and sin is both a sickness and a wound. "The whole head is sick, the whole heart faint: from the sole of the foot, even unto the head, there is no soundness in it, but wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores"-a sickness that wants healing, a wound that wants binding d;-a sick sinner that wants a physician to call to repentance ;-a wounded sinner that wants a Samaritan (so the Jews called Christ') to bind up and pour in wine and oil &.

Diseases are of several sorts; but those of all other most dangerous, that are in the vital parts; as all the diseases of sin are, and from thence spread themselves over the whole man. Ignorance, pride, carnal principles, corrupt judgement, -diseases of the head:-hardness, stubbornness, atheism, rebellion,-diseases of the heart :-lust, a dart in the liver: -corrupt communication, the effect of putrefied lungs :gluttony and drunkenness, the swellings and dropsies of the belly :--despair and horror, the grief of the bowels :-apostasy, a recidivation or relapse into all :-an ear that cannot hear God speak :-an eye quite daubed up, that cannot see him strike i-a palate out of taste, that cannot savour nor relish heavenly things:-lips poisoned :-a tongue set on fire-flesh consumed, bones sticking out, sore vexed and broken to pieces ". Some diseases are dull, others acute; some stupifying, others tormenting:-sin is all; a stupifying palsy, that takes away feeling "; a plague in the heart, which sets all on fire o.

h

Let us consider, a little, the proper passions and effects of most diseases, and see how they suit to sin.

First, Pain and distemper. This, first or last, is in all sin; for it begets in wicked and impenitent men the pain of guilt; horror, trembling of heart, anguish of conscience,

• Isai. i. 3, 6.

d Ezek. xxxiv. 4. • Matth. ix. 12, 13. f John viii. 48. h Jer. vi. 10. i Jer. Ixiv. 18. Isai. xxvi. 11. j Rom. 1 James iii. 6. m Job xxxiii. 21. Psalm vi. 2. • 1 Kings viii. 38. Hos. vii. 4. P Peccatum

* Luke x. 34. viii. 5. Rom. iii. 13. li. 8. n Ephes. iv. 19. quod inultum videtur, habet pedissequam pœnam suam, si nemo de admissi nisi amaritudine doleat: Aug. de Continent. c. 6.-Memoria Testis, Ratio Index, Timor Carnifex: Bern. Ser. de villico iniq.-Omne malum aut timore aut pudore natura suffudit. Tert. Apol. c. 1.-Perturbatio animi, respicientis peccata sua; respectione perhorrescentis; horrore erubescentis; erubescentia corrigentis. Aug. in Ps. 30. Con. 1. Morbus est έναντία τῇ ὑγιείᾳ διάθεσις, ὑφ ̓ ἧς ἐνέργειαν λέγομεν BráĦTeodai, Galen.-Habitus corporis contra naturam, usum ejus ad id facit

fear of wrath, expectation of judgement and fiery indignation, as in Cain, Pharaoh, Ahab, Felix, and divers others. And in penitent men it begets the pain of shame and sorrow, and inquietude of spirit, a wound in the spirit, a prick in the very heart'. Penitency' and 'pain' are words of one derivation, and are very near of kin unto one another :-never was any wound cured without pain; never any sin healed without sorrow.

Secondly, Weakness and indisposedness to the actions of life. Sin is like an unruly spleen, or a greedy wen in the body, that sucks all nourishment, and converts all supplies into its own growth, and so exhausts the strength and vigour of the soul, making it unfit and unable to do any good. Whenever it sets about any duty, till sin be cured, it goes about it like an arm out of joint; which, when you would move it one way, doth fall back another. It faints, and flags, and is not able to put forth any skill, or any delight unto any good duty. Naturally men are reprobate, or void of judgement unto any good work. Godliness is a mystery, a spiritual skill and trade; there is learning, and use, and experience, and much exercise required to be handsome and dexterous about it ". To be sinners, and to be without strength, in the apostle's phrase, is all one. And look how much flesh there is in any man, so much disability is there to perform any thing that is good. Therefore the hands of sinners are said to hang down, and their knees to be feeble, and their feet to be lame, that cannot make straight paths till they be healed. If they, at any time, upon natural dictates, or some sudden strong conviction, or pang of fear, or stirrings of conscience, do offer at any good work, to pray, to repent, to believe, to obey, they bungle at it, and are out of their element: they are wise to do evil, but to do good they have no knowledge. They presently grow weary of

deteriorem, cujus causâ natura nobis ejus corporis sanitatem dedit. Leg. 1. Sect. 7. D. de Edilitio Edict. q Gen. iv. 13, 14. Exod. ix. 27, 28. 1 Kings xxi. 27. Rom. viii. 15. Heb. x. 27. Prov. xviii. 14. Acts ii. 37. εἰς τὰ δεξιὰ προαιρουμένων

Acts xxiv. 25. Isai. xxxiii. 14. Heb. ii. 15.
r Rom. vi. 21. Ezek. xvi. 61. 2 Cor. vii. 10.

* Καθάπερ τὰ παραλελυμένα τοῦ σώματος μόρια
κινῆσαι, τοὐναντίον εἰς τὰ ἀριστερὰ παραφέρεται. Arisl. Eth. 1. i. c.ult.
u 1 Tim. iii. 16. Phil. iv. 11. Heb.iv. 13, 14.
y Rom. vii. 18.

ii. 16.

* Heb. xii. 12, 13.

t Tit.

* Rom. v. 6, 8.

any essays and offers at well-doing, and cannot hold out or persevere in them.

a

Thirdly, Decay and consumption. Sin wastes and wears out the vigour of soul and body; feeds upon all our time and strength, and exhausts it in the services of lust. Sickness is a chargeable thing; a consumption at once to the person and to the estate. The poor woman in the gospel, which had an issue of blood, "spent all that she had, on physicians, and was never the better":"-so poor sinners empty all the powers of soul, of body, of time, of estate, every thing within their reach, upon their lusts; and are as unsatisfied at last as at the firstd. Like a silk-worm, which works out his own bowels into such a mass, wherein himself is buried; it weareth them out, and sucketh away the radical strength in the service of it; and yet never giveth them over, but, as Pharaoh's task-masters exacted the brick when they had taken away the straw, so lust doth consume and weaken natural strength, in the obedience of it; and yet when nature is exhausted, the strength of lust is as great, and the commands as tyrannous as ever before. We are to distinguish between the vital force of the faculties, and the activity of lust which sets them on work that decays and hastens to death, but sin retains its strength and vigour still nothing kills that but the blood of Christ, and the decay of nature ariseth out of the strength of sin. The more any man, in any lust whatsoever, makes himself a servant of sin, and the more busy and active he is in that service,-the more will it eat into him, and consume him: as the hotter the fever is, the sooner is the body wasted and dried up by it.

Fourthly, Deformity. Sickness withereth the beauty of the body, maketh it, of a glorious, a ghastly and loathsome spectacle. Come to the comeliest person living, after a long and pining sickness, and you shall not find the man in his own shape: a wan countenance, a shrivelled flesh, a lean visage, a hollow and standing eye, a trembling hand, a stam

■ Tabificæ mentis perturbationes. Cic. 4. Tusc. 36. b Luke viii. 43. Aπλστος ἡ τοῦ ἡδέος ὄρεξις. Arist. Eth. 1. 3. c. ult. Πονηρία τῶν ἀνθρώπων ἄπληστόν τι ἄπειρος ἡ τῆς ἐπιθυμίας φύσις, Polit. 1. 2. Naturalia desideria finita sunt; ex falsa opinione nascentia, ubi desinant, non habent, &c. Sen. p. 16. Ex libidine orta, sine termino sunt. Ep. 39. d Eccles. i. 8. e Isai. lvii. 10. Jer. ii. 25.

mering tongue, a bowed back, a feeble knee, a swelled belly; nothing left but the stakes of the hedge, and a few sinews to hold them together. Behold here the picture of a sinner, swelled with pride, pined with envy, bowed with earthliness, wasted and caten up with lust, made as stinking and unsavoury as a dead carcase. When thou seest an unmerciful man, that hath no compassion left in him,—think thou sawest Judas or king Jehoram, whose sore disease made his bowels fall out. When thou seest a worldly man, whose heart is glued to earthly things,-think upon the poor woman, who was bowed together, and could not lift up herself'. When thou seest a hypocrite walking crooked and unevenly in the ways of God, think upon Mephibosheth or Asa, lame, halting, diseased in their feet. When thou seest a proud ambitious man, think upon Herod, eaten up with vermin. O if the diseases of the soul could come forth and show themselves in the body, and work such deformity there (where it would not do the thousandth part so much hurt) as they do within ;-if a man could, in the glass of the Word, see the ugliness of the one, as plainly as, in a material glass, the foulness of the other; how would this make him cry out, "My head, my head; my bowels, my bowels; my leanness, my leanness; unclean, unclean!" No man thinks any shape ugly enough to represent a devil by: yet take him in his naturals, and he was a most glorious creature; it is sin that turns him into a serpent or dragon. There is something of the monster in every sin; the belly or the feet, set in the place of the head or heart; sensual and worldly lusts, set up above reason,-and corrupt reason, above grace.

SECT. 13. Now because the sickness, here spoken of, is a falling sickness, and that the worst kind of fall, not forward in our way or race, as every good man sometimes falls, where a man hath the help of his knees and hands to break the blow, to prevent or lessen the hurt, and to make him to

f Inflatus et tumens animus in vitio est. Sapientis animus nunquam turgescit, nunquam tumet. Cic. Tusc. Quæst. 1. 3. g Invidus alterius rebus macrescit opimis. Hor. Ep. i. 2. 57. h O curvæ in terras animæ et cœlestium inanes. Pers. Ut corpora verberibus, ita sævitia, libidine, malis consultis animus dilaceratur. Tacit. Annal. 1. 6. i Psalm xiv. 3. Ezek. xvi. 4.

k 2 Chron.

rise again; but old Eli's falls, a falling backward,' where a man can put forth no part to save the whole, and so doth more dangerously break and bruise himself thereby ;-therefore as it is a sickness which requires curing, so it is a wound which requires healing and binding. The ancients compare it to falling into a pit full of dirt and stones", where a man doth not only defile, but miserably break and bruise himself. There is contritio, solutio continui, suppuratio, sanies,' &c. all the evils of a dangerous and mortal wound.

Add to all this, that, in this diseased and wounded condition, 1st. A man hath no power to heal or to help himself, but in that respect he must cry out with them in the prophet, "My wound is incurable, and refuseth to be healed "."

2d. He hath no desire, no will, no thought to enquire or send after a physician, who may heal him; but is well contented rather to continue as he is, than to be put to the pain and trouble of a cure, and pleaseth himself in the goodness of his condition.

3rd. He is in the hands of his cruel enemy, who takes no pity on him; but by flattery and tyranny, and new temptations, continually cherisheth the disease P.

4th. When the true Physician comes, he shuts the door against him, refuses his counsel, rejecteth his receipts, quarrels with his medicines; they are too bitter, or too strong and purging, or too sharp and searching; he will not be healed at all, except it may be his own way .—Thus we have taken a view of the patient, sick, weak, pained, consumed, deformed, wounded, and sore bruised; without power or help at home, without friends abroad: without sense of danger, no desire of change; patient of his disease, impatient of his cure; but one means in the world to help him, and he unable to procure it; and, being offered to him, unwilling to entertain it: who can expect after all this, but to

Cecidimus super acervum lapidum et in luto: unde non solum inquinati, sed graviter vulnerati et quassati sumus: Bern. Ser. 1. in Coena Dom.-Cecidimus in carcerem, luto pariter et lapidibus plenum, captivi, inquinati, conquassati. Idem Ser. 2. in Octav. Paschæ.-Libens ægrotat, qui medico non credit, nec morbum declinat: Arist. Eth. 1. 3.-O fortes, quibus medicis opus non est! fortitudo ista non sanitatis est, sed insaniæ; nam et phreneticis nihil fortius :-sed quanto majores vires, tanto mors vicinior. Aug. in Psal. 58. n Jer. xv. 18. Rev. iii. 17. Matth. ix. 26. P 2 Tim. ii. 12. q Prov, i. 24, 25. 2 Chron. xxxvi. 16. Ezek. xxiv. 16. Matth. xxiii. 37. Jer. xiii. 11.