A20762:952
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. 3 That the poorer sort must labour painfully in their callings, notwithstanding that the badness of their trades afford small earnings.
§. Sect. 3 That the poorer sort must labour painfully in their callings, notwithstanding that the badnesse of their trades afford small earnings.
Now if the rich and noble are not privileged from diligent walking in their callings, then much less can any of the poorer sort, who are able to take pains, think themselves exempted, seeing they are tied to the ⟨p. 260⟩performance of their duty, not only by the same golden bond of conscience, but also by the iron chain of necessity, that they may have wherewithal to relieve and sustain themselves and those that belong unto them; which if they be not strong enough to tie them to their duty, but that they will live like idle loiterers, and not labour for their living; it is fit, that unto these two, there be added a third, which is the bond of authority, whereby they should be compelled to take pains, and not live as idle and unprofitable Drones in the Common wealth. And if this treble bond will not hold them, then are they as inordinate livers (according to the Apostles rule) to be cast out of all civill society, and not suffered to eat, 1because they will not work; or else to feed upon the bread of affliction and the water of sorrow, because they will not eat the bread of their honest labour, nor earn their living in the sweat of their face. Neither doth any law bind us to relieve such as will be subject to no law, nor to pity their wants who will take no pity on themselves. But what if being poor, they cannot maintain themselves and their charge, either because it is so great, or the gain so small that cometh of their labours? and what if their trade be so hard, and pains in it prized at such low rates, that there is no competency in their earnings to minister unto them and theirs necessary relief? In this case the poor are ready to say, that it is as good to sit still, as to rise and fall; and that they had as lief play for nothing, as work for nothing. But it is far otherwise; for howsoever if the case truly standeth thus (for it is not always so when it is pretended;