A20762:969
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 That we must make choice of such recreations as are lawful, and which they are.
§. Sect. 4 That we must make choice of such recreations as are lawfull, and which they are.
And thus it appeareth that recreations are not only lawful, but also profitable and necessary. Now because many are apt to abuse this liberty unto licentiousness, and to rush upon all sports and pleasures without choice or difference, or if they pitch upon those which are allowable in themselves, care not how shamefully they abuse them, in respect of their il carriage in the manner of using them: We are in the next place to know, that recreations are not absolutely good, but of an indifferent nature; good to those that use them well, and evil to those who abuse them unto sin; not simply good being considered apart by themselves, but as they in their use tend to the advancing of those ends for which they are used. Finally, not good at all unto us, if we rush upon them rashly and hand over head without choice, and have neither care nor conscience in our manner of using them; but when we observe diligently those laws and cautions, wherewith we are limited and bounded in their use by the Word. And these either respect the matter or manner; the recreation it self, or our course and carriage in exercising our selves in it. For the recreation it self, our first care must be that it be lawful, and either approved and warranted, or at least, not forbidden and condemned in the Scriptures. And here we are to observe not only those recreations which are particularly named, but likewise all those which have some analogy and similitude with them. And these are either of the mind alone, or of the body and mind jointly together. The recreations of the mind, as the propounding of Riddles, and resolving of them, for the exercise of wit, of which we have an example in Samson, propounding unto the Philistines at his marriage feast this Riddle, Out of the eater came forth meat, and out ⟨p. 266⟩1of the strong came forth sweetness, &c. Wherein we are to observe, that both the words and meaning be modest and chaste, and not like many Riddles, propounded in obscene words, which men think excused by their modest resolution.