Cotton Mather, one of New England’s leading lay doctors and a major force in the Puritan church in Boston, stated:  “Let us look upon Sin as the Cause of Sickness. There are it may be Two Thousand Sicknesses: and indeed, any one of them able to crush us. But what is the cause of all? Bear in Mind, That Sin was that which first brought Sickness upon a Sinful World and which yett continues to sicken the World, with a World of Diseases.”