A10659:83
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.
he will not only send a▪ Moth and rust which shall in time eat them out, but he1 will send a Thief upon them too, which shall suddenly break through and carry them away. So many steps and gradations are there in the mortality of the creature, when God pleaseth to add his curse unto them for sin. As for Ephraim, saith the Lord, their Glory shall fly away 2like a Bird, from the birth, and from the womb, and from the conception. Observe the gradations of mortality in the best blessings we enjoy, in our very glory, namely our3 children, which are called an Inheritance and reward to take away shame from their parents. They shall fly away like a bird, that notes the swiftness of the Judgement, and that first from the birth; as soon as they are borne the murderer shall destroy them: yea from the womb; before they be borne they shall perish, nothing of them shall be enjoyed but the hope, and if that be too much, here is a degree as low as can be, from the very conception they shall miscarry and prove abortive. I 4will smite the winter house and the summer house, the houses of Ivory, and the great houses shall have an end. If ⟨p. 44⟩the Lord undertake to smite, if he send abroad the fire of his wrath, it shall seize on those palaces and great houses5 which men thought should have endured unto all generations. For that Flying role, importing Judgement decreed,6 and sudden, which was sent over the whole earth against the Thief and the swearer, did not only smite the man, but his house, and like a leprosy consume the very timber and stones thereof. Therefore we read in7 the Levitical law of leprosies not in men only but in houses, and garments, intimating unto us, that sin derives a contagion upon any thing that is about us, and like Ivy in a wall, or that wild Caprificus, will get rooting in the very substance of the stone in the wall, and break it asunder. What ever it is that men can find out under the Sun to fasten their hearts upon for Satisfaction and comfort, this leprosy will defile it, and eat it out. If silver