Man ashiv le-Yahoweh, or, A serious enquiry for a suitable return for continued life,…

¹Hath God spared you in time of so great Contagion, that you live when others are dead, or were you sick and are recovered? then Endeavour that the Cure may be a thorough Cure, that your Soul be healed as well as your body, that there be not spiritual Judgements upon your Soul, when temporal Plagues are removed from your Body. You may observe, that such that came to Christ with diseased bodies, Christ healed their bodies and their souls too; he took away their corporal sickness, blindness, distempers, and the guilt of their sins too, Mat. 9.1, 2. Many are delivered from a Corporal Plague, that yet are infected and in danger of eternal death by the Plague upon their hearts: That remain under spiritual Judgements, and Soul-sickness, when temporal Judgements and corporal sicknesses are cured and removed. When St. John wrote to Gaius, he desired that it might be as well with him as to his bodily health, as it was in respect of his soul, and spiritual health, 3 Ep. John v. 2. Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayst prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth. But it may be matter of our desire concerning those that remain alive, and are well after this Visitation, that their souls may prosper ⟨p. 143⟩and be in health even as their body prospereth. It is a greater mercy to have an healed soul in a sickly body, than to have spiritual sickness remain in an healthful body: It is not so great a Judgement to have the body full of Plague-sores, as to have the soul full of reigning sins. If your body be cured and not your soul, the cure is but half done: Therefore in speaking to this Direction. I shall show these things: