N30392:340
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.
First, Riches which sometimes thy Heart hath been so much set upon, cannot be thy Summum Bonum, or chief Happiness; for they are uncertain, fleeting and variable Things; and let a Man have never so much of them, yet he is still craving and desiring more, so that 'tis as Solomon says, He that desireth Silver, shall not be satisfied with Silver. Secondly, Honours are of like Nature; and besides their Vanity, they depend on the Minds, Wills, and Humours of Men, who are changeable and unconstant. Thirdly, Pleasures and Voluptuousness, they are common (as I told thee) with Beasts as well as Men, and also have▪ annexed their Sting and Discontention when they are past.
Besides all this, Consideration, to induce him to open to true Godliness, bid him ask his Soul, in what State it now was; What it was a doing; And whither it was a going.
First. He endeavoured to show him, that his Soul was in the Gall of Bitterness, and in the Bond of Iniquity, being under the Law and Curse of God, both in Respect of original and actual Sin; he having not closed with Christ, nor received True Godliness. Secondly, Then as to what he was a doing, he bid him see if he did not neglect that one Thing needful. Have you, said Consideration, made Religion your chief Business, since you came to live in this Place? Have you not rather spent too much of your Time about Notions and airy Speculations? Thirdly, Whither are you a going? said he: Are you fit (being well prepared) to die? Are you going the Way to Heaven? Sure that cannot be, unless you receive True Godliness: For I have heard that it consists in a right Faith, as well as a holy Life. Oh what Cost, Labour, Pains, Means, Motives, and Arguments, hath God used to make Men sensible of the everlasting Interest of their Souls, and to engage them to a serious Preparation for another World.