The Morning exercise [at] Cri[ppleg]ate, or, Several cases of conscience practically resolved

Thus was Joseph rescued from the Archers, that shot at him, and sorely grieved him. His bow abode in strength, and the arms of his hands were made strong by the arms of the mighty God of Jacob, Gen. 49.23, 24.

Use. ¹I come at length to the Use.

Ʋse. ¹I come at length to the Use.

1. 11 Information.

We are to learn hence, That our souls are not as they came out of the father of Spirits hands, they appear as it were wrong risen in the world, and begin to tread awry the very first steps they measure on the stage of Earth. All the symptoms of degeneracy are upon them. The best of men that ever yet blest the earth with their Residence upon it (except that Son of man who was only so by the mothers side, being by the Fathers the only begotten Son of the eternal God) had flesh lusting in them unto sin. Which is as convincing an Argument, that humane nature is blemished, and infected, that it hath received a [Greek or Hebrew] ⟨p. 105⟩a stain and venom, as the [Greek or Hebrew] are of a pestilential disease, whose breakings out, display the contagion within. If the Carbuncle and the Tokens proclaim the Plague? or the spots discover a pestilential fever? or the Variolae (those pustulous efflorescencies, which we commonly name the Small Pox) argue the precipitation of the blood, by some latent malignity? Certainly the lustings of the flesh in all men, demonstrate that the very nature of man on Earth is now blasted, and corrupted.