A20762:3140
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.
§. 1 The first remedy, is to avoid ignorance, and labour after knowledge.
§. 1 The first remedie, is to auoid ignorance, and labour after knowledge.
BY that which hath been said in the former Chapter, it may manifestly appear, that the sin of carnal security is out of measure sinful, a capital evil, and most dangerous disease of the soul, which is more heartily to be abhorred, and more carefully to be avoided, then the plague, leprosy, or corporal lethargy. But, for as much as it is not sufficient that we see the manifold mischiefs of this Spiritual sickness, and thereby be moved to hate it, and earnestly to desire to be freed from it; unless we also know by what means our desire may be satisfied: I will in the next place propound the preservatives, which may keep us from this disease, and the medicines which may cure and recover us if we be already fallen into it. First, then if we would be cured of this Spiritual lethargy, we must imitate skilful Physicians, who to effect a perfect cure, do labour chiefly to take away the causes of the sickness, and withal to strengthen and confirm the affected part, that being expulsed they may be able to keep them from re-entering. Which not being observed, there can be no perfect cure, but the Patient will be ready, upon the next distemper of heat, cold, or misdiet, to relapse dangerously into his former disease. And if we 1would take away these malignant and poisonous streams of carnal security, it will be to little purpose to lade and empty them in the current, unless we dam and stop up the Well-head and Fountain from which the Spring. To which end, we will propound them in the same order wherein they were formerly handled. And first, if we would be freed from carnal security, we must labour to come out of our natural ignorance, and to have our minds enlightened with the knowledge of God, and of those attributes, whereby his true fear is wrought in our hearts, as his omnipotent power, omniscient wisdom, omnipresence, justice, trueth, mercy, goodness, and the rest. For there are scarce any that are ignorant of these, who are not wholly possessed with carnal security; neither doth it make them watchful and fearful to be compassed about with desperate dangers, because living in the blindness of ignorance, and in such palpable darkness as obscureth all things, they want both light and sight to see and apprehend them.