A20762:2615
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.
Again, the duties of a godly life are somewhat tedious and troublesome, even unto the regenerate, who have made some entrance into them, because this work of regeneration is not perfected at once, but only inchoate and begun. And therefore, as they are delighted with ⟨p. 818⟩the Law of God in the inner man, so they find another law in their members, 1warring against the Law of their minds, and leading them captive to the law of sin. The which spiritual bondage affecteth them with such grief and sorrow, that it forceth them to cry out with the Apostle; O wretched 2man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? We are not wholly and perfectly sanctified, but remain partly flesh, and partly spirit, like a city which is at civill wars within it self. And these do continually lust the one against the other; So that no sooner do we set our selves to perform any Christian duties of a godly life, in the spiritual part; but presently the flesh opposeth and interrupteth us in it. No sooner do we resolve to go forward in the ways of godliness, but forthwith the corruption of our nature, like an heavy burden, encompasseth us, and (as it were) clingeth about our necks, so as we cannot proceed without much labour and weariness. All which and many other the like impediments, as they do much disturb and distract all in the duties of a godly life, so especially young beginners at their first entrance into it. For then the