A30153:104
A holy life, the beauty of Christianity, or, An exhortation to Christians to be…
A holy life, the beauty of Christianity, or, An exhortation to Christians to be holy by John Bunyan.
London: printed by B.W. for Benj. Alsop, 1684
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.
1. How is iniquity in thine eye, when severed from the guilt and punishment that attends it? is it as separate from these, beauteous, or ill favoured? I ask thee how it looks, and how thou likest it, suppose there were no guilt or punishment to attend thy love to, or Commission of it. For if in its own nature it be desirable to thy mind, and only therefore shunned, for fear of the punishment, that attends the Commission of it: without doubt thou art none of them that do depart from it: all that thou ⟨p. 29⟩dost, is, thou shunnest the sin, not of abhorrence of the sin, but for fear of the punishment that attends it. Like the Thief that yet refuseth to take away his neighbours horse, not of hatred of theft, but for fear of the Gallows.
1. How is iniquity in thine eye, when severed from the guilt and punishment that attends it? is it as sepeparate from these, beauteous, or illfavoured? I ask thee how it looks, and how thou likest it, suppose there were no guilt or punishment to attend thy love to, or Commission of it. For if in its own nature it be desirable to thy mind, and only therefore shunned, for fear of the punishment, that attends the Commission of it: without doubt thou art none of them that do depart from it: all that thou ⟨p. 29⟩dost, is, thou shunnest the sin, not of abhorrence of the sin, but for fear of the punishment that attends it. Like the Thief that yet refuseth to take away his neighbours horse, not of hatred of theft, but for fear of the Gallows.
2. How dost thou like thy self, as considered possessed with a body of sin, and as feeling, and finding that sin worketh in thy members, doth this yield thee inward pleasedness of mind, and a kind of secret sweetness, or how? for to be sure, where a sanctified mind is,1 there is nothing more odious in it self, nor that makes a man so in his own eyes, as doth this sight, the sight of sin in him, of the working of lust in him. 'Tis this that makes the good man ashamed, that makes him blush, and that makes him abhor himself.