A treatise of original sin ... proving that it is

and all was accounted prating that was not such a wordy preaching. And, truly, this vanity hath much infected the mind of hearers; men coming to the Word preached, not as to hear the Oracles of God, with fear and trembling, but as to the Schools of oratory, looking to the powdering of their words, and the dressing of the language, as much as to the setting and ordering of their own hair; Is not this a great evil and vanity, thus to regard the healing of the finger, when the heart is deadly sick? If thy mind be renewed in this, it will also appear, and for that vanity, there will be solid gravity.

and all was accounted prating that was not such a wordy preaching. And, truely, this vanity hath much infected the mind of hearers; men coming to the Word preached, not as to hear the Oracles of God, with fear and trembling, but as to the Schooles of oratory, looking to the powdring of their words, and the dressing of the language, as much as to the setting and ordering of their own hair; Is not this a great evil and vanity, thus to regard the healing of the finger, when the heart is deadly sick? If thy mind be renewed in this, it will also appear, and for that vanity, there will be solid gravity.

Fifthly, Original sin filleth the mind with exceeding great folly; So that no man born a natural fool is more to be pitied, then every man who by nature is a spiritual fool. Those conceited wise ones of the world, who condemn the godly for a company of fools, they are fools in the highest degree, as may easily be evinced: If so be (Job 4. 18.) God is said, To charge his Angels with folly, (and that, as some expound,) even the good Angels themselves, because that wisdom they have comparatively to Gods, is but folly; how much more is this true of man fallen, who hath lost that wisdom God once bestowed upon him? If you ask, Wherein doth a natural mans folly appear? Truly in every thing he doth, Eccl. 10. 3, His wisdom: faileth him, and he saith to every one, he is a fool; Every oath, every lie, every drunken fit proclaimeth a man to be but a fool; If he had the wisdom of Gods Word he could never do so; especially the folly of man by nature is seen these ways.