519. The nature of people of this sort can be illustrated by comparisons. They are like churches with congregations of none but the spirits of the dragon, and the people meant in Revelation by locusts. They are also like pulpits in those churches where there is no Word, because it has been buried underfoot. They are like walls with beautifully coloured panelling, but with windows left open so that owls and ill-omened night-birds fly inside. They are like whitewashed tombs containing dead men's bones. They are like coins made out of dregs or dried dung plated with gold. They are like bark and bast surrounding rotting wood, or like the vestments of Aaron's sons on a leprous body; or rather, like ulcers full of pus covered by thin skin, so as to look as if healed. Is anyone unaware that a holy external and an unholy internal do not agree? Such people also are more than ordinarily afraid of examining themselves; so they are no more conscious of the rottenness in them than they are of the foul and stinking matter in their stomachs and bowels before being ejected into a lavatory.

But it should be grasped that those so far discussed are not to be confused with those whose actions and beliefs are good, nor with those who repent of any sins and talk to themselves or pray using the same sort of verbal confession when worshipping, and even more when undergoing spiritual temptation. For that general confession both precedes and follows reformation and regeneration.

The nature of the soul is a deep and complicated topic, but it can be summarized as our spiritual life — that is, who we are in terms of our thoughts and affections. And that, generally, is the internal sense when the Bible talks of a soul. You could be missing limbs, disfigured in the body due to illness or accident, paralyzed, but you would still be a complete human being. That's because the soul is the real you, and the soul has to do with internal things, not the state of your body.