A10659:363
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.
Now as indifferent things may be made good by circumstances: as to eat or not to eat is indifferent, yet not to eat for fear of scandal is charity, and to eat, for fear of superstition, is Christian liberty. To observe things indifferent as indifferent, without any conscience of the thing it self, only in tdue submission to the commands of just authority, is obedience; to observe the same things without such authority, and that upon superstitious reasons, directed to bind the conscience, and leading to the thing as such a thing, is in regard of others great scandal, and in regard of a mans self bondage and idolatry: Thus I say as indifferent things may be made good or bad by circumstances: so other things, the matter of which is commanded, may yet be made in the doing of them evil, when that due respect and conformity which the Law wherein it is commanded requireth is not observed. If a man build a wall, with pretence to keep out the Sea or an enemy, and yet leave a wide gap and entrance open to admit them, though he who sees nothing but firm wall may admire the work, yet he who views the whole will but deride it: so though a ma• ⟨p. 241⟩do very much, though he proceed so far as to offer up the children of his body, and bestow mountains of cattle 2upon God and his service; yet omitting righteousness, and justice, and humiliation before God, though to men it may seem very specious, yet unto God it is both abominable and ridiculous. As a piece of silver or gold may be shaped into a vessel of dishonour, which shall be destined unto sordid and unclean uses: so may a work be compounded of choice ingredients, the materials of it may be the things which God himself requires, and yet serving to base purposes, and directed to our own ends, it may stink in the nostrils of God, and be by him rejected as a vessel in which there is no pleasure. A cup of cold water to a prophet as a prophet shall be rewarded, when a magnificent alms with a pharisees trumpet shall be rejected: As a small thing which the righteous3 hath, so a small thing which the righteous giveth, is better then great riches of the ungodly.