A10659:79
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.
when therefore man had committed that notorious rebellion against his maker, which was not only to aspire like Corah and his associates to the height and principality of some fellow Creature, but even to the absoluteness, wisdom, power and independency of God himself, no marvel if the wrath of God did together with him seize upon his house, and all the goods that belonged unto him, bringing in that con fusion and disorder which we even now see doth break asunder the bonds and ligaments of nature, doth unjoint the confederacies and societies of the dumb Creatures, and turneth the armies of the Almighty into mutinies and commotion, which in one word hath so fast manicled the world in the bondage of corruption, as that it doth already1 groan and linger with pain under the sin of man and the curse of God, and will at last break forth into ⟨p. 40⟩that universal flame which will melt the very Elements2 of Nature into their primitive confusion. Thus we see besides the created limitedness of the creature, by which it was utterly unsuitable to the immortal desires of the soul of man, the sin of man hath implanted in them a secret worm and rottenness which doth▪ set forward their mortality, and by adding to them confusion, enmity, disproportion, sedition, inequality (all the seeds of corruption) hath made them,3 not only as before they were mortal, but which adds one mortality to another, even momentary and vanishing too. When any Creature loseth any of its native and created vigour, it is a manifest sign that there is some secret sentence of death gnawing upon it. The excellency of the Heavens we know is their light, their beauty, their influences upon the lower World, and even these hath the sin of man defaced. We find when the Lord pleaseth to reveal his wrath against men for4 sin in any terrible manner, he doth it from Heaven; There shall be wonders in the Heaven, blood and fire, and 5pillars of smoke, the Sun shall be turned into darkness, and the Moon into blood; and the day of the Lord is called a day of darkness, and gloominess, and thick darkness.