A10659:115
Three treatises of the vanity of the creature. The sinfulness of sin. The life…Three treatises of the vanity of the creature. The sinfulnesse of sinne. The life…
Three treatises of the vanity of the creature. The sinfulness of sin. The life of Christ. Being the substance of several sermons preached at Lincolns Inn: by Edward Reynolds, preacher to that honourable society, and late fellow of Merton College in Oxford.Three treatises of the vanity of the creature. The sinfulnesse of sinne. The life of Christ. Being the substance of severall sermons preached at Lincolns Inne: by Edward Reynoldes, preacher to that honourable society, and late fellow of Merton Colledge in Oxford.
London: printed by Felix Kyngston for Robert Bostocke, 1631
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.
We read in Saint Austens confessions1 of Alipius his Companion, who being by much importunity overcome to accompany a friend of his to those bloody Roman Games, wherein men killed one another to make sport for the people; and yet resolving though he went with his body, to leave his heart behind him, and for that purpose to keep his eyes shut, that he might not stain them with so ungodly a spectacle, yet at last upon a mighty shout at ⟨p. 66⟩the fall of a man, he could not forbear to see the occasion, and upon that grew to couple with the route, and to applaud the action as the rest did. In another place of the same book we read of Monica, the mother of that2 holy man, that she had so often used to sip the wine that came to her fathers table, that from sipping she grew to loving, and from thence to excessive drinking, which particulars are by him reported, to show the deceitfulness of sin in growing upon the conscience, if it can but win the heart to consult, to deliberate, to indulge a little to it self at first: for it is in the case of sin, as it is in treason, qui deliberant desciverunt, to entertain any the modestest3 terms of parley with Gods enemy is down-right to forsake him. And if it be so in any thing, then much more in the love of the World; for the Apostle tells us, […] that is a Root, and therefore we must expect, if ever4 it get […] in us, partly by reason of its own fruitful quality, partly by reason of the fertile soil wherein it is, the corrupt heart of man, partly by reason of Satan's constant plying it with his husbandry and suggestions, that it will every day grow faster, settle deeper, & spread wider in our souls. By which means it must needs likewise create abundance of vexation to the spirits of5 men. For as Manna in the Wilderness, when the people would not be content to have from God their daily bread, but would needs be hoarding and multiplying of it, bred worms and stank; so when men will needs heap up wealth and other earthly supplies beyond stint or measure, they do but store up worms to disquiet their minds, that which will rot and annoy the owners. They pant after the Dust of the Earth on the head of the