Still God proclaimeth himself this people's enemy. Pestilences are but the usual consequents of long sieges, through the scantness and unwholesomeness of food; but God is the first cause of such sore judgments, though there be other second causes. The murrain of beasts bears proportion to the pestilence amongst men, and the beasts are threatened as well as men, not because of any sin in them, but because men are punished in them, they being part of their substance; and this is a part of that bondage of corruption from which the creature groaneth to be delivered, of that vanity to which they are subject, which maketh the irrational part of the creation to be brought in by the apostle, Romans 8:20, like as a woman travailing in pain, and desiring the day of judgment.

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