A44443:23
The vanity of the worldThe vanity of the vvorld
The vanity of the world by Ezekiel Hopkins.The vanity of the vvorld by Ezekiel Hopkins.
London: printed for Nathanael Ranew and Jonathan Robinson, 1668
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.
For these things, though they make a fair and gaudy show, yet it is all but show and appearance. As bubbles blown into the air, will represent great variety of Orient and glittering colours, not (as some suppose) that there are any such really there, but only they appear so to us, thorough a false reflection of light cast upon them: so truly this world, ⟨p. 8⟩this earth on which we live, is nothing else but a great bubble blown up by the breath of God in the midst of the air, where it now hangs. It sparkles with ten thousand glories; not that they are so in themselves, but only they seem so to us thorough the false light, by which we look upon them. If we come to grasp it, like a thin film it breaks, and leaves nothing but wind and disappointment in our hands: as histories report of the fruits that grow near the dead sea,1 where once Sodom and Gomorrah stood, they appear very fair and beautiful to the eye, but if they be crushed, in cinerem vanescunt, turn straight to smoke and ashes.
For these things, though they make a fair and gaudy shew, yet it is all but shew and appearance. As bubbles blown into the air, will represent great variety of Orient and glittering colours, not (as some suppose) that there are any such really there, but onely they appear so to us, thorough a false reflexion of light cast upon them: so truly this world, ⟨p. 8⟩this earth on which we live, is nothing else but a great bubble blown up by the breath of God in the midst of the air, where it now hangs. It sparkles with ten thousand glories; not that they are so in themselves, but onely they seem so to us thorough the false light, by which we look upon them. If we come to grasp it, like a thin filme it breaks, and leaves nothing but wind and disappointment in our hands: as histories report of the fruits that grow near the dead sea,1 where once Sodome and Gomorah stood, they appear very fair and beautifull to the eye, but if they be crusht, in cinerem vanescunt, turn straight to smoak and ashes.
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