That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses.
Ver. 17. Himself took our infirmities] The prophet speaketh of spiritual infirmities, the evangelist applieth it to corporal. And not unfitly; for these are the proper effects of those. We may thank our sins for our sicknesses, Revelation 2:22. She had stretched herself upon a bed of security, she shall be cast, another while, upon a bed of sickness. Asa had laid the prophet by the heels; and now God lays him by the heels, diseasing him in his feet, 2 Chronicles 16:12. Sin is a universal sickness, Isaiah 1:5,6; like those diseases which the physicians say are corruptio totius substantiae. And our lives are fuller of sins than the firmament of stars or the furnace of sparks. Hence all our bodily distempers, which when we groan and labour under, let us reflect and revenge upon sin as the mother of all misery. And when we are made whole, "sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon us."