Englands sickness, comparatively conferred with Israels Divided into two sermons, by ThoEnglands sicknes, comparatively conferred with Israels Diuided into two sermons, by Tho

2 The excessive occasion to procure ill health to our souls, is by feeding too heartily too hastily on the world. This is that too much oil, which quencheth our Lamp. For as in a body overcharged with immoderate quantity of meats or drinks, when the moisture swells (like a tide above the verges) and extinguisheth the digestive heat: that their kindly embraces are turned to conflicts, and the superfluities want their former dissolution, and egestion, the necessary event is distemperature and sickness. So the aff•ctions of the soul overladen with the devoured burden of worldly things, suffer the benign and living fire of grace to be quenched. Hence the fainting spirits of virtue swoon and fall sick,¹ and after some weak resistance (as a coal of fire in a great shower,) yield the victory ⟨p. 71⟩to the floods of sin, and are drowned. Neither are the affections only (which they call the neither part of the soul, as if this dropsy were only in the feet) thus diseased; but the sickness taketh the head of the soul, the understanding and the heart of it, the conscience: that faith (which is religious reason) is impaired, and the instrument, the tongue, the Organ of Gods praise is hindered. As we see it in these corporal effects by drunken men, the feet are too light, and the head too heavy: the legs cannot stand, the tongue cannot speak: so both understanding and affections are stifled in this deluge, inward faith, and outward profession falling sick to the death.

2 The excessiue occasion to procure ill health to our soules, is by feeding too heartily too hastily on the world. This is that too much oyle, which quencheth our Lampe. For as in a body ouercharged with immoderate quantitie of meates or drinkes, when the moisture swels (like a tide aboue the verges) and extinguisheth the digestiue heate: that their kindely embraces are turned to conflictes, and the superfluities want their former dissolution, and egestion, the necessary euent is distemperature and sicknes. So the aff•ctions of the soule ouerloaden with the deuoured burden of worldly things, suffer the benigne and liuing fire of grace to be quenched. Hence the fainting spirits of vertue swoune and fall sicke,¹