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. 2 That sanctification taketh not away our joy & delight, but only changeth and improveth it.

§. Sect. 2 That sanctification taketh not away our ioy & delight, but only changeth and improueth it.

But this objection which the flesh maketh against the leading of a godly life, it further presseth and confirmeth by the experience which we may have in others, and the examples of many Christians, who spend a great part of their time in sighing and sorrowing, mourning and lamenting, as though they were deprived of all inward joy, and outward pleasures, and do live in such a melancholic and mopish manner, as though they thought all delights unlawful, being ready to condemn themselves, and censure others, if they laugh or smile, or show any other signs of gladness and rejoicing, as not savouring of sanctification, and the mortification of our fleshly lusts; not beseeming the season, which is a time of mourning, nor befitting the place, which is a valley of tears, nor yet well suiting with the example of our Saviour Christ, of whom it is written, that he mourned and wept, but never any thing said of his mirth and laughter. For the answering whereof, we are first to know, that sanctification and mortification do not annihilate or change the essence and being of nature, or the substance of our faculties, passions, and affections, but only reneweth and purgeth them from their corruption, that becoming holy, they may be serviceable to God, and the spiritual and inner man. It doeth not abolish and take them away, but moderateth them in their degree, and keepeth them from extremity and excess, when as they are exercised about worldly things; and both rectifieth their disorder, and correcteth their vitiosity and faultiness. And finally, it causeth our passions and affections to change their objects, making us to bewail our sins, in which formerly we rejoiced, and to rejoice in those spiritual exercises, which in the days of our ignorance we loathed and neglected. It taketh away the lightness, vanity, and madness of mirth, and causeth it to become more grave and sober: It changeth our rejoicing in evil, for rejoicing in that which is good: It moderateth the excess of our earthly joy, which is more in the creature, then in the Creator: It maketh us to rejoice but a little, in things that are but a little worth, and to abound, and even triumph with joy in things of greatest excellency, as the assurance of Gods love and our own salvation, and the manifold and undoubted testimonies of his grace and favour towards us.