that we feel it not with our other diseases; and this makes it worse still. This was the church's disease, Thou sayest I am rich, and knowest not that thou art poor, &c. We are usually full of complaints of trifling griefs that are of small moment, and think not on, nor feel our dangerous maladies; as he who shewed a physician his sore finger, but the physician told him, he had more need to think on the cure of a dangerous impostume within him, which he perceived by looking to him, though himself did not feel it.

In dangerous maladies or wounds, there be these evils, a tendency to death, a fear of it, an apprehension of its terrors, and the present distemper of the body by these; and all this is in sin. 1. There is the guiltiness of sin binding over the soul to death, the most frightful eternal death. 2. The terror of conscience in the apprehension of that death or wrath that is the consequent and end of sin. 3. The raging and prevailing power of sin, which is the ill habit and distemper of the soul: but Christ's stripes, and that blood that issued from them, are a sound cure applied unto the soul. They take away the guiltiness of sin, and death deserved, and free us from our engagement to those everlasting scourgings and lashes of the wrath of God; and they are likewise the only cure of those present terrors and pangs of conscience, arising from the sense of that wrath, and sentence of death upon the soul. Our iniquities that met on his back, laid it open to the rod, which in itself was free; those hands that never wrought iniquity, and those feet that never declined from the way of righteousness, yet for our works and wandrings were pierced; and that tongue dropped with vinegar and gall on the cross, that never spoke a guileful nor sinful word. The blood of those stripes are that balm issuing from that tree of life so pierced, that can only give ease to the conscience, and heal the wounds of it; and they deliver from the power of sin, working by their influence a loathing of sin, that was

q Rev. iii. 17.

the cause of them; they cleanse out the vitious humours of our corrupt nature, by opening that issue of repentance, They shall look on him, and mourn over him, whom they have pierced'.

Now, to the end it may thus cure, it must be applied; it is the only receipt, but it must be received for healing. The most sovereign medicines cure not in another manner, and therefore still their first letter is R, Recipe, take such a thing.

This is amongst those wonders of that great work, that the sovereign Lord of all, that binds and looses at his pleasure the influences of heaven, and the power and workings of all the creatures, would himself in our flesh be thus bound, the only Son bound as a slave, and scourged as a malefactor! and his willing obedience made this an acceptable and expiating sacrifice; amongst the rest of his sufferings, He gave his back to the smiters".

Now, it cannot be, that any that is thus healed, reflecting upon this cure, can again take any constant delight in sin. It is impossible so far to forget both the grief it bred themselves, and their Lord, as to make a new agreement with it, and take pleasure to live in it.

His stripes.] Turn your thoughts every one of you to consider this. You that are not healed, that you may be healed; and you that are, apply it still to perfect the cure, in that part wherein it is gradual, and not compleat; and for the ease you have found, bless and love him who endured so much uneasiness to that end. There is a sweet mixture of sorrow and joy in contemplating these stripes; sorrow, sure by sympathy, that they were his stripes, and joy, that they were our healing. Christians are too little mindful and sensible of this, and it may be somewhat guilty of that great fault mentioned, They knew not that I healed them.

Zech. xii. 10.

$ Isa. 1. 6. t Hos, xi. 3.

Ver. 25. For ye were as sheep going astray, but are now returned to the shepherd and bishop of your souls.

IN these few words we have a brief and yet clear representation of the wretchedness of our natural condition, and our happiness in Christ. The resemblance is borrowed from the same place in the prophet.

Not to press the comparison, and, as it is too usual in such comments as these, to strain it beyond the purpose in our lost estate; this is all, or the main circumstance wherein the resemblance with sheep holds, our wandring, as forlorn, and exposed to destruction, as a sheep that is strayed and wandred from the fold. So it imports indeed the loss of a better condition, the loss of the safety and happiness of the soul, of that good which is proper to it, as the suitable good of the brute creature here named, is safe and good pasture.

That we may know there is none exempt in nature from the guiltiness and misery of this wandring, the prophet is express in the universality of it, All we have gone astray: and though the Apostle here applies it in particular to his brethren, yet it falls not amiss to any other, Ye were as sheep going astray: yea, the prophet there to the collective universal adds a distributive, every man to his own way, or a man to his way. They agree in this, that they all wander, though they differ in their several ways. There is an inbred propension to stray in them all, more than in sheep that are creatures naturally wandring, for each man hath his own way of it.

And this is our folly, that we flatter ourselves by comparison, and every one is pleased with himself because he is free from some wanderings of others; not considering that he is a wanderer too, though in another way; he hath his way as those he looks on have theirs. And as men agree in wandering, though they differ in their way, so those

a Isaiah liii. 6.

ways agree in this, that they lead unto misery, and shall end in that. Think you there is no way to Hell but the way of open profaneness? Yes sure, many a way there is that seems smooth, and clean in a man's own eyes, and yet will end in condemnation. Truth is but one, error endless and interminable; as we say of natural life and death, so may we say of spiritual, the way to life is one, but there are many out of it; Lethi mille aditus. Each one hath not opportunity nor ability for every sin, or every degree of sin, but each sins after his own mode and power.

Thy tongue, it may be, wanders not in the common path-road of oaths and curses, yet it wanders in secret calumnies, in detraction and defaming of others, though so conveyed as it scarce appears: or, if thou speak them not, yet thou art pleased to hear them. It wanders in trifling away the precious hours of irrecoverable time, with vain unprofitable babblings in thy converse, or, if thou art much alone, or in company much silent, yet, is not thy foolish mind still hunting vanity, following this self-pleasing design or the other, and seldom, and very slightly, if at all, conversant with God, and the things of heaven? which although they alone have the truest, and the highest pleasure in them, yet to thy carnal mind are tasteless and unsavory. There is scarce any thing so light and childish that thou wilt not more willingly and liberally bestow thy retired thoughts on, than upon those excellent incomparable delights. Oh! the foolish heart of man, when it may seem deep and serious, how often is it at Domitian's exercise in his study, catching flies.

Men account little of the wandering of their hearts, and yet truly, that is most of all to be considered; for from thence are the issues of life. It is the heart that hath forgotten God, and is roving after vanity. This causes all the errors of mens words and actions. A wandring heart makes wanb Isa, xl. 20. Prov. iv. 23.

dring eyes, feet and tongue. It is the leading wanderer that misleads all the rest; and as we are here called straying sheep, so within the heart itself of each of us, there is as it were a whole wandring flock, a multitude of fictions", ungodly devices, the word that signifies the evil of the thought in Hebrew, here y from is from that which is feeding of a flock, and it likewise signifies wandring; and so these meet in our thoughts, they are a great flock, and a wandring flock. This is the natural freedom of our thoughts; they are free to wander from God and Heaven, and carry us to perdition: and we are guilty of many pollutions this way that we never acted. Men are less sensible of heart wickedness, if it break not forth; but it is far more active in sin than any of the senses, or the whole body. The motion of spirits is far swifter than of bodies; it can make a greater progress in any of these wandrings in one hour, than the body is able to overtake in many days.

When the body is tied to attendance in the exercises wherein we are now employed, yet know you not? (it is so much the worse, if you do not know, and feel it, and bewail it,) Know you not, I say, that the heart can take its liberty, and leave you nothing but a carcase? This the unrenewed heart doth continually: They come and sit before me as my people, but their heart is after their covetousnessc. It hath another way to go, another God to wait on.

But are now returned.] Whatsoever are the several ways of our straying, all our wandring is the aversion of the heart from God; whence of necessity follows a continual unsettledness and disquiet; the mind is as a wave of the sea, tossed to and fro with the wind; it tumbles from one sin and vanity to another, and finds no rest; as a sick person tosses from one side to another, and from one part of his bed to another, and perhaps changes his bed, in hope of ease, but still it is further off; thus is the

d Gen. viii. 21.

* Ezek. xxxiii. 31.