A practical exposition of the X. Commandments with a resolution of several momentous questions…A practical exposition of the X. Commandements with a resolution of several momentous questions…

If we would come to consider, in the next place, how a man should profit better, and improve his own estate, it will be hard to speak so of it as to pitch upon particulars; for certainly God alloweth parsimony, or suitable and due sparing, and frugality, as he disalloweth and discountenanceth the extremes in the defect and excess; we would then consider the midst, in quo stat virtus, as they use to say, and so speak of the positive part in these following questions. 1. If a man may aim and endeavour to increase his estate, how far? by what means? or how? and for what ends? 2. How we are to walk in merchandise and bargains? 3. How to walk in charity, alms, and distributing to others? 4. How to walk in managing of our estate, as to the gathering, keeping, or preserving and using of it? 5. What to judge of, and how to carry in Usury (as it is called)? 6. What to account of the ⟨p. 413⟩punishment of theft in the Court of men? 7. How it came that the covetous have been so marked or noted in the primitive times, 1 Cor. 6.10. and Ephes. 5.5. that they have been looked on as persons secluded from Heaven, and not worthy of Church fellowship? and what marks to know him by? where we may touch a little on the ill of that sin, and speak a word by way of dissuasive from it.

If we would come to consider, in the next place, how a man should profit better, and improve his own estate, it will be hard to speak so of it as to pitch upon particulars; for certainly God alloweth parsimonie, or sutable and due sparing, and frugalitie, as he disalloweth and discountenanceth the extreams in the defect and excess; we would then consider the midst, in quo stat virtus, as they use to say, and so speak of the positive part in these following questions. 1. If a man may aim and endeavour to increase his estate, how far? by what means? or how? and for what ends? 2. How we are to walk in merchandize and bargains? 3. How to walk in charity, alms, and distributing to others? 4. How to walk in managing of our estate, as to the gathering, keeping, or preserving and using of it? 5. What to judge of, and how to carry in Vsury (as it is called)? 6. What to account of the ⟨p. 413⟩