A61386:226
An antidote against distractions, or, An endeavour to serve the church, in the daily…An antidote against distractions, or, An indeavour to serve the church, in the daily…
An antidote against distractions, or, An endeavour to serve the church, in the daily case of wanderings in the worship of God by Richard Steele M.A. and minister of the Gospel.An antidote against distractions, or, An indeavour to serve the church, in the daily case of wandrings in the worship of God by Richard Steele M.A. and minister of the Gospel.
London: printed for Elizabeth Calvert, 1667
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.
4. These do infect the memory*, and imprint such species and notions there, as offer and produce themselves, when we are in the service of God And so when a good man out of the good treasure of his heart should bring forth good things. He stumbles upon the vain and unprofitable trash, before laid up in his memory, to the grief of Gods spirit, and hazard of his own. The memory, you know, will most easily retain an impertinent story, a filthy or foolish imagination a long time, and then when an Idle heart hits upon it, (though God himself looks on) that will run away with the heart, and give both matter and strength to a long, woeful, and wandering Distraction.
4. These do infect the memory*, and imprint such species and notions there, as offer and produce themselves, when we are in the service of God And so when a good man out of the good treasure of his heart should bring forth good things. He stumbles upon the vain and unprofitable trash, before laid up in his memory, to the grie• of Gods spirit, and hazard of his own. The memory, you know, will most easily retain an impertinent story, a filthy or foolish imagination a long time, and then when an Idle heart hits upon it, (though God himself looks on) that will run away with the heart, and give both matter and strength to a long, woful, and wandring Distraction.
- *Sed cùm s••mens ad studium orationis erexerit, earum rerum imagines reverberata patitur, quibu• libenter prius otiosa premibatur. Greg. in Job. l. 10. c. 16.
How doth the *active Fancy in our sleep sometimes light upon some sorry thoughts we had in the day, and take them by the end, and spin them out into a very sinful Dream? and this, Casuists say, we are responsible for though it seem involuntary: because we administered matter for it, and remotely promoted it: so we shall be found guilty before God, even of our unwilling wandering in Gods service, because we laid up for them before. If we brew for them, Satan will be sure to broach them.