i.e. to the body, here, by metonymy, equated with its ‘rottenness’ (putrefaction). Pulter insists upon the present ‘rottenness’ of the body, even prior to its posthumous decay. In a treatise on the resurrection of bodies, published in 1640, the popular preacher and scholar Richard Sibbes reminded readers: ‘Those that die in much honour and pompe, and have their bodies imbalmed, doe all what they can with the body, it will come to dust and rottennesse; it will be vile in death’ (Evangellical Sacrifices. In xix. Sermons. … The third tome, Ee4v). The term has spiritual as well as physical connotations, describing ‘The state or quality of being morally corrupt; depravity; lack of integrity’ (OED, ‘rottenness’, def. 3), as in George Herbert’s poem, ‘The Church Porch’, which asks readers to weigh the pleasures of lust against the joys of moderation, and cautions, ‘If rottennesse have more, let Heaven go’ (‘Perirrhanteum’, in The Works of George Herbert, ed. F. E. Hutchinson (Oxford University Press, 1941), 6–24, line 18). Being ‘rotten’ suggests an inner weakness concealed beneath a healthy exterior, as in a rotten bough, or as in medical descriptions of festering sores. The term appears on several occasions in the Bible, most notably in Proverbs 12.4, ‘A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband: but she that maketh ashamed is as rottenness in his bones’; Proverbs 14.30, ‘A sound heart is the life of the flesh: but envy the rottenness of the bones’; and Habakkuk 3.16, ‘When I heard, my belly trembled; my lips quivered at the voice: rottenness entered into my bones …’ (all KJV).