A61390:110
A discourse concerning old-age tending to the instruction, caution and comfort of aged persons…
A discourse concerning old-age tending to the instruction, caution and comfort of aged persons / by Richard Steele ...
London: printed by J. Astwood for Tho. Parkhurst, 1688
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.
Neither will religious purposes of doing ⟨p. 64⟩some Good with your Estates, excuse your present penuriousness: for that is to do evil that good may come of it. Hear what God himself saith to this, Isa. 61. 8. For I the Lord love judgment, I hate robbery for a burnt Offering. They that will part with nothing while they live, nothing will be accepted from them when they dye. Plead not your unspotted Justice, Honesty and Equity, against this charge; as if a Man could not be covetous, that meddles only with his own. For tho fraud, injustice and oppression be sometimes the Effects, yet the Nature of covetousness stands in overloving the World; and so you may be damnably guilty of this Sin, tho you keep you within the limits of your Estate. For as a man may be guilty of uncleanness with his own Wife, and be drunk with his own drink, so a man may be covetous with his own Riches. We do not find that the rich Fool, Luk. 12. nor that the rich Glutton, Luk. 16. did other folks wrong; nor those on the left hand of Christ, Mat. 25. that they robbed the poor or wronged the needy, but yet all guilty of this accursed vice.
Neither will religious purposes of doing ⟨p. 64⟩some Good with your Estates, excuse your present penuriousness: for that is to do evil that good may come of it. Hear what God himself saith to this, Isa. 61. 8. For I the Lord love judgment, I hate robbery for a burnt Offering. They that will part with nothing while they live, nothing will be accepted from them when they dye. Plead not your unspotted Justice, Honesty and Equity, against this charge; as if a Man could not be covetous, that meddles only with his own. For tho fraud, injustice and oppression be sometimes the Effects, yet the Nature of covetousness stands in overloving the World; and so you may be damnably guilty of this Sin, tho you keep you within the limits of your Estate. For as a man may be guilty of uncleanness with his own Wife, and be drunk with his own drink, so a man may be covetous with his own Riches. We do not find that the rich Fool,