A10659:118
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.
As fire under water, the hotter it burns, the sooner it is extinguished by the over-running of the water: so earthly things raise up such tumultuary and disquiet thoughts in the minds of men, as doth at last quite extinguish all the heat and comfort which was expected from them.
As fire under water, the hotter it burnes, the sooner it is extingvished by the over-running of the water: so earthly things raise up such tumultuary and disquiet thoughts in the minds of men, as doth at last quite extingvish all the heate and comfort which was expected from them.
Give me leave to explain this Vexation in some one or two of Solomons particulars, and to unfold his enforcements thereof out of them. And first to begin with that with which he begins. The Knowledge of things, either natural in this present text, or moral and civill. vers. 17. of both which he concludeth that they are Vanity and vexation of spirit. The first argument he takes from the weakness of it either to restore or correct any thing that is amiss. That which is crooked cannot be made strait. We may understand it several ways. First, All our knowledge by reason of mans corruption is but a crooked, ragged, impedite knowledge, and for that reason a vexation to the mind: for rectitude is full of beauty, and crookedness of deformity. In mans Creation his understanding ⟨p. 69⟩should have walked in the strait path of truth, should have had a distinct view of causes and effects in their immediate successions; but now sin hath mingled such confusion with things, that the mind is fain to take many crooked and vast compasses for a little uncertain knowledge. Secondly, The weakness of all natural knowledge is seen in this that it cannot any way either prevent or correct the natural crookedness of the smallest things, much less make a man solidly and substantially happy. Thirdly, That which is crooked cannot be made strait. It is impossible for a man by the exactest knowledge of natural things to make the nature of a man, which by sin is departed from its primitive rectitude, strait again, to repair that Image of God which is so much distorted. When they knew God, they glorified