' I will heal,' &c. The healing meant here is especially in the pardon of their sins, answerable to their desires in justification. And there is a heal- ing also ia sanctification by the Spirit. When God takes away the venom from the wound, then God cures in sanctification. Both are meant, but especially the first. In a wound we know there is,
1. The malignity and venom of it; and then,
2. The wound itself, so festered and rankled.
Now, pardoning grace in justification takes away the anguish and malice of the wound, so that it ceaseth to be so malignant and deadly as to kill or infect. And then sanctification purgeth and cleanseth the wound and heals it up. Now, God through Christ doth both. The blood of Christ doth heal the guilt of sin, which is the anger and malignity of it ; and by the Spirit of Christ he heals the wound itself, and purgeth out the sick and peccant humour by little and httle through sanctification. God is a perfect
302 THE RETURNING BACKSLIDER. [SeRMON V.
healer. ' I will heal their backsUding.' See here the state of the church and children of God. They are prone to backsliding and turning away. We are naturally prone to decline further and further from God. So the church of God, planted in a family in the beginning of the world, how soon was it prone to backsliding. This is one weakness since the fall. It is incident to our nature to be unsettled and unsteady in our holy resolutions. And whilst we live in the midst of temptations, the world, together with the fickleness of oiir own nature, evil examples, and Satan's perpetual malice against God and the poor church, are ill pilots to lead us out of the way. This is spoken to make us careful how to shun backsliding. For we see how many opinions are foisted in amongst us, and have got some head, that durst not before once be named amongst us. Popery spreads itself amain. Even churches are prone to backsliding. Therefore, St Paul's advice is, ' Be not high-minded, but fear; for if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest he also spare not thee,' Rom. xi. 20, 21. What is become of Rome ? So the same will become of us if we stop not our backslidings.
Now, in that God's promise is, * I will heal their backslidings,' observe, in the first place.
That sin is a wound and a disease.
Now, as in sickness there is, 1, grief troubling and vexing the party who feels it ; and, 2, deformity of the place affected, which comes by wounds and weaknesses ; so in all sin, when we are sensible of it, there is first grief, vexation, and torment of conscience, and then, again, deformity. For it takes away the beauty and vigour of the soul, and dejects the counte- nance. It debaseth a man, and takes away his excellency. As Jacob saith of Reuben, * Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel, because thou wentest up to thy father's bed,' Gen. xlix. 4. Saith God to Cain, ' Why art thou wroth, and why is thy countenance fallen?' Gen. iv. 6. And the prophet David, he confesseth, ' When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long,' Ps. xxxii. 3, 4. So again, ' There is no soundness in my flesh, because of thine anger ; neither is there any rest in my bones, because of my sin,' Ps. xxxviii. 3. So that sin is a wound and a disease, whether we consider the miseries it brings on soul and body, or both. Therefore, howsoever a sinful person think himself a goodly person, and wear his sins as ornaments about him, pride, lust, and the like, yet he is a deformed, loathsome person in the eves and presence of God ; and when conscience is awakened, sin will be loathsome, irksome, and odious unto himself, fill him full of grief and shame, so that he cannot endui'e the sight of his own soul.
Now, all sins whatsoever are diseases. The first sin of all sins, which we call hereditary, original sin, what was * it but an hereditary disease ? A leprosy, which we di'ew from our first parents, spread over all the soul, having the seeds and spawn of all sin in it. The church of Rome makes it less than other sins, as indeed popery is ignorant both of the height of grace and of the depth of corruption, for if they knew the one, they would be more capable of the other. Why do they not conceive aright of grace and of the height of it ? Because they know not the depth of original sin. And, indeed, the true knowledge of this disease is proper only to the child of God in the true church. None but he knows what original sin is. Others can dispute and talk of it, but none feels it but the child of God. Now, all other pai'ticular, actual sins be diseases flowing from hence. So that aU diseases in this kind arise either, 1, from ourselves, as we have a
* Qu. 'isit?'— G.
HOSEA XIV. 4,] THE RETURNING BACKSLIDER. 308
seminary of them in our own hearts ; or else, 2, from the infection and contagion of others ; or, 3, irofn Satan, who hath society with our spirits, as men have with the outward man, coming in by his suggestions, and our entertaining of them. So that in that respect sin is like unto a wound and a disease, in regard of the cause of them.