A94156:83
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 1: The Preface and Coherence of the Text.
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.
The unclean spring of ungodliness divideth it self (like the third African gulf) into two main cursed channels Atheism and Superstition. In one of which, 1all the children of men swim by nature, and very many, as the filly fish, down the streams of Jordan, till they descend ⟨p. 2⟩into the lake of Sodom, the dead sea of hell, and perish. Which of these two passages are most fatal and perilous, seems worth our inquiry. The waters in the former stream are deepest; Atheism denieth the very being of God: But to prevent sinking in these waters, Nature her self hath provided some skin-deep bladders; for though there be many Atheists in practice, yet there be no Atheists in principles. The being of a Deity was so fairly written on the tables of mans heart at first, that though it be exceedingly blotted and blurred by the fall, yet it is still legible. Those Heathen, as Caligula and others who endeavoured to extinguish that candle of the Lord, which showed them a first cause, or being of beings, could never accomplish it. It is a part of that Law which is written in all mens hearts, Rom. 2.15. The *Orator could say, That no Nation was so barbarous, as to deny the being of a God. †Tullus Hostilius, third King of the Romans, who derided his Predecessor Numa's sacrifices, saying, That Religion did but effeminate mens mind, did himself (as Lactantius in Instit. observes) worship the god Fear. Idolatry is a clear proof that all men believe a Deity, otherwise they would never worship (not only the Sun, as the Masagetes, but) dead men as the Grecians; whom their Governors would appoint, as the Romans; Cats, Dogs and Horses, as the Egyptians, 4and any thing rather then nothing. Though there be, saith a learned Author, Nations without Kings, without Laws, without clothes, yet there are none without a God. When man fell, this truth stood.
THe unclean spring of ungodliness divideth it self (like the third African gulf) into two main cursed channels Atheism and Superstition. In one of which,