A94156:1001
The Christian-man's calling: or, A treatise of making religion ones business. Wherein the nature…
The Christian-man's calling: or, A treatise of making religion ones business. Wherein the nature and necessity of it is discovered. : As also the Christian directed how he may perform it in [brace] religious duties, natural actions, his particular vocation, his family directions, and his own recreations. / By George Swinnock ...
London: printed for T.P., 1662
Treatise › Chapter 26: How to exercise our selves to Godliness in our Partiular Callings.
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.
Fourthly, If thou wouldst exercise thy self to godliness in thy particular calling, look up to God for a blessing upon thy labours therein. Creatures may be the object of thy diligence, but God alone the object of thy confidence. Thy supplication must be to God, and thy expectation from God. Thou canst as soon by thine own power add a cubit to thy stature, as a penny to thy purse. Thou shalt remember the Lord thy God, for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, Deut. 8.18. All thy endeavours without Gods blessing are but (as Cesar said of Senecas works) arena sine calce, Sand without Lime, they will not hang together; if God bless them they prosper, if he blast them they perish. The Devil himself was so far Orthodox, Job. 1.10. Thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased in the land. Alas the whole course of nature turneth only as it is moved by the hand of God. It is not in the frame of nature as in frames of Art; when a watch is made, it may go though the workman be many miles off, or though he be dead; but there is not the least wheel in the frame of nature which doth not depend upon God for its motion every moment. As the vapours exhaled by the Sun, depend so much upon ⟨p. 485⟩it, that if that withdraw its influence, they fall to the earth; so do the Creatures depend on God; if he withdraw his influence from them, they presently come to nothing.
Fourthly, If thou wouldst exercise thy self to godliness in thy particular calling, look up to God for a blessing upon thy labours therein. Creatures may be the object of thy diligence, but God alone the object of thy confidence. Thy supplication must be to God, and thy expectation from God. Thou canst as soon by thine own power add a cubit to thy stature, as a penny to thy purse. Thou shalt remember the Lord thy God, for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, Deut. 8.18. All thy endeavours without Gods blessing are but (as Cesar said of Senecas works) arena sine calce, Sand without Lime, they will not hang together; if God bless them they prosper, if he blast them they perish. The Devil himself was so far Orthodox,