A10659:28
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.
THE VANITY OF THE CREATURE.
THE VANITIE OF THE CREATVRE.
ECCLESIASTES 1. 14. I have seen all the works that are done under the sun, and Behold, All is Vanity and Vexation of Spirit.
ECCLESIASTES 1. 14. I have seene all the workes that are done under the sunne, and Behold, All is Vanitie and Vexation of Spirit.
TO have a self-sufficiency in being and operation, and to be unsubordinate to any further End above himself, as it is utterly repugnant to the Condition of a Creature, so amongst the rest to Man especially; who besides the limitedness of his nature, as he is a Creature, hath contracted much deficiency and deformity as he is a Sinner. God never made him to be an End unto himself, to be the Centre of his own motions, or to be happy only by reflection on his own excellencies. Something still there is without him, unto which he moves, and from whence God hath appointed that he should reap either preservation in, or advancement and perfection unto his nature. What that ⟨p. 2⟩is upon which the desires of man ought to fix as his Rest and End, is the main discovery that the Wise Man makes in this Book. And he doth it by an historical and penitential review of his former Enquiries; from whence he states the point in Two main Conclusions. The first the Creatures Insufficiency, in the beginning of the Book, Vanity of Vanities, All is vanity. The second Mans Duty to God, and Gods All-sufficiency unto man, in the End of the Book, Let us hear the Conclusion