Riches of mercy to men in misery, or, Certain excellent treatises concerning the dignity…

Now all other ornaments, all natural and moral virtues do beautify and adorn the creature within himself, they make a man to see something within himself, now no creature is to do this; no not the creature when it was in the flower of all its bravery. When Adam and the Angels would begin to look on something in themselves, and forget God, and to think that they were some body, and would stand upon their own bottom, then they fell. For the creature of it self is as a glass without a bottom, if you set it down it breaks, for it hath ¹nothing to sustain it, but as long as a man holds it in his hand, so long it is safe. Such a thing is every creature in it self. Angels and men, they are without a bottom when the Lord doth not hold them in his own hand, when they will go about to stand of themselves, they fall and break, and that was the cause of the fall of the Angels, and the fall of Adam, and of all of us in him, viz. self-dependence.

Now all other ornaments, all natural and moral vertues do beautifie and adorn the creature within himself, they make a man to see something within himself, now no creature is to do this; no not the creature when it was in the flower of all its bravery. When Adam and the Angels would begin to look on something in themselves, and forget God, and to think that they were some body, and would stand upon their own bottom, then they fell. For the creature of it self is as a glass without a bottom, if you set it down it breaks, for it hath ¹nothing to sustain it, but as long as a man holds it in his hand, so long it is safe. Such a thing is every creature in it self. Angels and men, they are without a bottom when the Lord doth not hold them in his own hand, when they will go about to stand of themselves, they fall and break, and that was the cause of the fall of the Angels, and the fall of Adam, and of all of us in him, viz. selfdependance.

1. 1Simile.