2. Sickness doth debilitate and weaken the body ; a sick man is unfit to walk ; so this sickness of sin weakens the soul, Ro- mans V. 6. " When we were without strength Christ died." In innocency Adam was, in some sense, like the angels, he could serve God with a winged swiftness, and filial cheerful- ness ; but sin brought sickness into the soul, and this sickness hath cut the lock where his strength lay ; he is now disarmed of all ability for service; and where grace is wrought, though a Christian be not so heart-sick as before, yet he is very faint. The saints' prayers do but whisper in God's ears, and if Christ did not pray them over again, God coidd not hear them ; we sin fervently, but pray faintly ; as David said, 2 Sam. iii. 39. *' I am this day weak, though anointed king ;" 80 Christians, though they have the oil of
grace poured upon them, and they are anoint- ed spiritual kings, yet they are weak: sin hath enfeebled them ; they take their breath short, and cannot put forth such strong desires after God as they ought. When we find ourselves dead in duty, our holy affections languishing, think thus, This is my sickness, sin hath made me weak ; as Jephtha said to his daughter, Judges xi. 35. " Alas, my daughter, thou hast brought me very low ;" so may the soul say, Alas, my sin, thou hast brought me very low, thou hast brought me almost to the gates of death.
3. Sickness doth eclipse the beauty of the body : This I ground on that scripture, Psal. xxxix. 11. " When thou with rebukes dost correct man, thou makest his beauty to consume away like a moth." The moth consumes the beauty of the cloth ; so a fit of sickness consumes the beauty of the body. Thus sin is a soul-sickness, it hath eclipsed the glory and splendour of the soul, it hath turned ruddiness into paleness ; that beauty of grace which once sparkled as gold, now it may be said, " How is this gold become dim !" Lam. iv. 1. That soul which once had an orient brightness in it, it was more ruddy than rubies, its polishing was of sap- phire, the understanding bespangled with knowledge, the will crowned with liberty, the affections like so many seraphim, burning in love to God, now the glory is departed. Sin hath turned beauty into deformity; as some faces by sickness are so disfigured, and look so ghastly, they can hardly be known : so the soul of man is, by sin, so sadly me- tamorphosed (having lost the image of God) that it can hardly be known. Joel ii. 31. " The sun shall be turaed into darkness." Sin hath turned that sxui of beauty which shined in the soul into a Cimmerian dark- ness; and where grace is begun to be wrought, yet the soul's beauty is not quite recovered, but is like the sun under a cloud.
4. Sickness takes away the taste ; a sick man doth not taste that sweetness in his meat; so the sinner by reason of soul-sick- ness, hath lost his taste to spiritual things. The word of God is pabulum animce, it is bread to strengthen, wine to comfort ; but the sinner tastes no sweetness in the word. A child of God who is spiritualized by grace,
THE SOUL'S MALADY AND CURE.
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tastes a savouriiiess in ordinances, the pro- mise drops as an honey-comb, Psal. xix. 10. but a natural man is sick, and his taste is gone ; since the tasting of the forbidden tree, he hath lost his taste.
5. Sickness takes away the comfort of life; a sick person hath no joy of any thing, his life is a burden to him. So the sin-sick soul is void of all true comfort, and his laughter is but the pleasing dream of a sick man; he hath no true title to comfort, his sin is not pardoned, he may be in hell before night for any thing he knows.
6. Sickness ushers in death, it is the prologue to death; sickness is as it were the cutting of the tree, and death is the falling of the tree; so this disease of sin (if not cured in time) brings the second death.
2. What the diseases of the soul are. Adam by breaking the box of original righ- teousness, hath filled the soul full of diseases; the body is not subject to so many diseases as the soul: I cannot reckon them all up, Psal. xix. 12. "Who can understand his errors?" Psal. xl. 12. Only I shall name some of the worst of these diseases. Pride is the t}'mpany of the soul, lust is the fever, error the gangrene, unbelief the plague of the heart, hypocrisy the scurvy, hardness of heart the stone, anger the phrenzy, malice the wolf in the breast, covetousness the dropsy, spiritual sloth the green sickness, apostasy the epilepsy; here are eleven soul- diseases, and when they come to the full height they are dangerous, and most fre- quently prove mortal.
3. The third thing to be demonstrated is, that sin is the worst sickness. To have a body full of plague sores is sad; but to have the soul, which is the more noble part, spotted with sin, and full of the tokens, is far worse; as appears: