A20762:651
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 many and great dangers which follow the neglect of this daily exercise.
Fifthly, we may be moved to this daily and continual exercise, by consideration of the many and great dangers which do accompany the neglect of it; first, because we shall move the Lord to withdraw from us his graces, when as we are secure & slothful in the exercise of them. For he giveth unto us these spiritual Talents, not that we should wastefully misspend them, or idly tie them up (as it were) in a napkin, and cast them in a corner, where they do no good; but that we should by employing, improve them to the glory of our Master, and good of our selves and our fellow-servants; which when we neglect to do, he will take them from us, and give them unto others, who will use them to more purpose and profit. And thus David growing secure, and beginning through sloth to 1remit something of his spiritual exercises, in which he had been formerly zealous, was left unto himself to fall into tentation, God withdrawing the assistance of his grace and holy Spirit, and so was overtaken of foul and gross sins. Secondly, without this daily exercise we shall soon fall off from all power of godliness, and grow by degrees from bad to worse, till there be no prints of goodness remaining in us. For our course and proceedings in piety is no natural motion, but against the current and stream, wind and tide of our corruption; and therefore we must at no time intermit our labour, for so we shall in short time be carried further back, then we can recover in a great space and with much labour; but we must be in continual exercise, and (as it were) with unwearied diligence ply the oar, until by death we arrive at the haven of happiness. Our hearts, like the plummets of a clock, draw us with the weight of their corruption downward, till they pitch themselves and rest upon earthly vanities, unless every day, yea many times a day, we pull them up, and give spiritual motion unto them by these Christian exercises. Thirdly, sin is so wily and deceitful, that if we cease from the duties of a Christian life, and intermit the keeping of a straight watch over our selves and actions, it will soon steal upon us, and fortify it self against all virtue and goodness.