Puritan Wisdom

On I Peter 2:25 --

"Every Natural man is like a beast, who is therefore in Scripture to several sorts of beasts, for one ill quality or another; as to Dogs, for their malicious barking and biting at them they live with; to Wolves, for their greedy devouring of the poor; to Lyons, for their cruel tyranny; to fat fat Bulls, for their proud abuse of their prosperity; to Hogs, for their rude and irreverent base esteeming of Spiritual things, as the Word and Sacraments, and Gods Ministers; to Foxes (as Herod)for their craft; so to Horses and Mules for their ignorance and unruliness; yes, sometimes the beasts are preferred before them to shame them, and sometimes they are sent to school to them: nay, all Gods Creatures are more serviceable then Man, they obey God in their kind, and abide in their first estate; the Sun, Moon and Stars obey God in their courses, the huge Sea rageth, and is calm at his bidding; if he commanded it to stand as a wall, it doth so, to let Israel go through, and will return again upon the same warrant and drown Pharaoh; if God bid the Whale to swallow Jonah, and cast him up again, it obeys him in both; if he forbid the Lyons to touch Daniel, they stir not, though very hungry, as the fire did not burn the three Children, &c. But man, that should be best of all, and for whom all were made, as he for God, yet walk stubbornly and rebelliously, omitting what's required of him, and doing what's again and again prohibited: therefore God calls all Creatures to witness again man; yea, they are many times to set themselves against us (as when the heavens become as brass, and the earth as iron, &c.) and to groan because of us, as being weary of doing any further service to such as we are."

-- John Rogers, 378.