The Practice of Piety, Treatise
THE PRACTICE OF PIETY.
Directing a Christian how to walk, that he may please God.
WHo ever thou art that lookest into this Book, never undertake to read it; unless thou first resolvest to become from thine heart, an unfeigned Practitioner of Piety. Yet read it, and that speedily, lest before thou hast read it over, God (by some unexpected death) cut thee off, for thine inveterate Impiety.
The Practice of Piety consists
1. In knowing
1. The Essence of God, & that in respect of
1. The diverse manner of being therein, which are three Persons.
1 The Father.
2. The Son.
3. Holy Ghost.
2. The Attributes thereof, which are either
Nominal or
1. Absolute,
1. Simpleness.
2. Infiniteness.
2. Relative,
1. Life.
2. Understanding
3. Will.
4. Power.
5. Majesty.
Real,
2. Thy own self in respect of thy state of
1. Corruption.
2. Renovation.
2. In glorifying God aright
1. By thy life, in dedicating thy self devoutly to serve him,
Ordinarily,
1. Privately, in thine own Person.
2. Publickly,
1. With thy Family every day.
2. With the Church on the Sabbath day.
Extraordinarily, by
Fasting.
Feasting.
2. By thy death, in dying
1. In the Lord.
2. For the Lord.
Unless that a Man doth truly know God, he neither can nor will worship him aright: for how can a Man*Tum Deum amare libet, cùm persuasum habemus ipsum esse optimum maximum, ubique praesentem, omnia in nobis efficientem, eum in quo vivimus, movemus, sumus. Bucer in Psal. 115. love him, whom he knoweth not? and who will worship him, whose help a Man thinks he needeth not? and how shall a Man seek remedy by Grace, who never understood his misery by Nature? Therefore saith (the†Heb. 11. 6. Danda imprimis opera est, ut Deum nôrimus, quotquot foelices esse volumus. Quid noscis si teipsum nescis? Apostle) He that cometh to God, must believe that God is, and that he is a rewarder of them that seek him.
And for as much as there can be no true Piety, without the knowledge of God; nor any good practice, without the knowledge of a Man's own self: we will therefore lay down the knowledge of God's Majesty, and Man's Misery, as the first and chiefest grounds of the Practice of Piety.