A10659:532
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.
Behold he smote the Rock that the Waters gushed out, and the streams overflowed; but can he give bread also, can he provide flesh for his people? Psal. 78. 19. 20. They measured God by their own reason, and charged God with that impotency which they found in themselves. This was the sin of that noble man who attended upon the king of Israel in the great famine at Samaria; when the Prophet foretold a marvellous plenty which should suddenly come to the place, he measured Gods Power by his own conceits of possibility in the thing, If the Lord would make windows in heaven, this thing could not be, 2. King. 7. 2. There was a Promise made unto Israel to restore them out of that great captivity of Babylon, and this seemed to them as incredible as for men to be raised out of their Graves after so many years consumption, therefore they said▪ our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost, and we are cut off for our parts. We have no more reason to believe any promise, or to rest upon any expectations of deliverance, then dead bones have to revive again. Therefore the Lord acquainteth them with his Power together with his Promises. O my people ye sha•• know that I am the Lord! that is, that my ways and thoughts are infinitely above your shallow apprehensions, when I shall have brought you out of your Graves, Ezek. 37. 11. 13. Though there should be famine, and mountains between Gods people and his promises, famine to weaken their feet that they could not crawl away, and mountains to stop their passage which they could not climb nor overpass, yet when there was no might nor power left in them, the Spirit of the Lord should be their strength, their feet should be like Hinds feet to skip over the mountains, and the mountains should be as a plain before them, Hab. 3. 17. ⟨p. 355⟩18. 19. Zach. 4. 6, 7. All doubts and distrusts arise from this that men make their own thoughts the measure of Gods strength, and have low and unworthy conceits of his Power. This therefore in all difficulties we must frame our hearts unto to look of from second causes, from the probabilities or possibilities which are obvious to our reason, and admire the unsearchableness of Gods Power and wisdom, which is above all the thoughts of man.