Piety and Charity of Worship and good works which are to be exercised decently and in order by all Christians in publick as well as private Till these be setled there is no hope of soundness or health in Church or State Now of these things which properly tend to the health of the Church and the right constitution of Religion in piety and polity for Doctrine Worship Discipline and Government I humbly conceive as the Priests of old were by God appointed to be Judge and Physitian of the plague of Leprosie the Clergie or Evangelical Ministry are fittest men to discern the distempers and to prepare those plaisters or applications which by the sanction of the civil Magistrate may best be laid to the Patient or the parts affected And here for any part to plead that it may have liberty or toleration for that which by publique advice and upon due search is found to be such as is prone to endanger or disorder and infect the whole body with that itch and scab or scalling humor which that part pleaseth it self to scratch and scatter this is such a presumptuous motion as ought not to be made by any Patient nor granted by any Physitians who have either justice or charity for the salus publica common welfare none inclining to those sad indulgences but they who have neither ability nor authority to cure the hurt and disease but must to their shame cry out Morbus superat artem Chyrurgum vulnus the ill humors are too strong for the best Physitians and the ulcers conquer the Chyrurgeons Truly in such deplorable cases where not the disease but the Physitians are desperate as in the raging plague the way is to shut up the doors of the Physitians Colledge and the Chyrurgeons Hall and write upon them in behalf of Church and State Miserere Domine Lord have mercy on us for nothing remains in so deplored and desperate cases where Healers cannot or will not do their work but the prayers and patience of the poor Patient the miserable daughter of my people as in a State where either the disease is contemptor artis a despiser of all remedies or the Patient is of nothing more impatient than to be well cured or the Physitians are of nothing more afraid than to make too speedy and sincere a cure Thirdly But if Physitians of the daughter of my people are so blessed of God and encouraged by the Patient that they may freely and do seriously apply to their work of publique healing they have but these main things to do 1. Noxia morbifica purgare discreetly to facilitate and constantly to follow the purging away of the most peccant and pestilent humors which either are the main cause occasion or increase and continuers of the hurt and disease Here every presumptuous and prevalent sin which is most spread among the people is to be repressed by good Laws and the due execution of them when sins grow epidemical and by the multitude of commiters either threaten or plead their impunity they provoke God to punish what man does not he takes the matter into his own hand when his Laws Moral and Evangelical are openly and impudently broken Here it were good for Physitians of Church and State in extraordinary diseases long distempers and obstinate hurts admitting no cure such as those of the daughter of our people are to make accurate search as Joshua and David and the Mariners in Jonah did for what special cursed thing or crying sins sake all this evill this long storm is come on us and still so continues for many years as if there were no peace or calm to be expected no effectual Physician or cure to be had till those Vipers teeth or Serpents stings be pulled out till then no balm in Gilead will do us good Doubtless every honest Englishman and good Christian would be glad of health and peace to Church and State whence then are our so dreadful wounds so raging humors and our so dilatory healing We must needs conclude as he did of the Tares inimicus homo fecit an enemy hath done begun or augmented this evil Some whose bloody designs and sacrilegious interests as Achans and Sauls are contrary to the Word of God among us and the vows or oathes of God upon us contrary to the principles of the Protestant and Reformed Religion which once so flourished in England and contrary to the peace honor and freedom of this Nation which some foraign and domestick Policies would bring down as a Dromedary on its knees that it might at length take upon his back the burthen of foraign tyranny and usurpation of Romish Trumpery and superstition Hence no doubt are our distempers so horribly inflamed our healing so cruelly protracted our Physitians so shamefully baffled our body so wofully maimed Hence our wounds are made so deep and our abscissions so desperate that according to Achitophels counsel to make the breach irreconcilable between Absolom and David some things have been done to so high a rage and exorbitant indignities and so intolerable injuries without any authority from God or man that they are not capable of full reparation nor yet patient hitherto to bear such a measure of publick repentance or reparation as are not only most just but most necessary for the appeasing Gods wrath and for the perfect healing of the Nation without which there can be no soundness of constitution no compleatness of parts no decency of motion in the Body Politick or Ecclesiastick Nor will the wrath of God be turned away but his hand stretched out still Here not only Justice must be so done to take away the guilt and curse from the Nation of crying and notorious sins but also such penitent deprecations and compensations as are possible and may best expiate those horrid sins which are and ever will be while unrepented uncorrected and uncured the maim and ulcer the sin and shame the defect and deformity yea the consumption and death at last of the daughter of my people For tragical Judgements sooner or later follow tragical sins and presumptions bring a a Nation to consumptions England will never be it self till it doth it self this right both in honor and conscience in Reason of State and for the repute of the Reformed Religion from whose face such black and bloody stains must be washed if ever she will appear lovely to the world and not as the Whore of Babylon who was drunk as well as besmeared with blood All the inventions and projects of making supplies and amends by some other Commonwealth way is no better than getting a wooden leg or hands of clouts instead of such as are natural or as a bolster of goats hair instead of David The body cannot have ease or orderly motion or beauty and complexion till every part is restored to its place office and proportion 2. When the venom and core of the main distempers is removed the next
obducere skin over with unfaithful scars the ill searched and ill purged ulcers of mens hearts and lives saying peace peace all is all will all must be well in Church and State when bona fide or mala misera experientia in true but sad trial and sence of things there is no peace inward or outward to him that goes out or him that comes in no peace religious or politick civil or ecclesiastical foraign or domestick either to the Estates Liberties Laws honors or lives of men nor yet to their opinions doctrines devotions and consciences in any rank or degree but as the Prophet Isaiah complains The whole head if we have any head is sick and the whole heart is faint from the sole of the foot to the crown of the head there is no soundness in it but wounds and bruises and putrifying sores they have not been closed nor bound up nor mollified with ointments Yet there are that have cryed amain Peace peace men that are either so merry or so mad in our common calamities as to command us to call our sicknesses health our wounds salves our slavery liberty our divisions union our deformities reformings our unsettledness settling our sands and quagmires rockie foundations our wars peace our oppressions ease our common woe a Common-weal The Prophet seems thus to complain That either Physitians of no value {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} many and unskilful Empiricks have unfaithfully tampered with us and dum vulnera publica in lucra privata vertunt while they make private gain by our publick pains they have turned ipsa remedia in morbos our very remedies to new diseases and have kept us long uncured under pretence of cure or else we are by the venome of our own inbred and malignant humors become incurable as immedicabile vulnus ense recidendum a gangreen only fit for the saw and sword and such indeed do our proud and dead flesh or proud minds and dead hearts rather portend our case to be whilst so many tough obstructions so many high inflammations such new tumors and cruel biles daily arise of various interests such a constant fall of ill humors sharp and undigested not only upon the outward and grosser or more Mechanick parts of the body Politick but also upon the most vital and noble the head and heart where the counsel and courage the strength and wisdom the best blood and spirits of the Nation are or ought to be contained and exserted to the publick welfare Although as the woman in the Gospel we have spent all or most or much of our substance on Physicians and their attending Chyrurgeons on Counsellors and Soldiers yet we do not finde our selves any whit the better still we are scared and threatned by our sins which are Gods discontents and our unsettlednesses which are the Nations discontent and sufferings with daily breakings out and angry tumors with new purgings and loathsom potions with lancings and blood-lettings with cuttings off and cauterisings which will not heal restore close and redintegrate the body but maime and defame and cripple it for ever To prevent which successive miseries or the like from the daughter of my people here in England as much as in me lies I have sought to improve the sanctity and solemnity of this occasion this thankeful and hopeful opportunity of future mercies by presenting you with my meditations on this Text because it is not only querela de fallacia medicorum medelae mendacio a just complaint of the falsity of Physicians and inefficacy of the past applications which some Medicasters had with great vapour and confidence applied as bold Mountebanks are wont to do when they wound their slaves to shew their skill in healing them But farther the text is monitio de vera medendi methodo a direction for the right method and honest way of curing an afflicted nation It doth not only deplore the publique maladies but denotes their right remedies which may easily be known and followed if the healers were but honest For the hurts are not so fatall necessary and unavoidable that men should despaire and sink under them Saying There is no hope it is in vaine to wait on the Lord any longer God hath condemned and decreed us as poor diseased and desperate creatures to lie always in the Hospital under sores and paines expecting no cure but that of death and utter dissolution If it were so God would not here and elsewhere greivously reproach perstringe those cheating undertakers those false Quaksalvers these wanton and cruel Leeches who did not want skill and knowledg of what would heal Church and State in Law and Government in true Religion and Justice in Mercy and Humility Which are the best balsoms of both and clearly revealed to them by the Lord but they wanted honesty and fidelity therefore God pleads against them Is there no balme in Gilead is there no Physitian c. Why then is not the hurt of the daughter of my people recovered The question Is there no Balme is a vehement affirmation a Satyrick asseveration There are wayes and meanes parabiles ad manum sufficient easy apt obvious and at hand to cure the wounds or bruises or tumors or hurts of any nation if men did not either wilfully shut their eyes against them and refuse to use them or if God had not for their hypocrisie fraud and baseness justly blinded their eyes and hid from them the things belonging to their own and the nations peace by leaving them to the mists and clouds of their own partial covetous and ambitious lusts Then indeed nothing is to be expected but dayly recrudescentia ulcera relapses and recruitings of our wounds until God give us Physitians of better eyes and hearts that may both wisely discern our maladies and both speedily and faithfully incounter them with seasonable and fit remedies To which posture of providence we are prone to hope that we are this day restored by the valour honor and integrity of those who now have the conduct of power and counsel I pray God we may have cause serio gaudere to rejoyce long and in good earnest for every days delay of our cure is a chargeable uncharitable and painful delusion to the Nation threatning such a consumption of spirits and such debilitation of the Nations strength and estate besides the debasing of its honor and reputation as must necessarily at last betray us with our posterity with our Estates Laws Liberties and Lives yea and with our Reformed Religion which ought to be dearer to us as it was to our forefathers than our lives and estates to that foraign invasion and Romish superstition which is the {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} the great design of the Jesuitick agitation whereto are subservient all the fanatick factions of those who are such enemies to the just and legal closing or composing of our hurts in Church
and convulsions to weakness and consumption As a Father would be affected to see his tender Daughter thus used and abused which cannot endure pains like the hardier and rougher sex of Sons so is God and so his Prophet and so is every good man and woman to the Church and Country whereto they are so nearly related God is so concerned and touched to the quick that his bowels are turned within him he deplores himself as if he were a miserable God while his people his sons and daughters are miserable either by their sins or sufferings God hath his sympathies with them his repentings toward them his returns with tears and kisses for them as a compassionate and good natured parent hath toward his daughter when he hath been forced to use her hardly and hath in his anger either wounded or bruised and hurt her The kindnesses that in mankind are humane affections in God are Divine perfections None can be so good-natured so {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} as the good God is if we were not cruel to him and our own souls he could never be other than most kind to us for he doth not afflict us willingly We compel him to be froward by our frowardness and to break upon us by rebelling against him we bruise our selves by dashing against that rock which would be our refuge and shelter we wound our selves by running upon that sword which would only be our defence God never ceaseth to be our Father till we cease to behave our selves as his children From the blessed God the best men learn and derive this tender love care compassion and indulgence towards the Daughter of their people both in civil and sacred relations the concernments or interests of both are great endearments to gracious souls hence as other Prophets so specially Jeremiah becomes a man of sorrows his eyes run down night and day with rivers of tears nor can he be comforted while Sion is afflicted Though he be wel-nigh drowned in his own tears yet he wisheth Jer. 9.1 O that my head were a fountain of tears His bowels his bowels are pained within him by that coarctation or compression which great grief fear and horror makes upon by the retirings of spirit and blood the lactes and smaller bowels which are near the heart he is weary of life which doth but daily torment him with so many sad spectacles such dreadful diurnals such unwelcome news of breach upon breach such a dying and self-destroying Church and State all things growing worse and worse and no remedy Still he the alarm of war and sound of the Trumpet The Church and State Physicians are wholly for corrosives and no lenitives for fraud and force not for Reason and Law they pretend necessity and pursue providences till they are in a wilderness of woe and confusion far from peace health salvation and establishment which are the effects and fruits only of Righteousness and Justice of Reason and Religion Hence the Prophet with vehemency demands and demanding he deplores and deploring he reproacheth the folly and defect the stupidity and cruelty of those in power Is there no balm in Gilead is there no Physician Why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered The best of the Heathens had very quick strokes upon their heart strings by the love and care they had of their Countries they thought it dulce decorum pro patria mori most worthy of a good man not only to live but also to die for his Countries safety and honor It argues minds without natural affection not to have compassion for their Country and more for their Church They must be Clyclopick monsters of brutish Barbarity who can like Cannibals feed on the flesh and drink the blood of their Country and neighbors of their kindred of their parents and of their children yea of their very daughters who have a priviledge and plea from their sex for greatest tenderness The daughter of our people in respect of our posterity and descendents from us whom we leave to succeed after us in our lands houses and estates is also our Mother and Parent communis parens if we look backward as we are derived from our forefathers Patria est mater filia our Country is our parent or mother also our child or daughter in different aspects and so requires different respects First Of reverence as to our majores progenitores Father or Mother that begat and bare us Secondly Of Indulgence as to our daughter or posteri which derive from us In both that love and kindness is expected and by the Law of Nature which is Gods Law so commanded that they sin highly who are so cruel as either to sacrifice their sons and daughters or their Fathers and Mothers their Church and Country root and branch to the fires and flames of civil Wars and dissentions begun and continued by their sinful cruelty and tyrannous hypocrisie Can a Mother forget her childe or a Father cast off his Son or sheath his sword in the bowels of his daughter without the just imputation of madness and inhumanity Judge then what men yea what Sea-monsters they are that can be studiously designedly and industriously cruel to that Country wherein they were bred and to that Church in which they were baptized to deform the beauty and destroy the blessings of peace plenty order good Government and true Religion left them by their Progenitors and to leave to posterity nothing but poverty and pain terrors and wars blood and confusion hypocrisie and cruelty fanatick fury and military insolency nothing but either oppression or Anarchy either the cries of the oppressors threatning pillaging and exacting as grievous tax-masters or of the oppressed mourning and deploring their sad condition in vain while either the cords of unrighteous decrees do binde a Nation captive to the lusts of unreasonable and merciless men as to the rack and torture or such daily executions of violence exasperation and rigor as fills the land with discontent blood and tumult the daughter of his people daily appearing as the slain wallowing in their own blood and her voyce is as the groans of a deadly wounded and dying man Fourthly and lastly this denomination or title of the daughter of my people imports as the happy estate of any Nation that is thus under Gods eye and tender care also under the protection or guardianship of wise Governors of just and lawful Magistrates who carry themselves as Nursing-fathers and Nursing-mothers to Church and State yea as kinde Husbands and indulgent Spouses to their beloved Brides or Wives So it shews how sad desolate and helpless yea how dangerous and exposed to miseries both of dishonor and death and all manner of hurts incident to any Church and State the condition of any people is that is not under Gods care or is deprived by their sin and madness of good
work of a wise Physitian and Chyrurgeon is Sana Medicamina applicare to follow the Patient with wholesom medicaments as are 1 probata approved upon the file of long experience 2 propria specifica as apt proper and specifick as can be had considering the genius and constitution of the Patient also the original continuance and progress of the disease cures are by contraries those medicines will most certainly help which most encounter the principal causes of our maine disease and are proper antidotes against the malignity of our sores It is but the capricious and ridiculous conceit of some fine men who want employment to send this now languishing State of England and the other two adjacent antient and united Kingdomes to Mars his hill in Athens or to the Lacedemonian Sparta or to the Roman Capitol or to the Venetian Arsenal or to the State-house of the low Countries and so to send the Church to Geneva Edinbrough or Amsterdam as if we were Churches or Nations of yesterday in our bibs and swadling clouts to be dandled in the laps of such dry nurses and this in order forsooth to learn some unwonted models of civil and Ecclesiastical Government which like new garments will hardly fit for they will be either uneasie because too straight or unhansome because too loose Doubtless in Governments that Scripture Proverb of Wine holds true the elder is the better if it have not lost its spirits especially when not onely time and use but great wisdome had proportioned it to the true interests of the Nation and of all estates in it which follow much the genius of the people if they be either soft slavish and pesantly as in some countrys or robust manly and generous as in England the first will easily crouth under any burthen and truckle under any prevalent power the second is hardly contained in any bounds but those that are Soveragine and Imperial by way of monarchical yet legal Majesty which having something in it neerer the Divine Idea than any other way of Government by the perfection of wisdome guiding power and power assisting wisdome is onely fit to govern those Nations whose high spirits are impatient to be ridden by their equals much more to have their inferiours to become not only their rivals but superiours When the Cappadocians had leave to be a Province or popular State under the Roman Empire they refused the freedome and craved the favour of having a King to rule them as they ever had time out of mind professing the temper of the people was such that they would not be subject to any but those in whom Majesty was so concentred by the Laws and customs of the Nation that they could without shame and disdain pay an homage as subjects to them Herein experience hath been and will be our teacher but then it will be and hath been as Hippocrates begins his Aphorisms {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} a costly painful difficult and dangerous experiment and if at last it do not fit the Genius temper and desire of these Nations so as to ease them of their terrors and vast charges of civil War to free them of the fear of Enemies at home and abroad to settle them in such peace and plenty as many yet remember they injoyed before the flood of our civil wars to open the obstructions of trade and those veins of industry by which the body is maintained by the secret circulation of commerce as of the blood if all these Symptomes Concomitants or effects of health do not follow the essayes of new formes of Government alas what do we all the while but keep the daughter of our people upon the rack of paine and expence using a kind of a State Strappado by which to bring the armes to hang backwards rather then forwards so as they can neither lift up themselves to their head nor yet defend and help the body or themselves so by a dreadful convulsion to bring all things of antient order honor and beauty in the nation to the distractions and deformities which must needs attend such novelties as are not proper for the publique nor practicable without continued force and endless charge 3. Their healing medicines must be plenaria Catholica such as may in time do the work compleatly yet with leisure and discretion For momentary cures are onely miraculous So as carefully to preserve the good spirits and humors to strengthen the sound parts yet remaining to follow the grand crises of the disease and the indications of health which way evil humors are easiest discussed breathed out or purged still conserving the two main principles pillars and supports of health life and subsistence in the body politique the radicale humidum as I call it which is plenty by trade and industry that there be no crying out nor complaining by those whose mouths cannot eat if their hands be idle 2. That calidum radicale the sacred fire or celestial flame which Prometheus is said to have kindled in mankind which shines in reason and religion in Justice by good Laws well executed by Magistrates and in devotion by the holy publique worship of God solemnly discharged by able and autoritative Ministers both which are the grand designes of good learning which is the souls school for improvement and education during its minority or absence from its Fathers house till it comes to vision and fruition which sets it beyond all learning but that of the Fathers glorious example No civil laws can be wholesome for the publique which do enterfeer with true Religion which either rob God or his Church or his Vicegerents and Ministers or his poor of what is their due nor can any Ecclesiastical laws be healthful which cross the civil laws and authority so as to bring in licentiousness injuriousness rebellion or any thing that is for Doctrine fanatick or for practice injust and immoral all which like poysonous touchings or unwholesome feedings are destructive to the publique health The perfect healing of the Church and Religion as Christian and reformed whose divisions hurts and deformities are many will hardly be done without calling those spiritual Physitians together after the primitive pattern in Ecclesiastical Synods or National Councils who are best skilled in the true state of health in the nature of the diseases and in the aptest remedies which in Religion ought to be very humane and charitable convincing with meekness of wisdom and healing as much by prayers and tears as by reasonings and perswasions I confess I cannot see how a Committee of Parliament for Religion is proper for this work further than to be {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} the promoters of it when put into fit hands of able Ministers Herein the first grand work is to bring us to be again one National Church from which honor and happiness we fell as Lucifer from heaven when some mens ambition affected to make the
and State It will be found true by us at last as well as hitherto some others have felt it to their smart That a Commonwealth as well as Kingdom divided against it self cannot long stand Et sero medicina paratur Cum mala per longas invaluere moras in vain shall we at last cry out How have we been deluded how have we despised counsel and neglected such plain and safe remedies as would have cured us long ago There want not birds of prey Eagles Ravens and Vultures that wait for the feebleness and fall of this Church and State that they may pick out its eyes of Religion and Learning of Law and Justice the Universities and Inns of Court that the life and soul of Christian and humane Societies Equity and Charity Reason and true Religion being departed the cadaverosa Patria Ecclesia carkass of our Church and Country may be their spoil and booty which God of his mercy forbid In the Text there are six things to be enquired 1. Persona laesa icta afflicta the patient or afflicted whom the Prophet yea God himself deplores and ownes she is called the daughter of my people 2. Plaga or laesio the grief or malady her hurt or lesure 3. Ficta medela or insana sanatio the pretended cure or verbal healing they have healed with saying Peace peace slightly and superficially 4. {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} or mendacium the fallacy and cheat when there is no peace 5. Medicorum turba the Physicians or Empiricks They great Statists grave Polititians formal pretenders to do great feats and miraculous cures in Church and State when really they are no other than imperious hypocrites magniloquent Montebanks cruel and covetous confident and careless Boasters of their skill but no way Effecters of a real cure 6. Vera medendi methodus the true way of curing a diseased Nation a distressed Country a sick and languishing Church which is implied and supposed to be First as evident in it self Secondly As easie and as feasible by these Pretenders if honest Thirdly As it is necessary apt and seasonable for the poor patient hence the great blame and reproach imputed to these Tamperers or Medicasters They to their sin and shame They with their pride and pollicy They with their cunning and cruelty They more for want of honesty than ability have thus superficially skinned over and perfunctorily healed the hurt of the daughter of my people saying c. Of these I intend by Gods blessing to speak not as a Ruler or Magistrate nor as a Statist and Polititian nor as a Soldier and Commander nor as a Citizen and Trader but as a Preacher or Minister of God to his Church And since we are excluded beyond all men in the Nation from being chosen to meet or advise in any other ways of publick Counsels Civil or Ecclesiastical you may not think much if as men and Christians no less than Divines we use the freedom of this place to acquaint you with the sence and sympathy of our souls yea of Gods spirit in and by the Prophet when he was not a Spectator only but a joynt sufferer as we Ministers have been more than any order of men in the common hurts and miseries of Church and State 1. I begin with the Patient who is called here both by God and the Prophet The daughter of my people {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} That is gens mea or populus meus First In relation to God the people that I have bred up with so much care and tenderness the Nation that hath been to me as a Son or Daughter the Vine that I have planted watered and fenced for my self That Polity of Church and State to which I was Lawgiver the chief Counsellor and Constitutor the Supream head and Governor the Captain Shepherd and Bishop their great King and Protector My peculiar people whom I had preferred beyond all Nations as a Theocracy or holy Monarchy and royal Priesthood This is the Patient with whose hurts sores bruises wounds and sorrows these practicants have most impudently padled and cruelly pleased themselves in turning publick miseries of Church and State to their private advantages 2. In relation to the Prophet the daughter of my people which are of the same linage and derivation of the same Father and family of the nearest blood both by parentage and alliance with whom I have the same Laws and civil immunities also the same Religion and sacred communion Natural Civil Ecclesiastical kindred endears me to them they are as flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone yea we are or ought to be of the same spirit and soul as having the same God and Saviour the same holy duties or solemnities to engage us in love and dearness as well as nearness to each other so as the publick and common good should be the supream good of every particular We cannot be happy or miserable alone as members in one body all our enjoyments are social and all our sufferings are sympathetick This is the daughter of my people for whom I am so concerned and afflicted that I preach and pray I write and weep I wake and dream lamentations and tears for her as a man as a Citizen as a true Isrealite or Jew as a Christian as a Protestant or reformed Professor This Title of the Daughter of my people is so frequent in Scripture that it seems to importune the Reader to consider the importance of it Isa. 1.8 and 22.4 Jer. 4.12 and 9.1 and 6.14 19. Lam. 2.11 Zach. 9.9 So Daughter of Sion and of Jerusalem or the like expressions First To shew not so much the fruitfulness of a Nation whom God so blesseth that they encrease and multiply as that softer and procreative or mother sex doth to great numbers which are as the off-sets or fruit of a pregnant womb as the people of God are sometimes called his first born and his sons in respect of that masculine vigor and valor which was among them while God was with them so the daughter of his people as apt to bring forth Secondly But further to express the tender care and fatherly indulgence that God hath toward such a people as are called by his name who have had the special signets and bracelets the jewels and ornaments of his favour the glory of his Ordinances and presence among them God himself is afflicted in her afflictions such as torment her torment him he feels her wounds and faints as it were to see her blood prodigally shed as water on the ground either by open enemies or fallacious Physicians and cruel Phlebotomists who under pretence of healing the hurts they have made or festred venomed and inflamed do cut and lance and sear and lop and purge and let blood to such evacuations and superfluity as quite exhaust the best and vital spirits of a Nation bringing it to fainting fits
Governors of lawful Magistrates of able Ministers and Pastors such a Nation or Church is as a poor weak helpless daughter that is an Orphan or fatherless without any friend father or husband to defend and take care of her she becomes as a forsaken virgin subject to all those insolencies and indignities to which her own weakness and the power of others lusts may expose her nor can she have any safety health honor security or handsom subsistance and defence until she be restored to the care and protection of those who under God deserve to be and by law are Patres patriae the true Fathers of the daughter of their people All others that usurp on a nation are as unjust so hard Fathers Fathers in law because without and against Law having neither the Law of God nor man for their usurped authority nor the Law of love and tenderness in their stony hearts but as Physicians who unsent for obtrude their visits and practice more for their fee and gains than for any love to their Patients welfare are most welcome when the patient is soonest rid of them whose project is rather to protract and perpetuate their patients afflictions than to recover them nor are they afraid of killing them further than their gain may dye with them and their pragmatick humor have less mischief to do But I have done with the first particular the import of this stile and compellation the daughter of my people thus God and thus the Prophet thus all good men and all good Christians are wonted to speak and think and act to love to pitty and to pray for their country both Church and Srate What I beseech you must they be who wound her with the wounds of an Enemy and smite her with the strokes of a cruel one as if all their policy and power served to no other use but to execute animosities and exercise antipathies against their country to eat out as the generation of vipers are vulgarly said do the bowels of their mother who pray not for the peace of Jerusalem but seek to make a prey of her both in peace and war in things sacred and civil condemning her to everlasting enmities wars divisions confusions taxes and exactions which cannot be removed till health is restored nor can this be till the great wounds and wide breaches made and continued yea enlarged by some are closed and drawn together till there be a redintegratio continui et reparatio disjuncti restitution of all noble parts that are necessary for the publique integrality and unity its order and beauty its honour and safety Which what they are and how to be done I leave to wise honest and impartial men who have counsel to guide their prwer and power to execute or put in practise their good and healing counsels in spight of all the Leeches and Empiricks that would hinder publique health that they might from the open Orifices of their bleeding Country suck more advantages for themselves and their parties to the ruine of the whole Secondly Having visited the Patient and finding it to be our near relation as a Sister or Daughter or Mother even our Country and Church It is time for us to consider its hurt or affliction to see what it ails what that plaga or vulnus or laesio or morbus is wherewith it is so pained that it cannot rest night nor day Our work is not only to behold her a far off with silence and stupor as Jobs friends in her grief and anguish but either to apply suitable remedies or at least such prayers and words of comfort {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} to her heart as may shew our pity and compassion which is some relief to those that are in bitterness of soul The Hebrew word {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} whence our English shiver may well be derived is rendred by the LXX {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} and by the Latin contritio which properly imports some injury or hurt inflicted ab extra from an outward agent by violence so as to wound or bruise or batter or break or tear any thing that causeth solutionem continui separation or dissipation of parts which should be united and in whose right union is ease as in their dissolution or dislocation is pain But the latitude of the word may well extend to the larger scope and intent of the place and complaint which is not only upon the account of outward force and violent impression made upon Church and State against all Reason Justice and Religion but as in bodies natural so in these politique both Civil and Ecclesiastical there are many kinds of hurts or maladies incident to them both from within and from without There are besides vulnera or flesh wounds and ulcera which are inveterate sores and gangrena gangreens which are deadly if not speedily cured or cut off there are pustuli venemous tumors or angry biles which arise from some putid or corrupt humors in the body also running issues and fistula's which are most at ease when they have some vent and most dangerous when suddenly and indiscretly stopped these are hurts too and very grievous ones when times are such by the discontent of mens minds by the dissolution of their licentious manners by weakening the authority of Laws and overturning the course of Government in Church and State ut nec morbos nec remedia ferre possint that either the pertinacy of customary disorders and prevalent mischiefs or the petulancy of people overgrown with epidemical and tolerated diseases will not endure fit remedies yet are undone if they linger under their distempers uncured Sometimes a body grows plethorick and is hurt by its excess of humors crude and indigested which are prone to gather together and fall on any weak and disaffected part there to ferment and inflame to high feavors and very great anguish of the whole so is it in a Nation when either over-peopled to an indigence and idleness through want of work or when grown luxuriant by long peace and plenty which runs to sottery in many and at last to the armed man poverty whose free quarter pressing on people provokes them to discontents and so to design publique troubles quia multis utile bellum because they have nothing left them but their carkasses and their swords dig they cannot to beg they are ashamed fighting is their only fortune Otherwhile a Nation may be too much exhausted by war by exactions and oppressions by decay and want of trade so as it becomes consumptive weak and languishing either the humidum radicale native moisture oyle and balm of competency is wasted for want of encouraged industry and commerce or the calor naturalis the spirits activity and generosity of a people are as the modern Egyptians quite extinct being either sottishly idle or so cowed and over-awed that they are crest-fallen and below any gallant actions and designs living
more like slaves under hard Masters than like the Sons and Daughters of a fatherly Prince or a free and legal Polity much as poor Hospital wretches who are condemned to live always under the hands of Physicians and Chyrurgeons kept down by Janisaries and daily terrified with either taxes or instruments of pain or menaces of death Certainly as qui medice so qui militariter vivit misere vivit It is a kiling and dying life to live always under the Chyrurgeons lance or the Soldiers sword The Hurts of a Nation may be distinguished into those that either disaffect the body and outward man by Tyranny Injustice and oppression contrary to the known laws good constitutions and venerable customs of a people which are the native and self-healing balsom of those great bodies pressing upon the estates properties liberties limbs lives and honors of mankind when either Superiors like the disaffected head distill too sharp and corrosive humors upon inferior parts or these send up by a kind of circulation or exhalation pestilent fumes and vapors of mutiny and rebellion against their Heads and Superiors jealous of and envying each others welfare also withdrawing that natural assistance from each other which is indeed the support and health of the whole These hurts are very dangerous and ought to be speedily composed to such an harmony as is a tolerable state of health by adjusting every one their rights assigned to them by that Law which so takes care and provides for the publick order beauty and welfare of all that it permits no one private interest like a wen or leech or Incubus to oppress dreine and destroy anothers for as in Nature so in States the whole cannot be well at ease if one part be grievously pained or pierced There are sometimes horrible rapes committed upon the daughter of a people while vile and violent men sons of Belial to satisfie their own inordinate lusts of revenge covetousness pride or ambition apply by force or fraud or both to obtain that power and place that favor and preferment in the publick which they dispair to get in fair and honest ways of worthy industry and merit These are like the incestuous ravishers of their own Sisters or Daughters or Mothers men that have much of Cateline in them nothing of the true Christian nor are they to be envied if they prosper for a time in their wicked devices and indeavours since this is all the shadow of greatness they shall ever enjoy while for a moments glory among a company of poor mortals they venture eternal debasement among the Devils where such great sinners shall be greatly tormented nor will their prosperity procure their impunity though they dye in peace yet they descend to an eternal war which is {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} never to be ended by peace or truce nor yet by annihilation or extinction There are also grievous hurts which may bebefal a Nation as to its very soul and better spirits that is its intellectual powers and excellencies of Religion and Learning of rational and ingenuous improvements most worthy of men of Gentlemen and Christians These hurts are when true Religion which is founded on Gods Word confirmed by the testimony of the Church of God in all ages fortified by good Laws regulated by good Discipline or Government and supported by honorable encouragements when this is either corrupted in its soundness of doctrine or overgrown as the head with a scald by superstition or broken by faction or bafled by vulgar insolency or persecuted by misguided zeal or oppressed by inordinate power or robbed of its just maintenance or discomposed in its due order and government or despised in its best Preachers and Professors or run out to the itch and scratch the scabies pruritus disputandi as Sir Henry Wotton calls it of disputing and jangling which breeds uncharitable and empty formalities tending and ending in prophaness and Atheism extinguishing truth and love sound faith and sincere charity which are as the oyle and flame of the lamp of Religion in any Church and heart these are most dangerous distempers and hardly to be cured or recovered unless such speedy cordials and antidotes be applied by wise Magistrates sober Ministers and sincere Christian people as may recollect refocillate and restore the power of godliness and spirits of true Religion by dissipating and expelling those noxious and pestilent oppressions with which either Princes or Peers or people or preachers have pressed upon true Religion by covetousness or ambition or Sacriledge or Schism or popularity or love of Novelty or Sedition to the great disgrace of true Religion and the best Ministers of it both Fathers and Sons It is observed by Guildas and others who give account of our English subversions by Saxons and Danes when we were Christian and civilized but they Heathens and barbarous that nothing more presaged the deluge of those miseries which followed such invasions than the great contempt and oppression to which the Clergie and Religious Orders were brought partly it may be by their own sloth and luxury but chiefly by the prophane insolency of all sorts of people who were content to have all Religious cords broke asunder that they might enjoy the full sway of their licentious humors Again when good learning which is a most officious useful and comely handmaid to Religion when humane Arts and Sciences which are beams or strictures of divine wisdom when studies of good Laws and due administration of Justice accordingly which are the vital spirits of a Nation when these are vilified and outraged by the vilest people by Jack Straws and Wat Tilers whose ignorance makes them enemies to knowledge as darkness is to light being like Mastiffs the feircer for those dark kennels in which they are bred and kept up When this ill kind of men cry down like the Ephesine rabble with dust and clamor more than any shew of reason all Schools of Learning and Vniversities that they may run after false Prophets and Dreamers whose simplicity is so impudent to pretend inspirations and new lights to so eagle-eyed and quick sighted a people as the English are till their delusisions and folly are manifested These are as rough Satyrs a kind of robust wilde men who trust more either to their limbs and sinews or to their wit and cunning than to their consciences or our Laws for the getting of their living aiming to live more like beasts by rapine than like civil men and good Christians by honest labour and ingenuous industry Nor are they small hurts which the teeth of such Foxes and tushes of such Boars have given to any Church or State where they have for a while prevailed being much fitter for Mahometan conversation than Christian profession for there among Turks only force or fury makes men considerable for they think that their Princes and their mad men are highly favoured and most familiar with God and his Angels
inordinate self-lovers covetous bosters proud blasphemers disobedient to parents natural civil ecclesiastical unthankeful unholy without natural affection truce-breakers false accusers in continent fierce dispisers of those that are solidly sincerely and constantly good Traitors heady high-minded lovers of pleasures more then of God having a form of godliness but denying the power of it as the Apostle gives their character by an holy Satyr And can any thing that is good for the health of the daughter of my people proceed from such Galileans such evil men who meditate mischeif night and day who decree unrighteous decrees and act wickedness with both hands greedily Who think themselves most hurt if the State and Church should be throughly and speedily healed they fancy themselves undone if any publick good be honestly done t is paine and death to them to have the bones well set which by them have been broken to see the {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} rather than the {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} gaging wounds or gulphs rather closed up which they have either made or widened and kept so open that they threaten in a few years to swallow up all the wealth and peace and honor and strength and happiness of the Nation and Church Yet these are the men that say peace peace that would be thought the only blessed Peace-makers the soveraign healers of the hurts of the daughter of my people such Monopolisers of all medicines and healing drugs that they are impatient any others should take the cure in hand or have any thing to do in Church or State beside themselves and their applauders They tell the poor patient which is full of wounds and putrfied sores that they will do her more good with their tongues and lips added to their lancets and swords than the best Physicians can do by their best unguents and soveraign balsoms while the poor sick wounded and languishing creature crys out for some ease and pity yea roars for the very disquietness of its soul and continued pains yet without any shame or blushing these Physitians of no value these miserable Mountebanks affecting a supercilious shew of soveraign majesty severely frown on the pittiful looks and tears of the daughter of my people with terror threatning her to hold her peace to believe she hath peace nay to say and swear it is peace peace yea and to abjure the use of any other men or better means which have been formerly very effectual for her healing and recovery Quis coelum terrae non misceat mare coelo Here patience it self is a sin and impatience a vertue Who not stupid can forbear with the Prophet to cry out Hear O heaven and give ear O earth Was ever any Nation so tampered with so pestred by a company of fallacious Physitians pretenders to heal superficial skinners dilatory Empiricks and miserable Medicasters who resolve small hurts into grievous ulcers and green wounds into virulent gangreens and little bruises into fell and inflamed tumors yet cry peace peace and we have healed you why do you yet complain As if the Prophet should say it is high time indeed after so many years of wasting and wounding of war and trouble of death and bloodshed of undoing and destroying of cutting and dividing the Body Politique turning the daughter of my people as on the gridiron from one side to the other by vicissitudes of burning Feavors by continual tossings and fits of high distempers between the wrath of God and heavy hand upon her beside the fury of men against her yet to cry peace peace to her when as the Lord lives there is no peace nor many steps between the patient and death or at best such a sorry peace as is no less chargeable terrible and oppressive than an open war Pax omni bello tristior a peace patched up with popular pretentious and impious injuries as the body of Lazars whose plaisters rather hide than heal their sores What true peace can that be which is founded only on sands and quagmires on violence and exaction daubed over with the untempered mortar of policy and hypocrisie which holds not one winter built up with cries begun with violence carried on with oppression and ending in desolation Peace or health and salvation are far from the ungodly What peace can there be to the wicked Princes or people Senators or Souldiers whose feet are swift to shed innocent blood whose hand are full of bribes whose hearts are hollow and double minded whose power is usurped whose decrees are unrighteous whose mouths are full of fraud and flattery Peace and Establishment in Church and State with God and men are the fruits of Justice and Righteousness of true Religon and good Laws of just Magistracy and legal Soveraignty of fixed free and united Councils of wise and honest Valour the study prayer and endeavour of men fearing God and hating covetousness men of true publique spirits who are not swayed by private interests and passions to any novel designs and factious adherencies Men of wisdom and honor fortified with just Authority are only apt to make a Nation happy by healing her in those ways of honest decrees and impartial dealing which are legal and regular not fanatick and extravagant which every night dream and in the morning propose new receits Seraphick projects and untried medicaments which sufficiently shew that such Chyrurgeons and Physitians are either ignorant or pragmatick or impertinent either not knowing what to do or not willing to do what they know but are resolved to do any thing never so foolish and pernicious rather than sit still and do nothing or give way to better heads and hands who have more authority from God and man and so may better expect a blessing What peace can there be or true healing while the most crying sins that mankind are capable to commit or conceive the deepest wounds and sorest hurts from the hand of man that a Nation can receive are unpunished and unrepented yea unconsidered yea incouraged yea cried up by some for rare examples of Justice of Liberty of Piety of Sanctity when neither the holy God ever commanded or holy men ever practised any such thing What peace can there be while fleshly lusts and all manner of evil concupiscence in Rulers and ruled fight against mens own souls against Gods Spirit and against the publique welfare while worldly lusts of pride envy covetousness ambition and Sacriledge daily supply matter for general discontents publique wars and perpetual woes What peace or healing can there be in Church and State while men of the same polity are like Pikes in a pond or fish in the sea or beasts of prey in a wilderness pursuing and devouring one another while neither the bonds of the same Laws nor the same oathes nor the same covenants nor the same Religion can hold them while they will not endure the same Magistrates nor the same
Ministers nor the same form of Church and State while they have so little equity so no piety or charity to each other while every petty person among the Prophets and people aims to set up a party or faction and every party designs to subdue others to set up it self and to oppress the common liberty and publick welfare which are only contained in those Laws that are made by the consent of all Estates in the Nation What peace can there be where there are so many tumults and strifes so many whispers and jealousies so many fewds and animosities in the brest and bowels of the same Nation for want of that rare Elixir of lawful and just government which only is able to compose the distracted spirits to give a just allay and temperament to all humors and parts in their due places and porportions except they be such as are indigestible to any good order and are better purged out than kept in the body Alas these pittiful partial applications these diurnal doses these horary medicaments these slight and superficial plaisters these verbal and decretal healings which some men have so gloried in and vapoured of are as ridiculous as they have been inefficacious unless these great Masters of their new arts these Galens and Hypocrates of Church and State were so in favour with some Esculapius as to partake of his Diety and so by the words of their mouthes or shadows of their bodies or touch of their garments to rebuke the Feavors of the body politick and immediately to cure as by miracle what they have so long tampered about to very ill purpose But as an ilfavored Physitian is an ill omen to his patient especially if he look ill from his being ill there being no great hope that the Physitian should cure others who doth not or cannot cure himself so the busie Practitioners on the Daughter of their people should do well first to commend their skill to the publique by giving some good experiments on their selves by curing their own corrupt hearts or crazy heads by recovering themselves from those vertigos megrims and falling sicknesses with which they have been so oft afflicted let them wash their own foul hands and cleanse their double minds let them cease to do evil and learn to do good Let them do all things not arbitrary ad libitum libidinem but as exact Physitians Apothecaries per pondus mensuram by weight and measure by the rule and standard of the Laws of God and man which give or restore or preserve to every one what is their own by such purchase donation descent and honest industry wherein their rights are made good by Law and which they have no way forfeited by any injury to the publique of which the Laws of the Land and lawful Magistrates are the only lawful Judges Let them not think by a little Fasting-spittle to cure the hurts of Church and State nor yet by their solemne feasts This is the fast and this the feast the Lord hath chosen comely for true relion and wholesome for the Nation To loose the bands of wickedness to undo heavy burthens to break every yoak of unrighteous decrees and acts to restore what is unjustly that is without law taken away from any man to do as they would be done unto to deal justly to all men to shew mercy even in deserved Justice and after all to walk humbly with God This do O ye Physitians of my people and you shall live This do and the daughter of my people shall live being throughly healed of the wounds she hath received in the house of her seeming friends For it was not an open Enemy of the heathens round about which hath done her all this hurt But her own Children Let them cease from being rebellious Children companions of Adulterers Robbers and Murtherers return to that duty they owe to their God and their civil Parents to their Country and their Church or to that pitty and compassion they ow to their Children and posterity whose teeth will certainly be set on edge by the sower grapes their fathers have eaten Jer. 31.29 Then shall health spring forth speedily righteousness shall go before and the glory of the Lord be thy rearward Then shall they be as Fathers and sons too of the Nation who shall build the old wast places repair the breaches and raise up the foundations of many generations which have been overthrown overthrown overthown after they had continued firme for many ages as to the stability of Church and State under Gods indulgence and the care of good Magistrates But since these Tamperers are so justly and severely reproached by God and the Prophet for their slight healing which was indeed none at all the more cruel by how much they were more cunning to keep the daughter of my people in continual pain and themselves in constant practice and pay It will not be amiss more particularly to examine in the sence of Gods Spirit and his Prophet whence this malice or mistake had its rise how this slight healing did befall the daughter of his people and how it is to be avoided as much as death and hell and devil First it comes by unskilful Empiricks such as neither understand the Science of Physick nor the Art of Chyrurgery neither the cause nor the symptoms nor the proper and specifick medicines for such hurts and diseases as Church and State may labor under which possibly may be as many as the natural bodies of men are subject to if a man had a true Anatomy of the parts and constitution with all accidental distempers incident to the body Politick from within or without When men of little or no literature of as little experience in matters of policy and prudence of mean capacity and education of small minds and narrow souls do undertake the cure who are easily deluded and gulled byassed and swerved with fair words specious pretences and partial yea private interests especially if these novel interests have any smack or tincture fucus or form of more than ordinary godliness when these easie shallow and inconsultive men of giddy heads and rash hands full of childish credulity and popular formalty come to the helm of Church and State to rule and steer all they look more to the spreading of their sails than to that due balast and lading or to that right cynosure and compass of Law and Justice which God and their Country have prescribed Gonsalvo whom Guicciardine calls the great Captain of his time was wont to say that a General or cheif Commander of an army had need have thirty years experience to breed him accomplished to all the abilities requisite to such a place on whose prudent conduct the lives of so many men depend Yea and whole Nations too truly no less time is needfull to train up a compleat Counsellor of State a meet Physitian for the daughter of my people It is
vessel is sooner sodered and new burnished then a new one malleated out of the rough mass or wedge of mettal Thus Dum vitant stulti vitia in contraria currunt for want of wise honest and steady Physicians remedies over-driven prove worse than the diseases and a Nation is further off from cure after twenty years passionate practice than it was at the first cause of complaint This fals out when Phisitians grow so sympathising or symbolising with their patients pevish passions and humors that they flatter their diseases and fear nothing so much as to cure them with that discreet severity and moderation which permits not the outery when greater than the grief nor the importune clamer of the Patient either to keep him short or carry him beyond the reality of the disease Since health of the body as vertue which is the health of the mind consists {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} in the mean between extreames T is too true as in Patients and Physitians so in people and Parliaments perit judicium quum res transit in affectum when Physitians so much mind their patients distemper and clamor that their minds contract a disease that sets them next dore to a kind of raving or madness or dotage of which all men are thought in some degree guilty who either much over-do or underdo what they undertake to do as he that broke the pitcher which he was to wash and burnt or pulled down that house which he had commission onely to sweep or repair and cut off that head for aking which was onely to be shaved and fortified with some defensive plaister against the rheume To these transports of some men who were much swayed by the passionate outcries of some people we owe the loss of our antient Government and have run the sad ventures yea shipwracks of Anarchy so long in both Church and State 4. When these pretended healers look more at the lesser symptoms of the diseases or at the putid excresencies of the sore than at the root and fountaine of the malady when they regard more the sufferings of a Nation then their own or other mens gross sins and are more sensible of mans prejudices and displeasures than Gods It is a rule in Physick In complicatis morbis acutiori attendendum In complicated diseases the maine care must be to give check to that which is most accute malignant and predatorious of the spirits for if these faile or be not refocillated both nature and art as Hippocrates says must needs faile they are then very impertinent Physitians who seeing a Patient in an high feavour are more solicitous to take away some cloths or covering which seems too hot on them than to mitigate the flames of that fevorish furnace which boyles within them Here by gross mistakes some Physitians take non causam pro causa Angry at some Ceremonies and scared with meer shadows more than with gross sins that are most immoral and substantially evil as I may say This runs even reformation it self many times to a deformity while Physitians look so much to some apparences of evil that they neglect what is most appearent evil Thus men quarelled in their little cavils at the Liturgie so much about some things they less fancyed or understood as to the antiquity and innocency of their sence and use that they never regarded either the excellent matter and forme of the prayers and administrations in it or their own dull cold and formal application to them when indeed they deserved for their divine truth to be beleived and for their publique use and charity to be entertained with humble intentive fervent and devout affections the fault was not in the holy formes but the unholy formality Nor lastly did they bethink themselves of the great want which plainer people have of such wholesome compleat wonted formes of publique prayers and administrations which they can best learn and understand and intend for dayly variety in religion such as some men affect is almost as inedifying to poor country people as Latin service nor is any Symbol of Christian union more proper in any Church and if it could be in all the Churches then to have where ever they come the same Summary sence and solemnity of holy mysteries and such duties are ill left to all private mens fancys yea or to all Ministers suddain and extemparary abilities though they be able men If lying and swearing and riot and luxury if Schisme and perjury and sacriledg and Hypocrisie and bloodguiltiness if covetousness and ambition and immoderate revenge if discontent and impatience against God and Superiours if malice and high uncharitableness if bribery and corruption if popularity formality idleness and debauchery in Ministers if peoples immoralities and profaness factiousness Atheistical indifferency and rude insolencies if these and the like great hurts of the daughter of my people had been cordially reformed and by reinforced laws with due execution of both civil and ecclesiastical discipline had been so purged out or curbed and abated that the flagrancy and predominancy of them had been generally allayed doubtless the publique welfare might have consisted with those other things of convenient and comely use in Church and State at which some mens zeal did so rise and over-boyle that it almost quenched all Religion and civility to sordid confusions 5. When these pretending healers do either by immoderate tampering and dilatoriness multiply diseases or by stopping one orifice indiscreetly make a score or force ill humors to shift their seat and transfer diseases like the running gout from one part to another from the head to the hands thence to the feet and at last to the heart still the inward malady remains unpurged the daughter of my people as to the main is not healed so to rectifie the more feared than felt excesses of Monarchy and Episcopacy a greater Tyranny may be easily raised not only in a downright Anarchy but there are tyrannous and tedious burthens to be feared even in the best Democracy or Aristocracy that can be modelled for Church or State where as the teeth of harrows are worse than the point of one sword so many Reguli or Masters are like to be more inaccessible more untractable more intolerable more chargeable to the people than any one can be and no less both severe and supercilious besides less satisfactory and honorable For it is more ingenuous to be a Subject under some person of ancient honor and eminency than to have a snip of Soveraignty among others that are but upstarts and equals I believe the Peers and Gentry of England lived much more freely amply and magnificently though Subjects under one Soveraign than the best Heres or Burgomasters do among the Low-country-men or Swisses And so did the Clergy of England under excellent Bishops beyond what they ever will under the rigor of others who have their horns though they endure no head the little finger
of rigid Presbytery hath been heavier than the loyns of moderate Episcopacy It is a Monstrous either want of skil or of conduct or constancy for publique Physitians to let things run to such impolitick lapses under the pretence of curing the hurts of the daughter of their people as while they sought to recover the frequency of Parliaments thereby to moderate all enormityes and remedy all burthens inconvenient in Church and State that at last the publique welfare should come to that sad pass or ill fare that some things called Parliaments should be thought the greatest publick grievance and what convention is there so illegal and contemptible which some flatterers of times and powers will not christen and consecrate with the venerable name of that almost sacred Senate How desperate and sad a State is it when any grievance should be called a Parliament or any Parliament prove a publick grievance as if Parliament had the name from Parium Populi Principis lamentum the lamentation or complaint of Prince Peers and People or their contempt till at length even military insolency dared to adventure as the requital of the long and great pay which they as Soldiers had received from their dear Country-men to garble and purge to shufle and cut to lay out and take in Parliaments at their pleasure like a stock at Gleek yea and not onely to act against them and without them but above them in a game of Government wholy new to England called Stratocracy Mean while good God! what became of the wits of some of our wise Physitians and our confident Surgeons Could they not have foreseen and prevented by discreet counsels and moderate methods of seasonable applying State Physick those swoonings and heart faintings those convulsions and dyings those groans and bleedings of Church and State of Kingdoms and Commonwealth of Laws and Religion of Magistracy and Ministry which have all suffered in twenty years of tedious attending their cure more hurts than they ever did for an hundred years by all the diseases that were pretended so necessary to be cured that rather than fail all even head and members limb and life it self must be ventured where was the vertue of former oathes of late Protestations of all their Covenants and Vows the Antidotes which they had taken or given against Anarchy and Apostacy Sage and well-advised Physitians must still consider how subtil and Proteus-like distempered humors and spirits are in a body that is foul they instantly being moved but not removed slide as from one part so from one disease to another as easily transmuting interests and dangers as the scales of a ballance go up and down when more weight is cast into one than the other it presently follows the preponderancy and grows lower when heavier which was before higher because lighter So in publick or epidemick distempers preventive and prophylactick medicines must be used as well as Cathartick and purgative else things will by secret and insensible steps suddenly vary from one extream and oppression to another as the cold and hot sits of a Quartane especially if the grievances of sharp and unseasonable remedies like some corroding plaisters follow the grievances of the sore and disease so either stupifying instead of suppling or exasperating instead of mollifying or cutting noble parts quite off instead of reducing them to due temper and proportion State Physitians must be as wary of using too much of the salt of popular Proposals and the niter of levelling principles as other Physitians are of using Quick-silver uncorrected or unmortified for they are both most acute poysons if not well prepared and aptly applied by which either unfit or unseasonable or immoderate or rude or forcible applications men are quickly carried beyond their own duties and others deserts for want of that caution conscience charity and discretion which is necessary for all those who meddle in matters of life and death in private much more publick healing and welfare else the quick as well as the dead flesh may be cut off and consumed the vital as well as vitiated spirits and humors may be exhausted The very Arteries and Sinews of Government are prone to be rotted and the whole fabrick of the body will fall one limb from another Especially when by the fury or fear of Prince or people things are brought to that pass that all other medicines being laid aside nothing is made use of but the weapon-salve that ungnentum armarium the sword of war which hath seldome the vertue of Achilles his sword which was to heal as well as to wound hence follow those horribe healings which like Simeons and Levi's cure of the Sichemites when they were sore destroy both prince and people either lopping off the armes and legs of the body Politick the strength and multitude of the Nobility Gentry and Communalty which is the glory of a King and Kingdome or else by a dreadful abscission cropping off the very head of Soveraginty from the body of the polity the first reduceth a Nation to its stumps and makes it a cripple a long time the other makes both its appearance and its motions as monstrous and deformed as if a body should move without an head as it was in those dayes when there was no King in Israel or as the Giant Polyphemus did when blind he gropeth for Vlysses so are a great people when in the darkness and confusion of Anarchy they seek in vaine for that order wisdome and authority which are the body soul and spirit of Government and are eminently comprehended in the head with which the whole body best corresponds when happily compacted together This principal part once taken away by violence the body like fouls whose heads are wrong off may flutter for a while with blind inordinate and dying motions but no better can be expected unless as in Hydra many heads could presently spring up in stead of one which is neither easily nor suddenly done in Nations whose native courage emulation spirit and metal raiseth up many rivals for soveraignty and as many disdainful enemies against all that either obstruct their pretended power or affect to enjoy it themselves 6. When these pretending healers are much for a new Paracelsian practice for unexperimented applications or medicaments of their own inventions which are occasionally extracted and Chymically made with sin and force by themselves and such as are of their faction but they do not natively flow as the balme of Gilead doth from the tree of good Government and polity that is from those Laws and constitutions which have been long approved as most proper for the Nations welfare which without doubt are best able and most apt both to preserve and restore the health of the daughter of my people no counsel practice or power of Prince or Potentate or Parliament that are praeter or contra-legal can be for long or sound healing but rather proves more noxious and infestive at last
have Councels power and Authority interest and influence fit to advance the publick welfare by correcting the distempers and reducing all to a due constitution of health They that is 1. Those Princes or Kings Judges and Chief Magistrates who being themselves vicious or Idolatrous or Hypocrites or vain turning Piety into Policy and Religion into reason of state not onely infect the people by the contagion of an impious example but are willing the people should be as bad as themselves That for their enormities being followed by their Subjects they may seem less by the Imitation and as it were Approbation Kings that rule their people not by Law and Justice but by will and Passion more for their own pleasure than the publick Welfare that are great Oppressors flaying as well as fleecing their people yea breaking their bones and eating their flesh Ruling men not as rational creatures of the same Creator nor as brethren in the same Saviour sons to the same Father of their Countrey but as mere Slaves and Vassals forgetting that every King hath a King in heaven above him to whom he is subject and must give account not onely of the hurt he hath done and the wounds he hath made on the soules and bodies the estates and consciences of his people but also of their Health and good he hath left undone when it was in his place and power like the Sun in the firmament or as a little God among men to have been {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} a Catholick good to Church and state that thousands might have been blessed by them in this world and to eternity blessed God for them Not only the hands but the mouths eyes of Princes are healing of their peoples evils if they will but rebuke and reprove frown upon and discountenance evil doers Mens sins and Accounts enlarge according as their influence and relations ampliate which carry their obligations with them to God and man Great place and power are of all things most to be avoided if they onely serve to aggrandise a mans sins either of omission or commission for to augment his Judgment and Eternall torment 2. Those subordinate Counsellors and inferior Magistrates who are under the command of man and more of God these heal slightly when they are not men of Integrity fearing God and hating Covetousness but crafty Complyers with the inordinate lusts and passions with the illegal commands of either Princes or people contrary to their oaths so by flattery or faction to make way for their Ambition and gain by the undeserved favor of either or dividing one from the other by a most unnatural war and jealousie Such as please man rather than God and love themselves more than their Country or the Church such as prefer their bodies and Estates before their souls and put the healings of the Church and true Religion in the last place or Rear of affaires and when they profess to heal the Irreligion of others by severe Acts and Ordinances against Adultery Swearing Prophaness debauchery drunkenness corruption injustice c. yet themselves are higher by the shoulders than the most of the people in these and other enormities As if Peers or privy-Counsellors or Counsellors of State or Parliament-men had a Priviledg to sin more or to repent and suffer less than other men Nothing weakens the credit and Authority of any publick Lawes so much as when the Law-givers least observe them or are the first that break them like Physicians that prescribe strict diet to their Patients but themselves indulge all manner of Epicurisme Here every one is prone to retort Physician heal thy self The best things are commonly done by the best hands Religio medici Conscience is here required as well as his Science They will hardly do their Country good who care not either to serve God or to save their own souls Men should make conscience of private actions much more of publick adventures which are of grand consequence as the undertakings in war and not to be done rashly slovenly slightly and indifferently Nor may publick Counsellors or Ministers of State like Achitophel think they do wisely or safely because they go with the vogue and stream of times with the winde and tide or humor of some people in their prevalent Factions discontents and clamors by which vote Christ himself was crucified Mark 15.13 Common people in their Paroxismes or fits of discontent like sick and pained patients are ill Dictators to their Physicians who must advise better for them than they would for themselves else they will heal their hurts very slovenly slowly and ill-favouredly to their own sin and reproach as well as others pain and charge Nor is it enough for Aarons excuse to say The people are set upon mischief when they would needs have him make them visible Egyptian Gods to go before them under the figure of a golden calf to be instead of their true and invisible God publick Persons and Honorable Counsellors as Joseph of Arimathea must not go quâ itur sed qua eundum as peoples fury or the prevalent Faction drives them but as the Word of God and the Lawes of the land direct them else they shall bear not onely their own but the iniquity of their people who sin and suffer unwarned and naked hurt and unhealed upon the account of such cowardly Counsellors and corrupt Magistrates or Ministers of State all whose wisdomes will come to nought and they will at length like Achitophel be snared in the halters of their own twisting 3. Those Priests and Prophets those Pastors and Teachers those Bishops and Presbyters who are in Publick Place and sacred Authority as to the things of God the matters of Religion and mens souls good These heal slightly when they do the Work of God negligently when they skin over scandalous publick sins as Ely to his Sons with soft reproof when they sowe pillows under Princes Parliaments and peoples elbowes when they fear the face and offence of men more than of God when they are workmen that need to be ashamed their Lives and Actions confuting their Instructions and their doing making their Doctrine to blush when they heal publick Enormities or calamities by I know not what novel Inventions and magick spels of fine words which are no better than the powder of a post compared to the approved Catholick prescriptions of 1600 years which were soveraign for Clergy and Laity to preserve order and unity soundness of Doctrine and inscandalousness of manners in the Church of Christ under Christian Kings and Queens who were bountifull nursing Fathers and Mothers to the Church of Christ and the Clergy yet not by the Dominion and pomp luxury and tyranny of Bishops nor yet by the Factious and refractory humours of Presbyters much less by the schismatick sauciness of people who cast off both Bishops and Presbyters but by the fatherly
gravity prudence and Eminence of godly and Reverend Bishops by the brotherly assistance and son-like subordination of sober and orderly Presbyters by the service and obsequiousness of humble and diligent Deacons and by the meek submission of Christian people to the Care Monition Counsel and respective Superiority of every order as sheep to their Chief shepherds and their Assistants or Attendants Divide this chain of Church-Vnion Order and Communion in vain shall we talk of healing the Flock of its scabs and scratches or hurts I confess that I own and ever shall do Primitive Episcopacy with Presbytery so that as St. Paul speaks in another case Neither of them should be without the other in the Lord Neither of them oppressed or extirpated but so regulated and incouraged as I believe all moderate and learned men desire if it be my fault and errour that I prefer this Holy and Catholick Composition before any other late simple receipts of Church Government by which to heal any Church Truly I owe this my Judgement to all the Councils to all the Fathers to all the Church Historians to be best witnesses of truth in all times who have unanimously conspired to lead me into this opinion agreeable to the Word of God the example of Christ the practise of the Apostles and the parallel customes of all Churches which is besides mightily confirmed in me by the wisdom piety and prosperity of this Church under good Bishops since its Reformation which none in the world exceeded for health and happiness for sound and sincere Christians till some mens itching and scratching too much even till the blood came and others either not applying seasonable Salves or else sharper Remedies than perhaps were necessary or prescribed by the wisdom of our Church Laws have festred the hurts and sores of Religion that they now seem almost incurable till such hands are by Gods goodness applyed and such Medicines used as are most proper for a sick and diseased Church which hands and Medicines I cannot think ought to be Secular but rather Ecclesiastick Such in a free Synod of learned Divines should as a Colledge of spiritual Physitians advise and prepare for there is as much need of calling for free Synods as Free Parliaments The want of the former G. Naz. deplores as the occasion of so much Faction and Vexation in the Church in his times Lay-men though learned able and honest have enough to do in Lay Matters Church-men have nothing left them to do as to Secular Councels or State Concernments therefore ought not to be excluded from their proper sphere Church affairs being the best skilled of any men else they are ill imployed in the things of God for the searching supplying and healing the hurts of the Church and true Religion in its Doctrine Discipline Order Vnity and Authority That maxime is true of the Clergy as well as of other Orders of men Vnicuique credendum est in sua arte Every man is most to be credited in what he is most skilled I am sure as to the point of Physitians no people that are wise and would be healed in good earnest but are careful to get the best and ablest unless they undervalue their health and lives and to save charges will venture to dye Fourthly They That is those Souldiers and Military men Chief Commanders and Others under them these heal but sleightly when either they will be as the Clowns all-heal the onely Professors of State Physick and undertake all cures in Church and State or else they think and act as if there were no such way to heal soundly as to make greater wounds and bruises by irreconcilable distance by preposterous power and violent impressions even on those that both commissionate them and recompence them They are Iron Heads Brazen Faces and Stony Hearts who crye that Might gives Right And all power is of God though unjustly gotten and so used against the Word of God and the Laws of the Land such is a commission the Devil may boast of as well as any evil doers but little to the comfort of either when mens will is their onely warrant in Law and sad successes their onely security in Conscience when Souldiers make their backs and bellies the Commonwealth putting their Interest of pay and power into the ballance against all others when they are but as the dust of the ballance to the weight of the Nation for number and estates When men of War know not the way of peace but onely to avoid it seeking to make themselves necessary by keeping the wounds open and the sores raw of a Nation pleading necessity and native Liberty and I know what Good Old Cause or Metaphysical godly interests unknown to our Lawes or fore-fathers and it had been happy if we never had known them Lastly When Military men are injurious rapacious and insolent lovers of themselves more than of God or the Church or their Countrey when they look more to their Guns and Pistols than to God or godliness to their swords than to his Word and to the Riddles of Providence more than the Rules of conscience resolved to sacrifice the daughter of their people as Agamemnon did Iphigenia or Jephta his on the Altar of the Military interest These will be smart and chargeable healers of the hurts of the daughter of their people when they shall be such as prepare Warre against any that speak of Peace when such as esteem the speedy healing of their Countrey to the publick peace to be their greatest hurt when they grow so desperate as they had as live be damned as fairly disbanded though in order to the publick ease and tranquillity When as no good Souldier that either fears God or loves his Countrey or reverences the Church or hopes to save his own Soul but will most seriously strive to avoid the latter and most willingly submit to the former without the sin of Rebellion or Mutiny being content with his wages and more that his sharp work is at an end and no more need of cutting and lancing remembring that it is not multitude or Power or Armies or Armes that shall help injurious and dissolute Souldiers from the vengeance of God when they have deserved it by such wicked Counsels and Actions as cannot be carried on but with the Devils maxime Scelera sceleribus tuenda continued injuries and cruelties to the daughter of their people to Church and State to their brethren and Countrey men yea to their fathers and posterity But our hope is that God hath by his sore rebukes and defeats of some who trusted too much in the swords and spears in their own Armes their horses legs taught others more wisdome justice and modesty yea and stirred up such a spirit of Christian valour moderation and honour in some gallant Souldiers of more just Principles and nobler Spirits that they will not rest till they have put the hurts of the daughter of their people
which are now chronick or inveterate of many years continuance and very deep reaching from head to feet into such a posture of healing and into such healers hands as may be best able and honest on which account as these Souldiers who can do nothing against the truth and Law against Church and State but for them will deserve great honour and rewards from the Nation and its Parliaments full and free So people must blame themselves if they chuse for Healers or Physitians such men as are neither for wisdom and skill nor for courage or conscience nor for honesty or vertue nor for good example or reputation or yet for well-gotten estates of any value or publique interest nor ever probable to heal others since themselves are sick and sore either of fear and guilt or of Schism and Faction or of superstition and sacriledge or of Rebellion and Anarchy or of the itch of novelty and mange of popularity or of the plague of immorality and debauchery From such Healers both Civil Sacred and Military so unhealed so unwholesome so infectious so destructive to Church and State to Law and Gospel to Justice and Religion good Lord deliver the daughter of my people 5 Lastly Not only these unskilful or unfaithful or unwilling persons of publique influence are blamable for not healing the hurts of a Nation when they have authority and opportunity as well as power or for healing so slightly that things are never the better nay worse and worse But further there lyes no small sin and blame upon the Patient the people or community First when they are not conscienciously careful what Physitians or Surgeons they make choice of and put themselves with their lives estates liberties and lawes bodies and souls into their hands but adventure upon every pragmatique Emperick and confident Undertaker Next when this is done commendably as truly I am prone to believe it was in the first Elections of the long Parliament if they could have quietly kept together without tumultuating factions and fatal divisions for people then not to acquiesce as they ought under God in their skill and honesty onely following them with such modest Petitions as are necessary and such complaints as are comely also with their prayers to God for a blessing But for the populacy then to cluck into parties and conspiracies according to the cunning of some Agitators for novelty and factors for troubles then to break out into tumultuary rudenesses and seditious menaces and at last to become dictators to their Physitians and like gouty feet to threaten the head and shoulders and hands if they be not cured of their anguish after their own fancy not after the Rules of Art and Law of Health These are so far from being Healers that they are the greatest hinderers of their own and others publique health in the world yea the venome and acrimony of these fretting and turbulent humors subtilly diffused among the divided vulgar and by their means re-infused into the publique hurts and real grievances cannot but strangly increase the malignity of distempers throughout the whole habit of the body which {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} pestilent and depraved state of the generality of the people divided and distracted like Demoniacks or possessed with fears and jealousies with envies and hatred with hopes and other unreasonable passions is much harder to be cured and more dangerous to the publique than the disaffection or inflammation the discontent or ambition of any one part of the body which is easily corrected or counter-ballanced with the Antidote as it were of all other sound parts which are far the major number When therefore a sick Nation hath done its duty in the choice of its Healers The way is to assert the Honor and Authority of those orderly Physicians not to suffer any intruding Empyricks or extruding Mountebanks by fraud or force to drive these away that way may be made for their cruel activity and unsatiable gain It will prove an endless and costly cure which permits it self to every one that hath a minde to be tampering The best way is patiently to submit to their own Parliamentary choice and to Gods dispensation by their means In this way there is hope if people can be still they may see the Salvation of God Patients will make mad work if they may controle and cudgel their Physicians Although it is possible that the crying sins committed in a Nation may be such that no outward means can cure its sores and maims especially if the noblest and most vital parts of the body being cut off or grievously wounded there be a clamor of blood unjustly shed crying to heaven for vengeance which vengeance if a Nation will hope to escape and be healed they must be sure not to adopt the sin by after silence or Smotherings But rather so publickly to expiate it in wayes of Repentance as it may not be imputed to the whole Nation and their Posterity As the desperate Jews imprecated His blood be upon us and our children in the case of Christs being put to death by envy and faction by popular clamors and Statepolicies when against all justice of God and man yea against the sence and conscience of Pilate none of the justest judges he was condemned to dye to gratifie a popular and military importunity to which some Scribes and Pharises Hypocrites together with some covetous and ambitious Priests had exalted the credulous and cruel common people who are prone to triumph in the Tragick executions and ruines of their betters and Superiours as a kinde of victory over the others greatness and a levelling of eminent honor to their own meanness and baseness 6. But It is now time for me in order to give way to the pains of my learn'd and reverend Successor and to avoid the tyring of your patience at the first Stage when you are to go a second It is time I say for me to bring up the Rear and to present you in the Sixth particular with the vera sanandi methodus the true method of publick cures of healing the hurts of the Daughter of my people in Church or State For the precipitant preposterous or presumptuous neglect of which these Medicasters are here blamed reproached and threatned by the Spirit of God with whose Philanthropy as with every good man that politick and indeed pious because charitable maxime beares sway Salus publica suprema lex The welfare of the whole in all its integral members and essential parts as compacted by the constitution and order of the publick polity is the supream Law rule measure and end of all just Councels and honest actions which aym at the health or healing of a Nation As {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} is {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} Beauty is the due proportion of parts with decent colour So {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} Health consists
chief Magistrate of a Commonwealth to be similis altissimo as high as the highest in three Kingdoms which unity of this Church those have sought most subtilly to divide whose interests and purposes was to destroy it that by balancing of parties they might better keep up themselves as dancers on the rope are wont to do This restoring of the Church to its pristine unity is to be done by such an harmony of Doctrine as may be publickly owned and confessed by such an uniform way of worship as shall be publickly recommended and encouraged by such an authoritative and orderly Church Government among Bishops Presbyters and People as may carry on the Discipline of the Church for Ordination and Censure with gravity and honor with piety and charity redeeming both holy things and the Ministers of them from that vulgar insolency and Plebeian contempt under which they are fallen and have long lain either by their own indiscretion levity and divisions or by the petulancy force or fraud of others whose aim is to have no Presbyters as well as no Bishops yea and no Churches of the Reformed Religion That lenitive of equanimity forbearance and moderation in respect of consciencious Dissenters from the publique consent customs and constitutions in the Church which Christian charity requires and publique peace with safety may bear will best be prepared and applied when we fully see what is noxious malicious and intolerable what is only inconvenient and imprudent or infirm and venial in mens opinions and pretensions to be sure such a wise method may be used and such a course taken to have able Ministers and honest Magistrates concur in their judgement and joynt endeavors that the Justice of the one and the gentleness of the other the ability and sanctity of both in their places and performances may be such as shall render the established Religion so venerable and conspicuous as will in a few years draw all sober men to it when they shall see nothing in it but what is for the main conformable to Gods Word and necessary either for the being ot wel-being of Humane and Christian Societies As Civil so Ecclesiastical hurts are best that is soonest easiest surest healed revertendo ad leges bonas antiquas by returning as the wounded Hart to Dictamnum to those Laws and Canons wâ— are not therefore bonae quia antiquae but therefore antiquae quia bonae in which the aequum unum bonum make the vetustum Their verity equity and piety gave rise to their antiquity and their antiquity gave reverence and solemnity to their equity or goodness T is certain there can be no compleat health in the body till every part every limb every vein every vessel doth its Office in due time and place irregularities must be rectified defects supplied excesses repressed ill humors purged and all reduced by Law to good order A blessed work and to be done with as much Moderation and gentleness as the fidelity of the cure will permit and the spreading of the disease doth require wherein many parts may by weakness or by nearness to the fons morbi the first peccant or ill affected part have contracted sad distempers which will easily be cured of their anguish if the evil neighborhood be mended Here generous and gracious remissions are just and Christian to misled multitudes and to such whose penitent errors shew they were not of malice but credulity and mistake who are more zealous now for health than ever they were to be debauched and disordered so much to their own and the publique affliction Acts of pardon Amnesty or Oblivion are excellent lenitives Publico bono tam publicae quam privatae simultates injuriae sunt condonandae to pardon as well publique as private losses and injuries to the publique peace to interpret the intent and meaning of either side to have been good who persist not in evil the zeal of some to maintain their Loyalty to the King for which they thought they had the clearest commands of Gods Laws and mans The zeal of others to preserve the lawful priviledges and fixed authority of Parliaments against any thing that by violent overthrowing of those must needs hazard the overthrow of all possibly neither of these parties might be so bad or blameable as to the first intentions but that they may easily be reconciled in the medium which both first professed to intend namely King and Parliament setled laws and established Religion if this had been kept to the quarel had been soon ended in Church and State the misery was that by jealousies and misunderstandings the passions and transports of both sides might so overbear them as to occasion those sad conflicts and consequences upon both which neither of them at first intended but deprecated and detested mean time while humors were in motion new and unexpected diseases got head under the name of interest of State of liberty and common equity which had no law little reason or Religion So between the Episcopal Presbyterian and Independent Parties much of the acidness and sharpness of the humor would be allayed if this Poltice of charitable censure and interpretation were applyed one all sides that the first did but aim to maintaine the order and eminency of presidential Episcopacy which was so universal so antient so primitive so apostolical and so prosperous in the Church of Christ the second designed onely to bring Episcopacy to such a paternal temperament with Presbytery that the whole Clergie of a Diocess and the concerns of Religion might not be exposed to one mans sole jurisdiction without the such joynt counsel consent and assistance of Ministers as is safest for Bishops Presbyters and People the third of Independents or Congregationists which seemed to stickle for the interests of people in religious transactions where their souls are so much concerned what Minister they have and how both he and others of their congregation behave themselves either to the edification and comfort or the scandal and grief of that part or members of the Church with which they actually congregate and communicate It seems but agreable to the ancient usage of the Churches of Christ in St. Cyprians Tertullians and Irenaeus his time that no publique transactions much less impositions touching Religion should be made without fairly aquainting the Clergy and Christian people too with the grounds and reasons of them that Church-government might not seem to be a tyranny or an arbitrary and absolute domineering over the faith and consciences of Christs flock but a mutual and sweet conspiring of the Shepherds with the sheep to make each other happy in truth and love by orderly authority and due subordination I should be glad to see the beams of this candor this kindness this charity shine in all faces from all sides that the Shiboleths of different dialects and designes the carnal and unhappy discriminations of I am of Paul I of Apollos and I
of Cephas might be laid aside by being all for and of Christ who is not and ought not and cannot ether truly in himself or comfortably as to any Christians and churches be divided let all like straight lines from the several points of the circumference be drawn true to the centre of Gods glory the publique peace and the good of souls no doubt we shall by meeting in those come so nigh to each other that all will rejoyce in the harmony and concurrence who do not seek the ruine of this Church and the reformed Religion and indeed the differences of honest Protestants are but small compared to the bonds of union in which they do agree as to doctrinals morals and essentials nor are we hard I hope to be reconciled as to prudentials if we could meet freely debate soberly and submit humbly to the publique votes and results of the Major part of Parliaments and Synods without which submission all counsels and all government depending upon suffrages must needs be vaine and dissolved either into Tyranny or Ataxy as the learned Grotius observes in his Batavick history Restat ut pauciores pluribus cedant hoc uno stant populorum imperia aliter casura To conclude let every one keep in Gods way which is the way of peace and holiness of duty to God and man let good Christians entertain good thoughts and give good words to each other good ayre conduceh much to recovery uncharitable speeches and sinful courses which are but halitus Diaboli the breath of the Divil or the exhaltation of our own foul hearts or the eructations of hell render the very aire in which men live unwholesome and the very Senates or Synods where such men meet grow infective by foul lungs and putid breaths Let us privately mourn over the daughter of our people for the hurts which our sins have either first inflicted on her or deserved for her or festred and inflamed or at least hindred from healing by childish pevishness or popular pertinacies or Sinister designs or politique jealousies lay these aside the work of healing will go on for not outward applications so much as inward sound principles and honest perswasions do heal as the outward plaisters and unguents or balsoms do not heal wounds by adding any matter to the part or the whole but healing flows from an internal native principle so soon as the noxious humours are purged and the proud or dead flesh removed which hinder the closure of parts and the digesture of good supplies Lastly let us in patience and prayers possess our souls and wait for the saving health of Gods salvation who can best ordain peace for us who hath smitten us and only can heal us by allaying and composing the spirits of honest-meaning men by making them to be of one mind by suggesting good counsels which no passions shall stop or private interests prevent by shewing us the way of peace and guiding us in it It is time for us to accept of the long punishment God hath inflicted on us take heed like King Ahaz of sinning more and more in our affliction by adding drunkenness to thirst confusion to rebellion and desolation to division Do not listen to those charmers and cheaters who will pretend you are healed or the daughter of your people is not hurt or she is much mended or she is not to be cured but only in those ways which their popular partial tumultuary bloody and violent heads have invented practised and pursued to the intolerable charge and anguish of the Nation If it be publique perfect peace peace as some have pretended if she be indeed healed whence are those moribundae palpitationes deadly pantings and fainting fits into which she falls so oft What means the running Issues the putid sores and purulent matter which daily is vented in such pamphlets of scurrility and papers of discontent as shew the fedity pain and shame of our times and Nation what a scorn and derision what a hissing and ashonishment is she become at home and abroad by the impatience and contempt of those useless yea hurtful means which some Empiricks have rudely applied and variously tampered with Ask all parts of the body politick if they be yet healed what an Asthma or difficulty of breathing have we had since the breath of our nostrils hath been oppressed as to that order and government that soveraign publique honor and highest authority which belongs to the Nation as its crown and glory no less than those properties Liberties and Laws or that industry peace and security which are due to every private honest man Ask the Nobility and Peers if they think themselves yet healed of the wounds which some of their honors received in Jezreel when they gave themselves the first great blow by separating their Spirituals from their Temporals and instead of grave venerable Bishops who had for many hundred years sate in Parliament as Patres Pares to counsel with them they submitted their honors to such Presbyters as affected to be not only their Confessors but their Dictators Ask the Gentry and Commons in Parliament if they are yet fully healed of the hurts which first tumults and afterward mutinies with armed force have made on them Ask the generality of the Clergie or Ministers that ate truly such if they are healed of the hurts which Schism and Heresie prophaness and licenciousness Sacriledge and Ataxy contempt and confusion inordination and new Ordinations have made upon all holy Orders and Offices upon all publick duties of Religion and devotion Particularly Ask those poor but worthy Ministers who flagrante bello in cautelam were by way of caution ne noceant or by way of castigation quia nocuerunt for some light offences sequestred from their Livings and after silenced from all Officiating whether their punishment which was greater than their sin be yet taken off whether their first sequestration be not made a total and final deprivation of all livelihood and their Purgatory become an Hell out of which is no redemption by a summa justitia which looks like summa injuria Ask the whole People when their Representatives or Deputies meet as their mouthes whether they are healed or have any hope to be healed of those stabs and wounds which Oaths and Covenants and cross Engagements have made upon their souls by either ill taking the latter or ill keeping the former which were the first just and lawful ones which no Pope or People can dispense withal Ask all degrees of men whether they are healed as to their Laws Liberties Properties Peace Plenty Estates and Trade except it be very slightly or whether they expect to be soundly healed till such methods of healing are taken by wise honest impartial authoritative free and unanimous Physicians as may bring them to those tried and good applications both for diet and physick both repenting what hath been done amiss and returning to
slight healing 1. By unskilful undertakers to 〈◊〉 2 Tim. 3.5 Prov. 20.3 2. By unfaithful Isa. 5.13 Ier. 4â— 22. Tit. 1.11 Isai. 56.11 1 Cor. 15. Lopes was Physitian to Q. Elizabeth and suborned to poyson her Camden When transported with passion and opinion Ier. 5.31 Isa. 3.9 The {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} or transport 4. When they too much intend petty symptomes and neglect the main distempers The slight healing by taking away the Liturgy Grand neglects and petty severity 5. By immoderate and dilatory tamperings Of curing the hurt of Monarchy by Democracy and Episcopacy by Presbytery Of medicines become maladies The lubricity and subtilty of ill humors Of violent ways of healing Gen. 34.25 Prov. 14.28 Iudg. 21.25 Slight healers by new inventions and unexperienced applications Law the most healing Ier. 6.16 7 Healing by charmes and Parliaments Ier 7.4 Isa. 65·5 Mat. â—0 22 The spoâ—les of those Egyptians Isa. 5.20 1 Sam. 21.15 Rom 3.8 Isa. 61.8 Exod. 32.28.35 Numb. 16.7 8. Slight healing for want of constant application of good prescriptions 2 Chron. 16 1â— For too much trusting to Physitians Isa. 17.5 Of Patients idolizing their Physitian Eccles. 9 1â— Psa. 3.8 and 29.11 Psa. 47 1â— Ier. 2.30 Isa. 58. 2 Parliament Prayers in a Book called The ancient Prayers of the Church 5 The persons charged for slight healing Kings and soveraign Princes slight heaven Eph. 22.26 27. Pro. 28.15 16. Micah 3.2 3. 2 Counsellors and subordinate Magistrates slight Healers Exod. 18. â—â— Gal. 1.10 Luke 4.23 Exod. 32.22 Luke 93.51 Ezekiel 33. 1 Cor. 2.6 2 Sam. 17.23 3 Priests and Prophets Pastors and Ministers slight Healers 1 Sam. 2.22 Ezek. 13.18 The Harmony which ought to be in the Church in order to Healing Of Ecclesiastical Council or Free Synods Souldiers and Commanders slight healers The present hope of better things from Souldiers 2 Cor. 13.6 5 The patient blamable for its own slight healing 1 By not carefully applying to good Physitians 2 By popular conspiracies against them The danger of popular distempers Peoples due regard and submission to their right Physicians full and free Parliaments Some sins may keep the hurts of a people uncured Luke 27.25 Part. 6. The true method of sound healing 1 By putting themâ—elves into the hands of good Physicians able and honest By Physitians right discerning the disease and throughly searching the wounds Of fainthearted foolish false and flattering Physitians Matth. â— 13 Rev. 2.9 Healing of the Church and Religion Lev. 13 14. Of scandalous toleration in matter of Religion The practice of sincere and speedy healing 1. To purge a way what is noysom Psa. 119 126 Matth 13.23 2. To apply such wholesom medicines as are tried and proper â—â—â—â—dels of new Governments heal 〈◊〉 Acts 17.21 Luke â— Governmâ—nt must fit the genius of people Novel essays of Government dangerous To apply Catholick and compleating medicines Psal. 1â—â— 14 Of Ecclesiastical Synods to heal a Church Acts 15.6 Of charâ—table toleration Civil hurts healed by recourse to the Laws Of lenitives and modâ—ration in healing Acts of Oblivion Reconciling of parties 1 Pet. 5.3 Charity and cander among Christians 1 Cor. 1.12 and 3.3 Lib. 17. p 115 Fâ—llow holiness and peace will follow Mourn for sins Pray with patiâ—nce Isa 26.12 Isa 19.20 Lev. 26.41 2 Chron. 28.22 Beware of false Healers Appeal to all Estates whether healed Aâ—peal to all esteats whether healed The sence of the Nation Necessary freedome to speak of our hurts Pristine health was best Good words heal not Ier. 5.3