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…

I have at large before insisted on the Curse considered alone, now I am to show in one word the issuing of Vexation therefrom. The curse of the Creature is as it were the poison and contagion of it; and let a man mix poison in the most delicate wine, it will but so much the easier, by the nimbleness of the spirits there, invade the parts of the body, and torment the bowels. Gold of it self is a precious thing, but to be shackled with fetters of gold, to have it turned into a use of bondage, adds mockery to the affliction; and far more precious to a particular man is a chain of iron which draws him out of a pit, then a chain of gold which clogs him in a prison; ⟨p. 77⟩a key of iron which lets him out of a dungeon, then a bar of gold that shuts him in. If a man should have a great Diamond curiously cut into sharp angles, worth many thousand pounds, in his bladder, no man would count him a rich, but a miserable and a dead man; this is just the case between a man and the Creatures of themselves without Christ to sanctify them unto us; though the things be excellent in their own being, yet mingled with our corruptions and lusts, they are turned into poison, into the Gall of Asps within a man, they will not suffer him to feel any quietness in his belly, in the fullness ¹of his sufficiency he shall be in straights, and while he is eating, the fury of wrath shall rain down upon him. Let a mans meat be never so sweet in it self, yet if he should temper the sauce with dirt out of a sink, it would make it altogether loathsome; and a wicked man eats all his meat like swine wrapped up and overdawb'd with dirt and curses. A little, saith Solomon, which the righteous hath is better then great riches of the ungodly: In se it is not, but Quoad hominem, in regard of the man it is: for that little which a righteous man hath is to him an experience of Gods Promise, a branch of his love, a means of thankful affections in him, a viaticum unto heaven; whereas the wicked mans abundance turns into his greater curse, their table becomes their snare, and those things which should have been for² their good prove unto them an occasion of falling. God makes his Sun to shine on the Just and on the unjust, on a garden of spices and on a dunghill:

I have at large before insisted on the Curse considered alone, now I am to shew in one word the issuing of Vexation therefrom. The curse of the Creature is as it were the poison and contagion of it; and let a man mixe poison in the most delicate wine, it will but so much the easier, by the nimblenesse of the spirits there, invade the parts of the body, and torment the bowels. Gold of it selfe is a pretious thing, but to be shackled with fetters of gold, to have it turn'd into a use of bondage, addes mockery to the affliction; and farre more pretious to a particular man is a chaine of iron which drawes him out of a pit, then a chaine of gold which clogs him in a prison;