A20762:544
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. 7 The means of loving our neighbours, namely, as our selves.
§. Sect. 7 The meanes of louing our neighbours, namely, as our selues.
The manner of our love towards our neighbours is, that we love them as our selves. In which, the love of our own persons is necessarily implied; 1for if the love of our selves be the rule of our love towards our neighbours, then must our charity begin at home, and from it, as from the fountain, the streams of brotherly love must spring and flow. And howsoever we have in the Scriptures no direct precept, enjoining us to love our selves, yet it is necessarily implied. First, when we are commanded to love God; for seeing love uniteth us unto him, who is the chief Good and fountain of all happiness, we chiefly love our selves in loving him, in whose fruition consisteth all blessedness and felicity. Secondly, in all those Commandments which require of us that we seek our own good and preservation, both in respect of our souls, bodies, and states, temporal and eternal, both by avoiding all sin which would hurt us, as self-murder, uncleanness, prodigality, exposing of our fame and good name to slanders and imputations, and by embracing all virtues, and practising all good duties which may further our everlasting salvation. Besides, where our Saviour saith, that whosoever loveth his own life better then him, 2is not worthy of him, he implieth that we ought to love our selves, but with such a love as is subordinate to the love of him, who hath loved us better then his own life. And the Apostle, in pressing a mans love towards his wife, which ought to exceed all other natural love, because of that near union between them whereby they become one flesh, useth this as a reason, that no man ever hated his own flesh; implying thereby, that seeing man and wife are both one, therefore we should love our wives as our selves, and consequently our selves first, according to which rule we are to love them.