This holy Law we have violated, these precious Promises we have undervalued, this blessed Spirit we have grieved, this Grace we have abused, this Image defiled, this free Love, this inestimable blood, this glorious Inheritance we have deprized, and miserably neglected •ad disesteemed. What remains, but that we cry out all with the Leper in the Law, Unclean, Unclean. Lastly, Let us take off our sins; if ⟨p. 31⟩we be not Rocks and Adamants, that will humble us. We were made to converse with God, and sin hath shut him out of all our thoughts. We use to lament sad Alterations, when a Garden of Eden is made a Wilderness, Cities turned into ruinous heaps, they that wear Scarlet, embracing Dung-hills. How should we bewail the sad change which Sin hath wrought in our Nature and Lives? That a Creature stamped with the impress of the divine Image, made for high and honourable Employments, should so far degenerate, as to be a child of Darkness, a vassal of Hell, a vessel of lust. That a Soul made of a kind of Angelical substance, should sink it self into the balance, with sordid pleasures, with perishing profits, with noisome lusts, should barter, and sell away its self, and its salvation, for wind; for shame, for vanity, for rottenness, and change its glory for that which doth not profit. That a tongue which was made to glorify God, and to be our Glory, made for prayers, and praises, and gracious Communication, should belch out Blasphemy and Profaneness, Oaths and Curses, Ribaldry and Reviling, and all kind of rotten speeches, like an open Sepulchre. That an heart which was made for heavenly meditations, and for intimate ⟨p. 32⟩communion and converse with God, should now entertain none but hellish affections, and be a sink and charnel house of impure Lusts.
This holy Law we have violated, these precious Promises we have undervalued, this blessed Spirit we have grieved, this Grace we have abused, this Image defiled, this free Love, this inestimable blood, this glorious Inheritance we have deprized, and miserably neglected •ad disesteemed. What remains, but that we cry out all with the Leaper in the Law, Unclean, Ʋnclean. Lastly, Let us take off our sins; if ⟨p. 31⟩we be not Rocks and Adamants, that will humble us. We were made to converse with God, and sin hath shut him out of all our thoughts. We use to lament sad Alterations, when a Garden of Eden is made a Wilderness, Cities turned into ruinous heaps, they that wear Scarlet, embracing Dung-hils. How should we bewail the sad change which Sin hath wrought in our Nature and Lives? That a Creature stamped with the impress of the divine Image, made for high and honourable Imployments, should so far degenerate, as to be a child of Darkness, a vassal of Hell, a vessel of lust. That a Soul made of a kind of Angelical substance, should sink it self into the balance, with sordid pleasures, with perishing profits, with noisome lusts, should barter, and sell away its self, and its salvation, for wind; for shame, for vanity, for rottenness, and change its glory for that which doth not profit. That a tongue which was made to glorifie God, and to be our Glory, made for prayers, and praises, and gracious Communication, should belch out Blasphemy and Profaneness, Oaths and Curses, Ribaldrie and Reviling, and all kind of rotten speeches, like an open Sepulcher. That an heart which was made for heavenly meditations, and for intimate ⟨p. 32⟩communion and converse with God, should now entertain none but hellish affections, and be a sink and charnel house of impure Lusts.
