THE PLAGUE OF THE HEART Its Nature and Quality Original and Causes Signs and Symptoms Prevention and Cure WITH Directions for our behaviour under the present Judgement and Plague of the Almighty By JOHN EDWARDS Minister of Trinity Parish in Cambridge CAMBRIDGE Printed by Iohn Field for Edmund Beechinoe Bookseller in Cambridge 1665. To the Inhabitants of the Town of Cambridge especially to my loving Parishioners of Trinity GRACE PEACE AS you have the Plague of the Body wasting in your streets so you are to take notice of a worser even the Spiritual Plague of your Hearts To this purpose I hope this short Discourse may be somewhat serviceable which even when it shall please God to take away the Bodily Disease may still be usefull to you to guard you against the Spiritual but more poisonous Distemper It is recorded to the honour of Queen Eleanor that when her Royall Husband in the Holy War was wounded with a poisoned Knife by a desperate Saracen the Incomparable Lady sucked the poison out of his Wound A signal instance of her Love to him Sin Beloved is Poison I wish unfeignedly I could by any holy skill and method ease you of that more dangerous Venom at your Hearts O that this Paper might prove a Plaister to draw it It is true I must confess my self one of the meanest and unworthiest of all those Physitians and Guides of Souls that are in the Church I may not be able to treat so successfully of this Spiritual Disease as those worthy persons who are of greater practise and larger experience But I request you that when you make tryal of what is here you would call upon God for a blessing and if you find any good thank God for it not me I will not beg your excuse by telling you these are very slender Preparations for the Press for I chose rather to hasten this little Thing and give it you as it is then to loose the opportunity of doing good by making it better There is nothing in it can render it worthy of the publick view but its seasonableness and your kind acceptance of it Many of the Directions which you will meet with I gave you lately in some of my Sermons which I Preached since the Hand of God hath been heavy upon this Town I must tell you I designed not language but living well It is not required that the Physitians Bill be curiously Penned but that the Medicines be there faithfully prescribed Besides a gaudy and flaunting stile is no ways suitable to these Mournfull Times I have onely this to beg of you that you would be mindfull of me at the Throne of Grace beseeching the Lord that he would crown my Ministery with the conversion salvation of many souls and that he would make me feel the power and influence of those saving Truths upon my own heart which I deliver unto you And my earnest Prayer for you shall be that ye may walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing being fruitfull in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God that ye may approve things that are excellent that ye may be sincere and without offence till the day of Christ being filled with the fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ unto the glory and praise of God The Great and Good God multiply his Gifts and Graces â—pon you The God of all blessings bless you and yours and keep you from sin and sickness This is the earnest Prayer of Yours in all Christian service J. E. Cambridge Novemb. 11th 1665. THE PLAGUE OF THE HEART 1 KINGS 8. 38. Which shall know every man the Plague of his own heart THese words are part of King Solomons prayer which he made at the dedication of the Temple the drift of the whole is that God would be pleased whensoever any judgements and calamities befall the Israelites to hear their requests and answer their prayers put up in that place and to remove their crosses and forgive their sins This is the design of the Prayer and the Lord appeared to Solomon afterwards assuring him that he had heard this his supplication Here then is a refuge and an escape for penitent sinners against Distresses Plagues and Troubles But every Prayer will not prove effectuall observe therefore the severall Requisites fairly intimated in this Holy Addresse of Solomon namely confessing of Gods name confession of sins and turning from them and then lastly the prayer and supplication must be made by those Israelites which shall know every man the Plague of his own heart Which shall know 1. Take notice of 2. Lament and be sorry for 3. Avert and cure Every man Every one all persons of both sexes of all qualities The Plague 1. The stroke the blow that 's the Originall signification 2. Any great judgement sent by God for the punishing of sin the lashes of the Divine Nemesâ—s strokes on the estates or bodies of men 3. That signall stroke of God that Plaga Dei that infectious and fatall Disease which we call the Sickness with an Emphasis Thus the word imports but here it is applyed to the Heart 1. The soul and its faculties principally they received a blow a foul knock in Adam and since they are bruised daily by our venturing at the breach of Gods Laws 2. The life and practice consequently for out of the Heart are the issues of Life So that as we consider in the Heart in mans Body its passages apartments and ventricles so here we may well understand both the corrupt principles and evill dispositions of our natures and the vanities and follies of our lives which are but the emanations of the former His own Heart The man is to look into his own breast and see if he find any tokens there he must live at home he hath work to do within doors So that I might present you with an Observation from every word but my design at present is onely to take occasion from these words to treat of the Plague of the Heart for though as I have intimated already the word here used doth not properly and primarily signifie the Disease of the Pestilence yet in the Verse foregoing it is joyned with Sickness whatsoever Plague whatsoever sickness there be and it plainly referrs to the Pestilence or Plague Emphatically so called If there be Pestilence in the Land One Plague suggested another to the good mans thoughts and indeed it is no unusuall thing with pious persons to make even the diseases of their bodies administer matter of devout meditation for the health of their souls there is nothing that they see but it brings God to their thoughts there is nothing in Nature nothing in Providence that they converse with but their sanctified minds can make some good use of a devout Fancy turneth earth into heaven and all secular occurrences into something Divine and Spirituall Did not our Saviour make use of Parabolicall speeches to slip in to the fancies
and prevaile upon the affections of his Auditours and to represent to them heavenly matters more forcibly and lively to this purpose serve all those excellent Similitudes and choise Metaphors which the Holy Scripture is full of amongst the latter that which I have now pitched upon is no contemptible one Sin is the distemper and sickness of the soul which the good Psalmist knew well enough when he made that Petition Heal my soul for I have sinned against thee Neither is Sin any light and inconsiderable distemper all the laws and rules concerning the Leprosie of old do but signifie to us more plainly the grievous nature of sin the very words and doctrines of vitious men and hereticks are compared by St Paul to a Canker or Gangreen nay the sinner is a most wretched Lazar and his soul a very Spittle of diseases sicknesses sores and bruises 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 putrifying sores And then as the summ of all the sinner is an Infected person he hath the Plague the worst of Plagues the Plague of the Heart It will be worth our while to search into the nature of this deadly disease to shew the resemblance between the spirituall and bodily Plague and to know the nature of the one by the other They agree as to their generall Nature and may be fitly expressed in the same terms for the best masters of Physick acquaint us that the Pestilence is a dangerous Poison which corrupts and invenoms the bloud and taints the spirits and spoils the agreement and harmony of the parts of mans body And Sin is the Poison that seizes on our souls and spreads it self into our members and senses Of the wicked men which imagine mischief in their hearts the Psalmist says Adders poison is under their lips The venom soon makes way â—rom the Heart to the lip And if according to St Iames The tongue be an unruly evil full of deadly poison the Heart is much more so In short the least sin is rank poison it corrupts and debauches our minds perverts our faculties destroyes our good principles it forces even nature it self it is violent and disagreable to rectified reason it is improportionate to our souls it puts all out of order and due frame and brings in unspeakable confusion Poison cannot make greater havock on our bodys then Sin on our immortall souls But because the Essences and abstract natures of things are hard to find out we shall view it further in its Effects and products and in its Cure too as Physitians say that by these we shall certainly know what the disease is But before we come to those let us stay a while and consider the Original Causes of the Spirituall Plague or the way how it is propagated And in this too as well as in the other it will appear that the Bodily and Ghostly disease resemble one another For not to speak here of the primary cause of all diseases and of the Pestilence more signally which all but Atheists acknowledge to be the hand of God nor to reckon up all other causes which are assigned many of which are in the dark and can scarcely be explained without a piece of old Philosophy called Occult Qualities The two main Naturall and Secundary causes of the Pestilence may very well intimate unto us the rise of the Spirituall Plague viz. Inward corruption Outward infection 1. That originall corruption and pollution which we derived from the loyns of our first Parents which though indeed it may seem to be a cause of the second rank yet because we bring it into the world with us and it is rivetted so fast into the hearts of the best here on earth because it is something bred within and brought up with us therefore I call it the Inward corruption and that which answers to the putrefaction of the humours in the body which is the root of the Pestilence And thus there being something corrupted within 2. 'T is no wonder that there is an Outward infection Corruption the corruption of our ways that is that we communicate the corruption unto others and are again infected by the vitious world For as we experience that men by lying or â—itting with infected persons or by keeping something on which the contagion hath seized or by taking in unholsome vapours and exhalations with the common air have the Plague derived unto them just so is Sin propagated and increased Whilest we more nearly converse with our wicked neighbours we participate of that fatall poyson which will destroy both them and us But let us passe from the Causes to the Signs and Symptomes of this Spirituall Plague by which I mean all the sad attendants and consequences of the disease and here we will set down those severall Passions Tokens and Indications by which men commonly judge of the Bodily Plague I begin first with the excessive Heat and Inflammation which attends the disease the Sinner is one always in a feaver and therefore that expression of the Evangelicall Prophet is worth our notice who reproves the Jews for inflaming themselves with Idols and not onely the fond worshiping of Idols but every sinfull passion and pursuit of lust is furious and enraged fierce and fiery and which is a sad truth these flames are but a prologue to everlasting burnings But as a man in a violent feavour is sick and weak and yet so strong that he is able enough to beat his best friends and those that would hold him within his bed so fares it with every sick sinner Which leads me to the second Symptome which naturally follows from that excessive heat namely Inordinate motions restlessnesse and unrulinesse And here I might lead you to the sinners chamber draw aside the curtains and let you see how he tumbles and tosses you may think he sleeps soundly yet you cannot say he takes his rest The wicked are like the troubled Sea when it cannot râ—st whose waters cast up mire and dirt there is no peace saith my God to the wicked It is Sin that overturns the course of nature and raises tumults both in the world and in the sinners conscience and at last these exorbitances these hot fits bring the man to distraction Which is the third Symptome of the disease for sin is a violent madness a strange distraction of the mind and reason and â—n alienating of a man from himself In this Phrentick state was St Paul once when he punished and persecuted many of the Saints you have the confession from his own mouth that he was exceedingly mad against them And idolatry which you heard before was an inflammation is in another Prophets account no less then madness Sin then is the worst delirium and phrensie for in this mad humour men abuse and barbarously wound their own souls
which the Wise man knew well when he said of sinners they lay wait for their own bloud they lurk privily for their own lives And this madness is long and lasting as the same Preacher delivers it the heart of the sons of men is full of evil and madness is in their heart while they live I might add another Symptome near of kin to this which sometimes attends the Bodily Plague but always the Spirituall I mean a strange vertigo and meagrim which every wicked man is troubled with else he would not stagger so shamefully as he doth and decline his duty and giddily rush into evil company and suffer himself to be shaken from the truth and as the Apostle phrases it be carried about with every wind of doctrine Again look as when the Poyson hath seized on the whole mass of bloud and got possession of the heart the usuall and equall mixture of the bloud is spoiled and thence followeth a coagulation and stagnation of the spirits so is it in the Spirituall Plague which makes the sinner cold and dull benummed and indisposed to every vertuous action his heart like Naballs dyes within him and he becomes as a stone The Holy Spirit is stifled then it is no wonder that the man grows stupid that his pulse is so low and languide swoonings and faintings are no unusuall things in the Plague But then in the next place the bloud being putrified and invenomed and it's motion retarded we see that boiles and swellings spots and the like tokens discover themselves in the outward parts And are there not as sad breakings out of sin are there not fouler blemishes and spots upon every wicked man else what mean those palpable risings of lust and uncleanness What are those swellings and tumours of pride What are those dismall characters and worser sort of Carbuncles in the intemperate person and common drunkard What are those lamentable and apparent marks those blows and bruises which oppression and cruelty are the cause of What are those curses and oaths which I hear from the swearers mouth such breaking out at the lips is no good sign in the spirituall patient Alass how many ways doth a naughty heart discover it self How many Plague-sores doth the sinner carry about with him Upon this must follow another effect and consequent namely Filthiness pollution and noisomness but of this loathsome attendant on the Spirituall Plague I shall speak some what when I come to consider the cure of it The next sad companions of the Plague as of most sicknesses are anguish and aches pain and disease Sure I am they are the inseparable associates of the Plague of sin out of the corruption of mans heart is soon bred the worm of conscience Horrour and a certain looking for of judgement a sting and tortures these are things that flagitious sinners know at the first naming and as wounds and sores do usually prick and pain most towards night so when death approaches the guilty conscience finds it's torments doubled and redoubled upon it I might add another Indication and Symptome which is common to the Plague with all other sicknesses and that is a certain nauseating and refusing of food as it must needs be when the pallate is out of taste and cannot relish and the corrupt matter hath infected the stomach Thus is it with a sick sinner he hath lost his spirituall taste and cannot savour the things of God but in the mean time the sweets and delights of the wicked world strike briskly upon his vitiated pallate and are taken down with a huge complacency But to leave these more common Signs I pass to another direct and proper Symtome which is the Pestilentiall malignity and Contagion which ever waits upon the Plague it is of that ill nature that it propagates and derives it self from one to another Adam was the first that had the Spirituall Plague and he got it by eating the forbidden fruit and since it hath sadly spread and descended from one to another All sin to this day is Epidemicall and catching we are corrupted our selves and we corrupt others How many are there that take a course to damne themselves but that is not all they must damne their friends and neighbours too This this is the nature of sin it diffuses it self in a large circle it runs as in a train and doth mischief on all sides it over-runs the whole man soul and body Our Inward man that is first depraved and infected Alas the brain is faulty the understanding blind and dark it is dull to conceive what is good and vertuous but it pursues vain unprofitable and fruitless notions it is stuffed with carnall reasonings fleshly wisdome fond disputes pride and false principles there is errour folly rashness and unbelief raigning in the judgement We are vain in our imaginations and our foolish heart is darkned We are wise to do evil but to do good we have no knowledge In the affections too there is inordinacy coldness and inpotency a loving of what we should hate and a hating of what we should love The infection seizes also on our memories as Thucydides tells us of some persons who were infected in that great plague at Athens that by reason of that sad distemper they forgot themselves their friends and all their concernments Most certain it is that by the Spirituall infection men forget God and their duty and their memories are onely tenacious in holding what is evil especially vanities and injuries The will likewise receives no litle damage by the contagion it being made weak and feeble and wholly indisposed to good it draws back at the proposall of vertue but is resolute obstinate and stubborn in the ways of unrighteousness The conscience is dull and dead and as the Apostle well expresses it is seared with a hot iron it discharges not it is office aright either in acquitting or condemning but is sadly insensible presumptuous and desperate I might proceed to shew you how all the parts and members of the body are tainted and infected and are in the Apostles words instruments of unrighteousness unto sin But I will say something of the adherency and pertinacy of this Spirituall disease the infection sticks close and cleavs to our nature it is like the fretting leprosie in the wall the wall must be pulled down before it can be extirpated We must be striving every day against our lusts but they will not be quite rooted out the leprosie of the soul will not wholly be removed till the wall be thrown down till the house be dissolved even our house of clay And as we see the Pestilâ—nce lyes still and dormant for a long time and then breaks forth more furiously being rouzed as it were from sleep it gets up and spreads it arms wider to take in greater numbers into it's fatall embraces so is it oftentimes with this Spirituall distemper it seems to be quelled and conquered but soon after it regains it's
of War Famine and Scarcity The design of all this is to stirr thee up whosoever thou art to consider well the Plague of thy own Heart to understand how destructive it is to thee There will be great hopes of thy wellfare if thou once throughly knowest thy danger Dost thou then desire to be delivered from thy body of sin Is it a body of death unto thee Is it heavy uneasie and burthensome to thee 't is a sign it begins to mortifie Art thou so sensible of thy sin that thou hatest it with a perfect hatred and even loathest thy self for the commission of it Art thou willing to be ruled by the Spirituall Physitians and true Lovers of Souls who advise thee to beware of sin and call upon thee and beseech thee not to drink poyson for it will be thy death In a word Art thou sensible of thy sickness and malady and hast thou attained to this piece of knowledge namely to understand that thâ—u canst not cure thy self Let that of the Prophet or of God rather by his mouth perswade thee of the truth of this Aphorism Oh! Israel thou hast destroyed thy self but in me is thy help This also let me add That delays and demurrs are unspeakably dangerous in this affair Alas poor souls now is the time for you to see your Plague and understand your misery for if you stay till death then indeed will you see it with a witness Oh! then the guilty soul will know what it is to be void of grace and holiness but it will not know how to help and recover it self So it is that one minutes delay may cost thee thy life Look out then for a Physitian presently Naaman when he had the leprosie repaired to the Prophet Some there are that nominate a particular Saint as a proper Physitian for every distinct disease and St Sebastian hath the Plague for his charge belike Sure it is that there are Quacks and Empricks enough in the world who can palliate the disease and skin over the wound but know not how to cure either There are Doctors who prescribe Physick which leavs the Patient as sick as it found him he is sick at Heart still I there indeed lies the distemper at the Heart the cure must be wrought within the applications must be such as are able not onely to stint and silence the pain for a while to mitigate and asswage the grieved part but to remove even the very cause of the distemper Wine and merry company the pleasures and entertains of the world their jollities and catches may sing the mans sorrow asleep and flatter his disease for a time but haeret lateri lethalis arundo the poysoned Arrow sticks fast in him and the disease by such methods as this is not eradicated Thus there are Physitians of no value miserable comforters to the sick sinner who with the Woman in the Gospel may spend all he hath upon them and yet be never the better But there is balm in Gilead there is a Physitian there Whether should we go but unto Christ he hath the words of eternal life But be sure you be not defective in these following things 1. Have a good opinion of Him great hopes may be conceived of thy doing well if thou likest thy Physitian 2. Despise not the meanest advice if it be but wash and be clean hearken unto it The cheapest Medicine may be the best But 3. If it should be chargable and must cost thee pains refuse not the Physick upon that account Or 4. If it seem strong and bitter no ways pleasant and toothsome take it down thankfully as we take common Physick and are content to be sick that we may be well Thou being thus prepared before-hand and answering affirmatively to that question which our Saviour put to the diseased Wil t thou be made whole I commend unto thee these following Preservatives and Antidotes against the Plague of the Heart The first is a holy fear of the Spirituall Plague Be affraid to offend God Ioseph made use of this preservative when he was set upon and assaulted by his lascivious Mistress How can I do this great wickedness and sin against God So true is that of Solomon A wise wan feareth and departeth from evill That we may then avoid the infection of sin let us be working out our salvation with fear and trembling let us sanctifie the Lord of Hosts and let him be our fear and let him be our dread And let Christ his Advice to his Apostles prevail here Fear not them which kill the body but are not able to kill the soul but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell The second rule for preventing the Spirituall Plague is that we shun all Infected places and persons 1. All places and dwellings where sin takes up it's abode and keeps open house for the entertainment of all comers Such are those Schools of Vice Shops of Sin and Nurseries of Prophaness and Lewdness which generally are erected in every City and great Town We must be carefull that we Walk not in the counsel of the â—â—godly nor stand in the way of sinners nor sit in the seat of the scornfull or in the chair of Pestilences as the Septuagint render it But the places are to be avoided 2. For the persons sake You are therefore to reckon notorious sinners as those that have the Plague-sores upon them by associating with them you partake of their sin your commerce with them draws the infection to your selves This is the reason of St Pauls counsel which he gave his Ephesians Have no fellowship with the unfruitfull works of darkness And of Solomons dehortation Enter not into the path of the wicked and go not into the way of evill men avoid it pass not by it turn from it and pass away And more particularly he guards us against the strange Woman as if she as well as others of her wicked profession were Infected Remove thy way far from her and come not nigh the door of her house for as he adds Whosoever toucheth her shall not be innocent The Psalmists practice and resolution should be our pattern I have not sat with vain persons neither will I go in with dissemblers I have hated the Congregation of evill doers and will not sit with the wicked and it follows I will wash my hands in innocency and so will I compass â—â—ine Altar O Lord. The Good man washed his hands before he conversed with God but had he come just then out of wicked company he had had much more reason to have done so The Church Story reports that St Iohn and Polycarp his Scholar made all the haste they could out of the Bath when they espyed Câ—rinthus that Arch-hereâ—ick to be there as if they feared infection from the very water that mans limbs were washed in And concerning that Martyr and Disciple of St Iohn even now