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

because I am not that to them, which ornaments are to a bride (saith God) if they delight in me, rejoice in me, if they did account me their glory, then they would never forget me: By this you see, that therefore we forget God, and his ways, because our hearts are not in love with him; Can he that is powerfully conquered by love of a friend forget his friend? Doth he not always remember him? Is not a friend alter ego? Is not the lovers soul more where it loveth then where it animateth? Thus it would be also with us in reference unto God; therefore we have bad memories, because bad hearts: It is true, some natural causes may either deprive us wholly of, or greatly enervate the memory: Thus Messalla that famous Orator, judged to be more elaborate then Tully, two years before his death, forgot all things, even his own name. Hermogenes also that famous Rhetorician, who wrote those Rhetorical institutions which are read with admiration of all, and this he did when he was but eighteen years old, and some six years after grew merely stupid, and senseless, without any evident cause of whom it was said, that he was; Inter pueros senex, & inter senes puer. Thucydides (as Vostius reporteth. (Orat. institut. lib. 6.) speaketh of such an horrible pestilence, that those who did recover of it, grew so forgetful, that they did not know their friends, neither remembered what ⟨p. 266⟩kind of life or profession they once followed; So that natural causes may much weaken the memory; but if we speak in a moral sense, then nothing doth so much corrupt the memory about holy things, as a sinful and polluted heart.

because I am not that to them, which ornaments are to a bride (saith God) if they delight in me, rejoyce in me, if they did account me their glory, then they would never forget me: By this you see, that therefore we forget God, and his wayes, because our hearts are not in love with him; Can he that is powerfully conquered by love of a friend forget his friend? Doth he not alwaies remember him? Is not a friend alter ego? Is not the lovers soul more where it loveth then where it animateth? Thus it would be also with us in reference unto God; therefore we have bad memories, because bad hearts: It is true, some natural causes may either deprive us wholly of, or greatly enervate the memory: Thus Messalla that famous Orator, judged to be more elaborate then Tully, two yeares before his death, forgot all things, even his own name. Hermogenes also that famous Rhetorician, who wrote those Rhetorical institutions which are read with admiration of all, and this he did when he was but eighteen years old, and some six yeares after grew meerly stupid, and sensless, without any evident cause of whom it was said, that he was; Inter pueros senex, & inter senes puer. Thucidides (as Vostius reporteth. (Orat. institut. lib. 6.) speaketh of such an horrible pestilence, that those who did recover of it, grew so forgetfull, that they did not know their friends, neither remembred what