A20762:3187
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.
§. 6 The sixth remedy is, to visit those who are in affliction.
§. 6 The sixt remedie is, to visite those who are in affliction.
The sixth means is, often to visit those who are afflicted, either outwardly in body and estate, or inwardly in mind; as those who are ruined in their estates, or have lost their nearest and needful friends, upon whom they chiefly depended; or lie groaning upon the bed of sickness, or being afflicted and troubled in conscience in the sight and sense of their sins, do pitifully complain of their wretched and disconsolate condition. The which we are principally to do in the time of our health, wealth and prosperity, when as we are most apt to forget God and our selves, and so to be overtaken of carnal security. For, we may use such distressed souls as glasses, to represent unto us our own condition, and as lively pictures, in which we may see resembled our own frailty and mortality. They may serve unto us as visible Lectures, teaching and calling to our remembrance, both our own sins, whereby we have deserved the like or greater punishments, the justice of God, in his righteous judgements, and our own danger in respect of both, to be attached with the like or more grievous afflictions, if we do not make use of these examples in others, and by waxing wiser by their harms, do not prevent them from falling on us, by turning from our sins by unfeigned repentance. And as it is profitable for young Gallants that are given to wastefulness, to look upon such Unthrifts as themselves, not in their ruff and riot, when they are adored by Parasites, and seem to carry the world with them in a string, for that will but make them the more secure in their wasteful courses; but when, having spent all, they have lost all their credit and esteem with their wealth, are forsaken of all their friends, censured for their prodigality, even by those who for the time that the streams thereof did flow, did quench their thirst, and supplied their wants by sucking from them; finally cast into prison without hope of delivery, and not able to supply themselves with the ordinary necessaries of food and apparel; seeing in them they may easily learn what will be the end of their journey, if they hold on in the way of their excess and prodigality: