The beatitudes

3. Sickness doth eclipse the beauty of the body:§3 This I ground on that Scripture, Psal. 39.11. When thou with rebukes dost correct man, thou makest his beauty to consume away like a Moth. The Moth consumes the beauty of the cloth; so a fit of sickness consumes the beauty of the body. Thus sin is a soul-sickness, it hath eclipsed the glory and splendour of the soul, it hath turned ruddiness into paleness; that beauty of grace which once sparkled as gold, now it may be said, How is this gold become dim!†^* That soul which once had an orient brightness in it, it was more ruddy than Rubies, its polishing was of Sapphire, the understanding be spangled with knowledge, the will crowned with liberty, the affections like so many Seraphims burning in love to God, now the glory is departed. Sin hath turned beauty into ⟨p. 474⟩deformity; as some faces by sickness are so disfigured, and look so ghastly, they can hardly be known: So the soul of man is by sin so sadly Metamorphiz'd, (having lost the image of God) that it can hardly be known. Joel 2.31. The Sun shall be turned into darkness. Sin hath turned that Sun of beauty which shined in the soul, into a Cimmerian darkness; and where grace is begun to be wrought, yet the souls beauty is not quite recovered, but is like the Sun under a cloud.

3. Sickness doth eclipse the beauty of the body:§3 This I ground on that Scripture, Psal. 39.11. When thou with rebukes dost correct man, thou makest his beauty to consume away like a Moth. The Moth consumes the beauty of the cloth; so a fit of sickness consumes the beauty of the body. Thus sin is a soul-sickness, it hath eclipsed the glory and splendor of the soul, it hath turned ruddiness into paleness; that beauty of grace which once sparkled as gold, now it may be said, How is this gold become dim!†^*