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…

Thirdly, the sentence of the Law against sin is already in execution. But we are to note, that sin though condemned to die, yet (such is the severity of God against it) it is adjudged to a lingering death, a death upon the Cross:¹ and in the faithful sin is already upon a Cross, fainting, struggling, dying daily; yet so, as that it retains some life still, so long as we are here, sin will be as fast to our natures, as a nailed man is to the Cross that bears him. Our Thorn will still be in our flesh, our Canaanite in our side, our Twins in our womb, our counterlustings,² and counterwillings; though we be like unto Christ per ⟨p. 148⟩primitias spiritus; yet we are unlike him per Reliquias ³vetustatis, by the remainders of our flesh; not to sin is here only our Law, but in heaven it shall be our Reward. All our perfection here is imperfect; Sin hath its deaths blow given it, but yet like fierce and implacable beasts it never lets go its hold till the last breath, Animamque in vulnere ponit, never ceaseth to infest us, till it cease to be in us. Who can say, I have made my heart clean? Cleanse thou be (saith holy David) from my secret sins. Though I know nothing by my self, yet am I not thereby justified, saith the Apostle; and the reason is added, He that judgeth me is the Lord; which Saint John further unfolds, God is greater then our hearts, and knoweth all things. Which places (though most dangerously perverted by some late Innovators, which teach, That a man may be without secret sins, that he may make his heart clean from sin, and that Saint Paul was so) do yet in the experience of the holiest men that are, or have been, evince this truth, that the lusts of the flesh will be, and work in us, so long as we carry our mortal bodies about us. And this God is pleased to suffer for these and like purposes: First, to convince and humble us in the experience of our⁴ own vileness, that we may be the more to the praise of the glory of his great grace. As once Theophilus Bishop of Alexandria dealt with the Egyptian Idols, after the embracement of Christianity; most he destroyed, only one of their Apes and Images he kept entire, not as a monument of Idolatry, but as a spectacle of sin and misery, that in the sight thereof the people might after learn to abhor themselves that had lived in such abominable Idolatries.