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…

But you will say, All these were at the time wicked men, what is that to nature in common? ▪Have the Saints such fierce and intemperate affections too? Surely while we carry our flesh about us, we carry the seeds of this rage and fury. Simeon and Levi were Patriarchs of the Church, and Heads of the Congregations of Israel; yet see how Jacob aggravateth, and curseth their fierceness▪ In their anger they slew a man, in their wrath they digge• ¹down a wall: Cursed be their anger for it was fierce, and their wrath for it was cruel. Peter was a holy man, yet when the winds blew, when the sluices were open, and the water had gotten a little passage, see how it gathers rage; how fierce and mad it grows, even against the evidences of his own heart, against the conscience of his own promises, a denial grows into an oath, and that multiplies into cursings, and damnings of himself; for so² the word imports, an imprecating of Gods wrath, and of separation from the presence and glory of God upon himself, if he knew the man. Jonah was a holy Prophet, and one whose rebellion and fierceness against God ⟨p. 171⟩might in reason have been quite tamed by the Sea and the Whale; yet look upon him when his nature gets loose, and you shall find more madness and tempest in him, then in the Sea into which he was thrown: Angry, exceeding angry at Gods mercy to Nineveh, and (with a strange uniformity of passion in a contrary occasion) as angry at Gods severity to the Gourd. That which made Job, though before full of impatience in some particular³ fits, to lay his hand on his mouth, and reply no more, which was Gods debatement, and expostulation with him, Jonah regarded not, but reproves, and replies with much madness of heart upon God himself, I do well to ⁴be angry even unto death. So belluine and contumacious are the minds of men set upon their own end, that though God himself undertake the cause, they will outface his arguments, and stand on their own defence. Asa was a holy King, his heart was perfect with the Lord