Page:Letters on the Human Body (John Clowes).djvu/211

Rh, and ; and they can never be removed but by seeing, confessing, and deploring the sin and filthiness of such a degraded state, and thus, in the spirit of evangelical faith and repentance, labouring to attain elevation to, and conjunction with, the of life, with all its healing powers. In making this assertion, however, I do not mean to insinuate, that the graces of faith and repentance are capable of expelling all bodily diseases, from persons of all descriptions, since there is every reason to conclude, that some distempers are of an hereditary nature, which cannot be wrought upon by any mental exertions of the unhappy sufferer, having been entailed upon him by obstructions communicated from a long line of his progenitors. Neither would I wish to insinuate further, that human medical skill is of no avail, and consequently is unnecessary to be consulted in the affair of bodily health, inasmuch as some obstructions to health are of the body as well as of the mind, and it is possible that the bodily obstructions may require for their removal the aid of bodily medicine. All then that I mean to insist upon, on this occasion, is, that the most general obstructions to bodily health are to be found in the mind, or spirit, of man, and that if the virtues of faith and repentance cannot entirely remove them, they may still remove them partially, so as to