ON HOSEA XIV. °VERSES 3, 4. 155 eye, a trembling hand, a stammering tongue, a bowed back, a feeble knee, nothing left but the stakes of the hedge and a few sinews to hold them together. Behold here the picture of a sinner swelled with pride, pined with envy, bowed with earth-. liness, wasted and eaten up with lust, made as stink. ing and unsavoury as a dead carcase, Psa. xiv. 3. When thou seest an unmerciful man, that hath no compassion left in him, think thou sawest Judas or king Jehoram, whose sore disease made his bowels fall out, 2 Chron. xxi. 19. When thou seest a worldly man whose heart is glued to earthly things, think upon the poor woman who was bowed together, and could not lift up herself, Luke xiii. 11. When thou seest a hypocrite walking crookedly in the ways of God, think upon Mephibosheth or Asa, lame, halting, diseased in their feet. When thou seest a proud, ambitious man, think upon Herod eaten up with worms. Oh if the diseases of the soul could come forth and show themselves in the body and work such deformity there (where it would not do a thou- sandth part so much hurt) as they do within ; if a man could in the glass of the word see the ugliness of the one as plainly as in a material glass the foulness of the other, how would this make him cry out, My head, my head ; my bowels, my bowels ; my leanness, my leanness ; unclean, unclean, unclean' No man thinks any shape ugly enough to represent the devil by ; yet take him in his natural state, and he was a most glo- rious creature : it is sin that turns him into a serpent or dragon. There is something of the monster in every sin ; the belly or the feet set in the place of the head or heart; sensual and worldly lusts set up above reason ; and corrupt reason above grace. Now because the sickness here spoken of is a
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