A26701:25
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.
O think better what you do! Gods terms are reasonable: His Word and Ways are good and equal: Christ's Yoke is easy and his Burden light, and his Commandments are not grievous to any, but so far as blindness and a bad and backward heart doth make them so. You have no true reason to be unwilling: God and Conscience shall one• day tell you and all the World that you had no reason for it. You may as wisely pretend reason to cut your throats, to torment your selves, as plead reason against a true Conversion unto God. Were I persuading you not to kill your selves, I would make no question, but you would be persuaded. And yet must I be hopeless when I persuade you from everlasting misery, and not to prefer the world and flesh before your Saviour and your God, and before a sure everlasting joy? God forbid!
O think better what you do! Gods terms are reasonable: His Word and Ways are good and equal: Christ's Yoke is easie and his Burden light, and his Commandments are not grievous to any, but so far as blindness and a bad and backward heart doth make them so. You have no true reason to be unwilling: God and Conscience shall one• day tell you and all the World that you had no reason for it. You may as wisely pretend reason to cut your throats, to torment your selves, as plead reason against a true Conversion unto God. Were I perswading you not to kill your selves, I would make no question, but you would be perswaded. And yet must I be hopeless when I perswade you from everlasting misery, and not to prefer the world and flesh before your Saviour and your God, and before a sure everlasting joy? God forbid!
Reader, I take it for a great mercy of God, that before my head lieth down in the duct, and I go to give up my account unto my Judge, I have this opportunity once more, earnestly to bespeak thee for thy own Salvation. I beg it of thee, as one that must shortly be called away, and speak to thee no more, till we come unto our endless state, that thou wouldst but sometimes retire into thy self, and use the reason of a man, and look before thee whither thou art going; and look behind thee how thou hast lived, and what thou hast been doing in the