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

§. 6 The fifth remedy is to shun customable sinning.

§. 6 The fift remedie is to shun customable sinning.

The fifth means to avoid carnal security, is to shun customable sin, and howsoever through infirmity we sometime flip into it, yet let us take heed we do not choose it for our common way, and by much use and often acting of it, make it as familiar as if it were our ordinary Trade and Occupation. For custom of sinning doth take ¹away all sense of sin, and whereas at the first it seemed notorious and heinous, and therefore affrighted the conscience with guilt and horror, after that men have often committed it, it seemeth little or nothing, and therefore they continue in it without fear. So those that are often fleshed in blood and cruelty, make no more account of killing a man, then of killing a beast: those that inure their tongues to oaths and blasphemies, vent them as securely and without fear, as yea and nay; they that have often stolen their neighbours goods, could as securely continue their theft, as other men their Trades and Occupations, were they not endangered hereby to humane laws. And in a word, sinners of all kinds, by much custom in sinning, do make this deadly Serpent so tame, that they dare without fear put it into their bosoms. And by injuring themselves to drink of this mortal poison by degrees, they make it so familiar to their stomachs, that they are not sensible of any hurt it doth them. Yea, by much acquaintance, sin (which at first terrified the conscience like an enemy) becometh their play-fellow, and they account it but a recreation of their youth, and even a sport to do evil; herein like through their impiety, unto little children in their simplicity, who securely play at the Cockatrice hole, as the Prophet speaketh to another purpose. ²