The vanity of dogmatizing: or confidence in opinions

Our current nature was not made this way by God, but by ourselves. We are God's creatures, but sin and misery belong to us. To prepare for what follows, we will look at the root of our former happiness and our current ruin. This helps us discover what humanity was originally and what the sinner has become.

Eternal Wisdom created a being whose greatest honor was to be like his Maker. God enriched him with noble qualities worthy of the giver and beneficial to the receiver. Just as the primogenial first-born or original light was first spread over the unformed Chaos the state of the universe before creation and then gathered into the Sun and stars by divine command, the perfections divided among all other living things were concentrated in man. He was the Epitome a perfect summary or miniature representation of the greater world. His joyful

life fulfilled any desire to be like gods. He was in a condition so perfect it could not be improved, even in his wishes. The difference between that state and our current miserable, fallen state makes it almost impossible to imagine or regain. It was a condition envied by creatures higher than us in nature. It differed from eternal glory only in that it could be lost. Even the smallest parts of nature today, though decayed, are so beautifully made that they show the marks of Divine Wisdom. If that is true after a curse was brought upon a disordered universe, imagine the state of the one whom God delighted to honor. What was the state of Heaven's favorite when Omniscience all-knowing God itself planned his abilities? Surely he was far above the exaggerations that poetry gives to its subjects.