A94156:988
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.
Now if thou wouldst not have thy particular calling to encroach upon thy general, take heed that it steal not away thy heart, nor thy time.
Now if thou wouldst not have thy particular calling to incroach upon thy general, take heed that it steal not away thy heart, nor thy time.
1. Take heed that thy particular calling steal not away thy heart from thy general calling. If the Mistress keep her distance and maintain her authority over her maidens, she may find them obedient and serviceable; but if she grow fond of them, and familiar with them, they will grow saucy and encroach upon her; Reader, keep thy inward distance, and maintain that authority which God hath given thee over the things of this life, and then all will be well; but if once thou dotest on them, and delightest in them, expect to have them thine hinderances in all holy exercises; The World may have thy hands, but it must not have thy heart. Thy actions may be about thy particular calling, but thy affections must be above it. Set your affections on things above, and not on things below, Collos. 3.2. Thy occupation is as the first Adam of the earth, carthly; but thy conversation must be like the second Adam (the Lord from Heaven) heavenly. A Christian should follow the things of this World with such a slightness and indifferency of Spirit as Wicked men do the things of a better World. The holy Angels behold our earthly affairs but as strangers to them. It is happy for him that can carry himself towards his own estate as if it were another ⟨p. 477⟩mans. An heathen could say, I do not give but only lend my self to my business. Surely then a Saint should go through the World as one in a deep study, 1his mind being the whilst intent upon a better object. Brutish Horseflies fasten on Dunghills, Swallows make their nests of earth. They who have no Heaven hereafter, may give their hearts to the earth; but, Christian if thou lovest thy soul, though riches increase, set not thine heart upon them. Love not the World, nor the things of the World,