A20762:2674
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. 3 That no joy of worldlings is comparable to that which is in Christians.
§. Sect. 3 That no ioy of worldlings is comparable to that which is in Christians.
But that those who affect such melancholic heaviness, & purposely banish both out of their hearts and countenances all joy and mirth, may be reclaimed from going on still in this erroneous and tedious course, and that others may not be discouraged by their example, from resolving to lead a godly life; let us know, that there is no joy comparable unto that which is, or ought to be in Christians, that desire to serve and please God in their holy conversation. For if, as Bernard hath 1excellently observed, we can be content with Abraham, in faith and obedience towards God, to offer and sacrifice our Isaac: First, our laughter and joy, it shall only be sanctified, but not slaughtered and killed. Thy Isaac shall not die, nor thy mirth perish, but the Ram only, that is, the perverseness and profaneness of thy pleasure and joy, which endeth always in grief and anxiety. Isaac thy joy shall not die, as thou supposest, but shall surely live; only it shall be lifted aloft upon the Altar and upon the wood, that thy joy may be holy and heavenly, sublime and lofty, not in the flesh and things beneath, but in spiritual things, in the cross of Christ, & those high and holy privileges which we have through him. For howsoever Christians in their first conversion and humiliation, chiefly act the part of sorrow & heaviness in the sight and sense of their manifold and heinous sins, and shed tears of bitter grief, looking upon him whom they have pierced, yet being