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 a godly life doth not take away friendship and good society, but rather increaseth it.

The fifth objection against a godly life is, that it taketh away all familiar friendship and good fellowship, all merry meetings and civill conversation from amongst men, estranging their minds one from another, and making them to delight more in solitariness then in company. To which I answer, that if by these glorious names of friendship, good fellowship, and civill conversation, be meant the common commerce which worldly wicked men have one with another, in the works of darkness and pleasures of sin, in gluttony and drunkenness, in May-games, misrule, and mad merriments, in carnal revellings, Stage-plays, Wakes, and Morris-dances, in swaggering, swearing, backbiting, and corrupt and filthy communication; in dicing, carding, and spending both their time and states in unlawful gaming; then is it no blemish or aspersion unto a godly life, but rather an high praise and commendation, that it breaketh off such wicked and dangerous societies, and reformeth such pernicious disorders as always end in grief and vexation. But if hereby be understood true friendship, and Christian familiarity and acquaintance, lawful meetings, and joyful feasting with one another in the true fear of God; then doth not a godly life abolish them, but rather confirm and increase them among all true Christians. For purging away the corruptions, and rectifying the disorders of societies and conversation, and making them truly civill and religious, it causeth them to be much more comfortable and profitable, and consequently more frequently to be affected by all those who taste the sweetness and benefit which cometh of them, without any sting of sin, or after-tang of bitter grief. As we see in the example of those Christians, which lived in the first age of the ¹Primitive Church, who took exceeding joy in the Communion of Saints, in mutual conversing one with another, and in their frequent meetings, to eat and drink and rejoice together. And therefore unless any will presuppose, that sin is the only bond of all good fellowship, and ⟨p. 850⟩