A20762:80
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. 1 What a godly life is, both according to the Law, and also Gospel.
Now that we may more orderly proceed in handling of this Argument, I will first show what this godly life is, and what the duties are, which principally are required unto it; and then propound the helps and means, whereby we may be persuaded to enter into this Christian course, and enabled to proceed in it conscionably and cheerfully. And first, if we define it in that legal perfection which God requireth: this godly life is an absolute conformity of all our actions, and whole conversation, unto the will of God, which is the perfect rule of holiness and righteousness, as it is revealed unto us in his Word, especially in the Decalogue or ten Commandments, unto which we cannot attain in this state of corruption and imperfection, seeing we are not perfectly regenerate, but are partly flesh, and partly Spirit, and have the relics of sin remaining in us, which as an heavy burden presseth us down in this way, and like fetters on our legs, 1so hindereth us, that we can but slowly and lamely proceed in our spiritual journey: as we may see in the example of the Apostle, who professeth that he could not do the good which he would, but the evil which he would not; 2and that whilst he was delighted in the Law of God, he found another law in his members warring against the law of his mind, and leading him captive to the law of sin. Notwithstanding we are to walk by this rule, and in our desire and endeavour (as it were with an holy ambition) to aspire unto it; and though we cannot reach unto this Sun of perfection, yet we must choose it for our mark, and shoot towards it as high as we can, and be sorry and ashamed in our selves, that we can shoot no higher; of which, we have the holy Apostle as a pattern for our imitation, who forgetting those things 3which were behind, namely, the former part of his race in the way of godliness, and reaching forth unto those things which were before, to wit, that Christian perfection, unto which he had not yet attained, did press towards the mark, for the price of the high calling of God, in Jesus Christ.