named we are told that it was his usuall custome to stop his ears at the wicked speeches of some that lived in his time You know who it was that made a Covenant of Chastity with his eyes and he was a Wise man that wisheth us to make a vow of temperance with the same sense that is that we look not on the wine when it sparkles in the Glass This mans Father fell fouly by a lascivious glance upon Bathsheba and therefore it is likely he guarded that sense better for the future and he desires God to Set a watch over his mouth and keep the door of his lips that he might shut out Infection there We shall do well to stop up all the avenues and ways by which sin usually enters we must not approach so much as the confines of Satans Kiâ—gdom we must abstain from all appearance of evill shunning the occasions of sin and hating even the garment spotted by the flesh The third effectuall Preservative against the infection of sin is a holy confidence undauntedness and trusting in God For as we see that a fearfull fancy and imagination melancholly and a dejected spirit have brought diseases upon mens bodies so is it as true that fearfullness and a desponding spirit have betrayed men to the commission of sin Then therefore we consult our own welfare and the health of our souls when we confide and rely upon God But this must be done in the way of duty and Prayer In the next place then get the Fire of devotion to air your houses to warm your hearts to inflame your souls Observe therefore the Connexion of the words prefixed to this Discourse Which shall know every man the Plague of his own heart and spread forth his hands towards this house While our hands are lifted up in devout Prayer our spirituall enemies cannot prevail Be sure then daily to use this perfume this incense of Prayer this is an excellent remedy against the Spiritual Plague To this belongs Confession and an humble acknowledgment of our sinfull ways by this we may disgorge our selves when our consciences gripe us and sin makes us sick by this we cleanse and ease our souls When I kept silence saith that good King my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long my moisture was turned into the drought of summer These were the sad effects of his sinfull silence and hiding of his sin but the remedy follows I acknowledge my sin unto thee and mine iniquity have I not hid Uncover therefore thy folly and make thy breast bare before God as I have seen diseased Cripples lying in the midst of the streets opening their bodies and shewing their grievous wounds and sores and then by hideous lamentations extorting charity and pitty from beholders We read that Hâ—zâ—kiah took a lump of figgs and laid it on the boyl which he had and so recovered Alass How many are there that with our first Parents use figg leaves for their Spiritual sores and Plagues concealing their faults and hiding them if it were possible from the eyes of God But He that covereth his sin shall not prosper as we see many have perished of the Plague because they would not make it known Confession must be accompanied with grief and sorrow and hatred of sin such a sorrow as pricks the very heart this will break the boyl and take down the swelling Beg then a broken and a contrite heart and the cure is half done Now for to perfect the Work the Blood of Iesus applyed by a lively faith is a soveraign râ—mâ—dy Christ crucified is more effectuall for the cure of our spirituall Maladies then that brazen Sâ—rpâ—nt was of old to the Israelites for the healing of those that were bitten and stung with fiery Serpents Believe then in this Iesus stedfastly look up unto him for with his stripes we are healed The Physitians Blood is the onely Medicine for the Spirituall Patient this alone can wash out the spots of sin this is that fountain opened for sin and for uncleanâ—ss Let us here cleanse our polluted and corrupted natures let that sun of righteousness arise upon us with healing in his wings hiding our sins with his mâ—rits healing our natures by his Sacred Spirit And this must be effected by Evangelicall Faith which purifies the heart By this then we are to apply the gracious Promises of the Gospel which are made and prepared on purpose to cleanse us from all filthiness of flesh and spirit Nay these are not onely Purgatives to remove the corrupt humours and infectious mass but they are Cordials to refresh the weak and fainting spirits Here is generous wine indeed when thou goest abroad into the world drink full draughts of this next thy heart and it will keep thee from the infection of sin And not onely the Promises but the whole Word of God must be made use of as the food and Physick of the soul all the Pages of that holy Volumne are like the leaves of the Tree of Life for the healing of the Nations Take this Book often into thy hand carry it along with thee read it over study and meditate upon it Bind it continually upon thy heart and tye it about thy neck When thou goest it shall lead thee when thou sleepest it shall keep thee and when thou awakest it shall talk with thee Here is an excellent Amulet to bear about with thee it will be both a grace and a guard an ornament and safety hang it always therefore at thy hâ—art and thou shalt never do amiss This will discover thy secret sins and in-most maladies unto thee For the Word of God is quick and powerfull and sharper then any two-edged sword piercing even to the dividing assunder of soul and spirit and of the joynts and marrow and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart This this will search and lanch thy conscience no less then three thousand persons were pricked to the heart at one thrust of this spiritual sword at one single Sermon My next advice in order to the cure of this fatall Plague of the Soul is that we do our endeavour to improve afflictions for these are mâ—dicines against sin bitter but wholesome medicines Gods judgements on a Land may prove good Sudorificks and make the sinner sweat and the peccant humours waste away and drive out the venom from the heart Folly is bound up in our hearts and these Rods of Correction must or may fetch it out Most successfull did this severer medicine prove to the Church He hath filled me with bitterness saith she he hath made me drunken with wormwood And it follows Remembring my affliction and my misery the wormwood and the gall my soul hath them still in remembrance and is humbled in me this I recall to minde therefore have I hope Oh! Smell to this wormwood and it will prove an excellent preservative against
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
strength and by the malice of that evil Spirit it makes fresh assaults upon us and we are brought into it's subjection more then ever Lastly That which brings up the rear in the Body of sin is the decay of strength weakness universall languor and a sudden approach of death For as in the disease now reigning the spirits are seized upon their strength and vigour is exhausted and so consequently the motions and functions of the body are hindered and destroyed nature is debilitated and the strength failes so doth the Infected Sinner grow sicker and weaker fainter and feebler every day disabled to perform any offices of Christianity And the case being thus death is making it 's fatall approaches as we see in Infected Persons when the poyson hath fully seized on the throne of life and it's retinue the vitall spirits nothing but death is exspected the throbbs at the heart and the faint and uneven pulses are but as so many sad tolles of the Passing-Bell so may you even Ring out for the sinner after so many sad Symptoms that I have named it is no wonder that he dyeth and that being dead in sin he also dyeth eternally The disease then being in it self mortall let us learn from the Causes and Symptoms what may be the most effectuall way to prevent it and preserve our selves from it In order then to Prevention and a happy Cure Labour to know the disease 't is true here as in other distempers the perfect knowledge of them is half the cure Do therefore what thou canst to see the odiousness of sin in it self and how loathsome it makes us in the eyes of God who is of purer eyes then to behold iniquity All the laws of old about uncleaness as I have told you before were designed on purpose to express the pollution of sin for there is nothing but this can defile us nothing but this can separate us from the favour of God The Poets indeed present some of their Gods obscene and debauched lustfull and impure but our God as he is purity it self so nothing can make him abhorre a creature but what is contrary to it 'T is sin therefore and that onely which stains and defiles us which slurrs and debases us in the midst of all our riches and honours Again In order to the Cure know that the Spirituall Plague is the worst sort of Plagues all the Plagues inflicted on Pharaoh were nothing in comparison of his hardness of heart all the boyls and blains the froggs and lice and swarms of flies were not half so dangerous and destructive as the Plague of his heart For consider with me that 1. This seizes on the best part the soul of man which was made for God and bears his Superscription 2. This being a Spirituall Plague is therefore Invisible and hard to be discerned this rather then the other may be called the Pestilence that walketh in darkness it destroys silently and this Mâ—rthering-piece as they say of a piece charged with white Powder goeth off without a Report Some sins there are which like Plants and Herbs have no visible motion in their growth they advance by degrees softly and insensibly though it must be confessed there are others which are so plain and palpable written in so large a Character that he that runs may read them Some persons indeed there are that are so fouly Infected that every one may see that their spot is not the spot of Gods Children But there are others that are not so much as suspected and they may pass for Clear-Corps let the spiritual Searchers be never so inquisitive The Prophet Ieremy gives the reason The heart is deceitfull above all things and desperately wicked who can know it The scene of vice is the Heart which is remote and therefore to be vitious and to be known to be so are two things Thus though in the late Philosophers sense The mind be more knowable then the body yet the diseases of the forner are harder to be discovered then those of the latter 3. As it destroys more silently so more suddenly then and Bodily Plague it hides it's fatall shafts for a while but then it surprises the poor sinner unawares and wounds him without hope of cure 4. It sticks closer and stays longer this is that which doth so easily beset us this is in the Apostles language Sin that dwels in us which is hereditary and inseparable and as I have told you already is like that fretting leprosie which could not be removed without demolishing of the house it self 'T is sad to consider how inveterate this Plague grows by custome and frequent practice Can the Aethiopian change his skin or the Leopard his spots then may ye also do good that are accustomed to do evill 5. It spreads further it diffuseth it's poyson on all our duties actions and performances the poyson is in the very fountain and so derives it's hurtfull nature to the streams or like polluted vessels we taint all that is poured into us We are all as an unclean thing and all our righteousness is as filthy raggs Our most solemn attendances on God in his Ordinances our praying hearing reading and conversing as well as all our actions in our particular callings are more or less touched with this Infection Therefore 6. It destroys greater numbers not unfitly is sin compared to leaven a little whereof leavens the whole lump Which I take to be the meaning of those words of the Preacher One sinner destroyeth much good he is able to infect whole Families and Towns if he be not carefully shut up the Bodily Plague may kill it 's thousands but this it 's ten thousands You have a Bill brought in every fortnight to tell you how many dye of the former but alas how many souls every week perish by the latter If you had the totall of those who are infected and dye of the Plague of sin not one Parish would be found clear no not one house which had not cause to put up a more pathetick Prayer then Lord have mercy on us More souls perish then bodies The Bill of Mortality runs high Broad is the way that leadeth to destruction and many there be which go in thereat That was a great Increase in the days of Noah When all flesh had corrupted it's way upon earth 7. This is the cause oâ— all other Plagues the forbidden fruit as if it had been strangely impoysoned shattered the goodly frame of our first Parents bodies and their posterity in all succeeding ages have fared abundantly the worse for that sinfull surfeit But besides this they are indamaged on another account their own actuall sins and the enormities of their lives have some of them in their own nature bred distempers in their bodies and all of them have moved God to punish them with severall sorts of diseases with the dreadfull Pestilence in a more signall manner and with the direfull Plagues