Page:Rules of Life, Johan Amos Comenius.djvu/14

10 dering at sins, so that you admit them not; but with respect to your good deeds themselves; fearing lest they be good only in opinion, from admixture of hypocrisy, or precipitate you into a Pharisaical complaisance with yourself. Therefore you shall think no anchor securely fixed, except in the mercy of God and the merit of Christ—safe under this shield, provided your own will be entirely resigned, and all confidence in yourself and every other creature laid aside, you deliver up to God alone the decision respecting you in this life and for eternity.

Summarily—Live while you live as if about to die, in order that you may die, when you come to die, as if you were about to live. Alas for those who rise again to death! If you wish to rise again to life, you must be careful that you die not in your death. If you wish not to die in death, before death you must blunt the stings of death, which are sins. (1 Cor. xv. 56.) Now sins will die before you, if you make it your aim that Christ live in you (Gal. ii. 20), for Christ is the fountain of life, and will spring up in you to life eternal, and death will not be death to you, as it was not to Him; but a transit to life immortal.

This is true wisdom—the duly regulated ordinations of ends and means, from the first all the way to the last, and may God so guide you to an accurate observance of them, as that you err not from these courses and fall headlong.

 

God is the fountain of all harmony. He made all things harmoniously; especially man his own image, if we do not by our irrational acts disturb that harmony in the eyes and ears of God, of angels, and of such men as judge wisely of us. Therefore that you may not distiurb this harmony, act thus:—

