A26701:135
The way to true happiness in a serious treatise /
The way to true happiness in a serious treatise / by Joseph Alleine.
London : Printed and are to be sold by Nevil Simmons, 1678
Title page typeset from the transcription.
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.
His Cares are quite altered. He was once set for the World, and any scraps of by-time, nothing (too often) was enough for his soul. Now he gives over caring for the Asses, and sets his heart on the Kingdom. Now all the cry is, What shall I do to be saved? Acts. 16. 30. His great solicitude is, how to secure his soul. Oh! how he would bless you, if you could but put him out of doubt of this!
His Fears are not so much of suffering, but of sinning, Heb. 11. 25, 27. Once he was afraid of nothing so much as the loss of his estate, or esteem, the displeasure of friends, the frowns ⟨p. 33⟩of the great: nothing sounded so terrible to him, as pain, or poverty, or disgrace. Now these are little to him, in comparison of Gods dishonour, or displeasure. How warily doth he walk, left he should tread on a snare? He feareth alway, he looks before and behind; he hath his eye upon his heart, and is often casting over his shoulder, left he should be • overtaken with sin, Psal. 39. 1. Prov. 28. 14. Eccles. 2. 14. It kills his heart to think of losing Gods favour; this he dreads as his only undoing, Psal. 51. 11, 12. Psal. 119. 8. No thought in the world doth pinch him and pain him so much, as to think of parting with Christ.