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…

Look into the memory, and you shall find it very unfaithful to retain good, very tenacious to hold any evil; It is like a ^cleaking vessel, lets out all that is pure, and retains nothing but mud and dregs. The Lord made great promises to the people of Israel to bring them into the holy land, began to fulfil them, in wonders, in terrible wonders, in mercies, in multitudes of mercies (and nothing so fit to make impressions on the memory as promises, miracles, and multiplied deliverances) and yet as if they meant to contend with God, which should be the greatest, the wonder of his goodness or the wonder of their unthankfulness, all this was not long a wearing out, for it is said, They did soon forget it all. Look into the² whole man, and you shall find him full of perturbation and disorder. A man cannot trust any member he hath alone, without Jobs covenant, without Davids bridle to³ keep it in. If thou hast occasion to use thine eye, take heed unto it, It is full of the seeds of adultery, pride, envy,⁴ wrath, covetousness, there are Lusts of the eye. If to use thy tongue, Trust it not alone, set a door before thy lips, there is a Hell within thee that can set it all on fire, that⁵ can fill it with rotten and stinking communication, there is blasphemy, persecution, theft, murder, adultery, curses, revilings, clamours, bitterness, crimson and hellish, fiery and brimstone abominations in that little member, able to set the whole frame of nature on fire about the ears of ungodly men. If to use thy hands or feet, look unto them, there are seeds of more sins, theft, bribery, murder, adultery (what not?) then there are joints or sinews in those members. If to use thine ear, be slow to hear, take heed how you hear, it is easily open to vanity, lies, slanders, calumniations, false doctrines, trashy and empty doctrines. Thus all over we find a Body of sin; And ⟨p. 143⟩which is yet more strange, this sinfulness cleaves not to our members only, but runs over with a prodigious exuberance into our very excrements, and adjacents. Absalom proud of his hair, Jezebel proud of her paint, Herod proud of his robes;