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

And if we would thus daily renew our repentance, the benefits arising unto us from this holy exercise would be inestimable. For first, we should prevent innumerable sins, into which, through the neglect of this duty, we fall daily, unadvisedly, and at unawares; but especially we should be armed hereby against all sins committed against knowledge and conscience. Secondly, if at any time through frailty we be overtaken with any sin, we should not lye in it, but rise again by unfeigned repentance; and so heal the sores of sin, whilst the wound is green, with much greater ease, and not suffer them to fester and rankle, to our greater pain and danger. Thirdly, we should much abate the violence of our fleshly lusts, when as though they with much labour put us to a foil, yet they shall not be able, no not for one day, to keep their hold and rule over us; and who will take any great pains to so little purpose? or swallow down that potion with any pleasure, which he must be forced to cast up so quickly with much grief? or embrace that sin with any great delight, ⟨p. 176⟩which within a few hours shall be plucked from him with an holy violence and indignation? or offend so good a God, or hazard a precious soul, or disturb the sweet peace of a good conscience, for the fruition of a sinful pleasure so vain, so momentany? Fourthly, though through infirmity we sometimes fall, yet shall we hereby be preserved from sleeping in carnal security, and from being hardened through the deceitfulness of sin, and though through weakness of the flesh, we slumber ¹