A26701:157
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.
The sound Convert is heartily engaged against sin. He wrestles with it, he wars against it. He is too often foiled, but he never yields the cause, nor lays down the weapons; but he will up, and to it again, while he hath breath in his body. He will never give quiet possession, he will make no peace; he will give no quarter, he falls upon it, and fires upon it, and is still disquieting of it with continual alarms. He can forgive his other enemies; he can pity them, and pray for them, Acts 7. 60. but here he is implacable, here he is set upon revenge: he hunteth, as it were, for the precious life; his eye shall not pity, his hand shall not spare, though it be a right hand or a right eye: Be it a gainful sin, most delightful to his nature, a support to his esteem with carnal friends; yet he will rather ⟨p. 41⟩throw his gain down the kennel, see his credit fall, or the flower of pleasure whither in his hand, than he will allow himself in any known way of sin, Luke 19. 8. He will grant no indulgence, he will give no toleration, but he draws upon sin where ever he meets it, and frowns upon it with his unwelcome salute, Have I found thee, O mine enemy!
Reader, hath conscience been at work, while thou hast been looking over these lines? Hast thou pondered these things in thine heart? Hast thou searched the book within, to see if these things be so? If not, read it again, and make thy conscience to speak whether or no it be thus with thee.
Hast thou crucified thy flesh with its affections and lusts; and not only confessed, but forsaken thy sins; all sin in thy fervent desires, and the ordinary practise of every deliberate and wilful sin in thy life? If not, thou art yet unconverted. Doth not conscience fly in thy face, as thou readest, and tell thee that thou livest in away of lying for thy advantage, that thou usest deceit in thy calling, that there is some way of secret wantonness that thou livest in? why then, do not deceive thy self, thou art in the gall of bitterness, and bond of iniquity.