For towards them oftentimes it quite blunteth the point and edge of humane laws, and commonly moderateth and mitigateth the extreme rigour of them in their punishments; but against the faithful it sharpeneth the point and edge where none is; yea, deviseth new laws, when the old restrain their malice. And whereas they content themselves with those punishments which the laws determine against the most notorious and heinous offenders, and when they are forced for the safety and preservation of humane societies to execute them, they do it as the Law requireth, and oftentimes with some pity and compassion: