N30392:176
The travels of true godliness. From the beginning of the world to this present…
The travels of true godliness. From the beginning of the world to this present day, in an apt and pleasant allegory: showing, what true godliness is; also the troubles, oppositions, reproaches, and persecutions he hath met with in every age. : Together with the danger and sad declining state he is in at this present time, by errors, heresies, and ungodliness, or open profaneness. / By Benjamin Keach, author of a book called War with the devil, and Zion in distress, and The travels of ungodliness.The travels of true godliness. From the beginning of the world to this present day, in an apt and pleasant allegory: shewing, what true godliness is; also the troubles, oppositions, reproaches, and persecutions he hath met with in every age. : Together with the danger and sad declining state he is in at this present time, by errors, heresies, and ungodliness, or open prophaneness. / By Benjamin Keach, author of a book call'd War with the devil, and Sion in distress, and The travels of ungodliness.
Boston: printed by B. Green and Company for D. Gookin over against the Old South Meeting-House, 1745
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.
Now, these Men remembering what a great Enemy true Godliness had been to them in the same Isle former Times, and how he had forced them to pack up their ⟨p. 68⟩Trumpery and begone: Nay, and not only so, but also they found that he had got a great Number of the Inhabitants of the said Isle to side with him, against their beloved Mistress and great Goddess Diana, which they feared might stand in the Way of her mounting the Saddle once again; they sought out many Ways to root out and utterly destroy true Godliness, and this they did, by contriving divers Plots and sham Plots; the first was in the Year 1661, when they craftily ensnaring a Company o• poor miss-led Men, called Fifth Monarchy Men, who thought in their own Time, and by their own Strength, by outward force, to have erected true Godliness a most glorious visible Kingdom; and by this Means the common Enemy took an Occasion to call all the Friends and Favourites of true Godliness, Traitors, and utter Enemies to Kings and civil Magistracy, which he and they ever abhorred: But upon this a great Persecution was raised and many of the chiefest Friends to true Godliness were imprisoned, and some executed▪ and divers died in filthy Prisons; but after this they raised a worse Persecution, and another after that, and at last they maliciously an• traitorously resolved, by a Devilish Conspiracy to destroy true Godliness, and all that favoured him, and to set up false and counterfeit Godliness in his stead; and indeed they so far proceeded, that the friends of true Godliness viz. the two Witnesses of Jesus were brought under […] civil Death, being divested of all Power, Help, or Hope, and like dead Men were cast out by the Walls, yet God defeated their Conspiracy so far as to discover the Conspirators, or else doubtless true Godliness, and all his Favourites had received the most fatal Blow as ever was known; but God would not have the dead Bodies of his Witnesses to be put into Graves, yet divers holy Persons were cut off by their bloody and traitorous Hands in the ⟨p. 69⟩West, and also in the chief City of the Isle, but God foresaw their crafty Design, and turned their Wisdom into Foolishness, in that he made the Men of Names, Enemies to their treacherous Prince, and them also, who laboured to violate the Laws and Constitution of the Isle.