A20762:713
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. 5 That we must cleave unto God by fervent love.
§. Sect. 5 That we must cleaue vnto God by feruent loue.
Fourthly, unto this daily exercise there is required, that we do adhere unto him by most fervent love, setting our affections upon him, and 1loving him above all things with all our minds, with all our souls and with all our strength: And that we daily and continually renew our love, by considering that he is in himself the chief goodness, infinite in all excellency, beauty, mercy and all perfection, and therefore most lovely and amiable; and also towards us most good and gracious, benign and bountiful. In which respects we are to esteem it our chief happiness, to be by his love towards us, and ours towards him, united unto him, and to enjoy him as our chief goodness and blessedness. For if worldly men do place all their happiness in the fruition of those earthly things unto which by love their hearts are firmly united, as the ambitious man, in the enjoying of his desired honours; the covetous man, of his beloved riches; the voluptuous man, of his wished pleasures; the carnal lover, in the obtaining of his love; how much more ought we to esteem it the top and perfection of our felicity, when by fervent love we enjoy God, being inseparably united unto him, and he unto us in the bonds of love? how much more should our hearts be ravished with delight (as the Spouse in the Canticles) with our mutual and sweet embracements, ⟨p. 188⟩intercourse of kindness, and tokens and testimonies of love towards one another? In which love if we would be truly happy, our daily care must be to wean our hearts and affections more and more from the love of the world and worldly vanities, that they may be wholly fastened and fixed upon God; and as men, when they would intend the whole strength of their sight to the more perfect beholding of an object, do wink with one eye, that all the visual spirits being collected in the other, they may more vigorously and exactly discern and comprehend it: so if we would have the whole keys and influences of our affections directed unto God, we must shut and avert them from the world, that we may comprehend and embrace him with more perfection, when they are wholly and solely fixed on him. Besides, the Lord is a jealous God, who can endure no corrivals in his love, and much less that we should share and divide our hearts between him and his enemies.