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…

Secondly, this hath been exceedingly improved by the s•ne of man, whose evil, being the lord of all Creatures, must needs redound to the misery and mortality of all his retinue. For it was in the greater World, as in the administration of a private family; the poverty of the Master is felt in the bowels of all the rest, his stain and dishonour runs into all the members of that society. As it is in the natural body some parts may be distempered and ill affected alone, others not without contagion on the rest; a man may have a dim eye, or a withered arm, or a lame foot, or an impedite tongue without any danger to the parts adjoining; but a lethargy in the ⟨p. 39⟩head, or an obstruction in the liver, or a dyspepsy and indisposition in the stomach diffuseth universal malignity through the body, because these are sovereign and architectonicall parts of man: so likewise is it in the great and vast body of the Creation. However other Creatures might have kept their evil, if any had been in them, within their own bounds, yet that evil which man, the Lord and head of the whole brought into the world, was a spreading and infectious evil, which conveyed poison into the whole frame of nature, and planted the seed of that universal dissolution which shall one day deface with darkness and horror the beauty of that glorious frame which we now admire. It is said that when Corah, Dathan, and Abiram had provoked the Lord by their rebellion against his servants to inflict that fearful destruction upon them, the earth opened her¹ mouth & swallowed not only them up, but all the houses, and men, and goods that appertained to them. Now in like manner the heaven and earth and all inferior Creatures did at first appertain to Adam: the Lord gave him the free use of them, & dominion over them:

Secondly, this hath been exceedingly improved by the s•ne of man, whose evill, being the lord of all Creatures, must needs redound to the misery and mortalitie of all his retinue. For it was in the greater World, as in the administration of a private family; the poverty of the Master is felt in the bowels of all the rest, his staine and dishonour runnes into all the members of that society. As it is in the naturall body some parts may be distempered and ill affected alone, others not without contagion on the rest; a man may have a dimme eye, or a withered arme, or a lame foot, or an impedite tongue without any danger to the parts adjoyning; but a lethargie in the