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…

Now all these things Faith gives us, first because it gives us the Fountain, and secondly the Promises of them all. First Faith carries us to the Fountain, that is, to God. With thee, saith the Prophet David, there is the Fountain of Life. Psal. 36. 9. And we are of God in Christ Jesus, saith the Apostle, 1. Cor. 1. 30. Now we know there is a kind of All-sufficiency in a Fountain, what ever water a man wants, he may have his supply at the Fountain; whereas Cisterns and broken pits will be presently exhausted. We may observe in many fountains that to the eye they seem to have far less water in them for the time, then some greater torrent or winter flood which overruns whole valleys, and carries away woods and stones before it: yet Job tell's us that a Torrent will make men ashamed in summer, when they turn aside for water to refresh them, and can find none, Job. 6. 19. 20. But he that comes to a Fountain for refreshment shall never be ashamed, because it is living and growing water, and so makes a perpetual supply. So the Faithful oftentimes have less wealth and abundance of earthly things then other men: yet notwithstanding they have therewith all the Fountain, and so by consequence they have more certainty, and more sweetness. First more certainty for Fountain water is Living water, and so it multiplies; whereas other men have their water in Cisterns that are broken, full of holes and chinks to let it out at again: so the Prophets tells us of some that drudge and labour, but it is in the fire, their work perisheth as fast as it grows; and of others that earn wages, but put it in a bag with holes, it falls out as fast as it is put in. What are these holes, this fire that melts, and lets out the ⟨p. 491⟩estates of wicked men; they are principally these two. First, the lusts of their own harts, Te ask and receive not, because ye spend it upon your lusts, saith the Apostle; and as lust keeps it away, so lust lets it out when we have it. How many great estates have Wine and women, Hawks and Hounds, fashions and complements, pride and vain-glory, humours and projects, quarrels and dissentions, the back, the belly, the eye, the ear, the tongue, the many inventions of an idle head, the many exorbitancies of a wandering heart, melted away, and reduced to nothing.