A20762:277
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. 4 The second means of a pure heart is a lively faith.
§. Sect. 4 The second meanes of a pure heart is a liuely faith.
And these are the arguments which may move us to esteem and seek after a pure heart, and to hate and avoid the contrary. Now when our 1hearts are inflamed with the love of it; the means to obtain it, is a lively and justifying faith, which purifieth the heart, as the Apostle speaketh; not by any virtue that is in it self, but by applying unto us the blood of Christ, which alone is sufficient to purge our hearts from all corruption, and to kill and crucify the flesh with the lusts thereof. And therefore seeing so long as we continue in infidelity, our hearts will also ⟨p. 62⟩continue in their impurity; this must make us labour to come out of this estate, and to use to this purpose, all good means whereby this faith may be begun and increased in us. Secondly, let us wash them in the tears of unfeigned repentance, bewailing those sins, in which formerly we delighted, and hating those corruptions, which in time past we loved. And because we cannot at once purge the deep sink of our polluted hearts from all their filthiness, therefore we must make it our daily work, and do it by degrees. And seeing we cannot in one assault overcome these cursed Canaanites, we must continually make war against them, and cast them out one after another, as God by his Spirit shall enable us. Especially let us not, out of fear and cowardice, suffer the sons of Anakim, our great and Giant-like corruptions, fortify themselves in the castle of our hearts; nor let those Agags, which have ruled and reigned most in us, live out of any carnal respects; but let us even at the first strike at these main roots, which being cut off and plucked up, many of the branches will die, for want of that sap of bitterness which they sucked from them; and let us drive out these master Bees, and whole swarms of carnal lusts will issue after them.