such children nor have so learned Christ as to expect his Kingdom to be of this world though in it yet not after its methods of the sword but by the word of truth and spirit of patience thus came the King of Sion the other by the sword of blood is a rare project for Muncer and Knipperdolling for Hacket and Arthington when they can be merry in peoples miseries with populus vult decipi decipiatur people have a mind to be deluded and t is fit they should be so when credulous people will believe in any spirit an hundred to one but some lying spirits and deceivers false Christs and false Apostles will come among them who shall make them believe light is darkness and darkness light that good is evil and evil good that their iron chains are bracelets of gold that factious Conventicles are purest Churches that Synagogues of Satan are the truest Jews or children of Abraham that partial Conventions and Senates sifted and purged affronted and bafled by tumultuary or armed force are full and free Parliaments Which name and thing of Parliament every sober and understanding English man justly venerates and highly esteems in their due and only true constitution so Parliaments are justly honored as flos corona gentis the cream flower and crown of a Nation the anchor and center under God of Laws Liberties Lives and honors of all that is dear to us in this world yea of our Religion too A Free and full Parliament is the very Palladium pacis publicae the best preserver and restorer of our peace publick health and all honest interests the most august and honorable Assembly in the world Quo sol illustriorem non aspicit as Bishop Andrews calls it in his Tortura Torti pag. 291. the best tempered constitutions of spirits and humors of power and counsel in a Nation the oracle of publique wisdom the magazine of publique strength the source and fountain of publique order and authority the treasury of our riches the sanctuary of true Religion the ark in which the Church of England is embarqued the Conservatory of both sanctity and civility the best umpire of our civil differences the most equanimous Censor and reformer of manners the grand Trustees of Church and State when so full and free as becomes men of conscience and honor Who would not submit their honor estate liberty life and all things temporal to such a Judicature of his Country-men such Arbitrators of the publique choise But to cry peace peace to the body when the whole heart is faint when the whole head is sick when the very brains are beaten out when the vital and best spirits of a Nation are almost expired and exhausted when the military and pretorian insolence shall stand over the Senate or Parliament as Hercules with his club over Hydra's many heads This partiality is such a tyrannous imposition on reasonable men as if they were commanded to believe and declare that a part is equal to or more than the whole that glow-worms are brighter than the Stars and Meteors or Comets more benigne than the Sun and Moon that all the wisdom and piety of a Nation were contained in a Knapsack as the Holy Ghost was carried in a Cloak-bag from Rome to Trent Men need but count the pole or tell noses to tell what a free and full Parliament means which comprehends all the Representatives and Trustees chosen by the Nation besides the Peers who were the great Council to the Prince Peace as health includes the good constitution of the whole but cheifly of the most Noble principal parts peace of Church and State at home and abroad will be far from that Nation whose publique counsels are at variance and their cheif Councellors are either fighters against themselves or oppressors of one another to serve some partiall which must needs be a Sinister base and bad interest for no counsel is good in or out of Parliament which is not for the publicks good in which every legal and just interest is contained Indeed it s a meer cheat put on the poor Patient the daughter of my people when vaine and empty words of peace peace are used and yet either the sword or the exactor or the oppressor devoureth every way and every day when God and man his word and the violated Laws peoples sad experience and tired patience their exhausted estates and dayly alarms proclaime there is no true peace no honest and just no safe and secure peace which indeed is not to be expected while such Witch-crafts are imposed and such wicked purposes partially and violently promoted utterly to deceive undo and destroy a people which brings me to the fourth particular Fourthly The {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} lye or fallacy which the Spirit of God by way of Irony expresseth they have healed thus they pretend and brag but slightly {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} super leve ut leviculum tanquam rem nihili {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} LXX despicientes vili-pedentes cum illusione Syr. cum ignominia verbis mendaciorum suorum Chald. Thus Translaters and interpreters render the word variously but to the same sence arguing the little respect of piety honesty equity and charity or humanity which was in these vaine glorious and ungracious healers who either wanted skill or will or power and influence or due authority or they were slighters and contemners of the publiques health onely intent to their private wealth and advantages They never searched the bottom of the Nations great crying sins disorders and sufferings nor applied seasonable just and meet remedies to either yea they festred and enflamed the lighter hurts to greivous ulcers small faults offences mistakes differences and jealousies which did arise in Church and State they either dressed these scratches with Vinegar and gall onely with sharp and picquent corrasives without any lenitive or moderation or else by a dilatory negligence and supercilious carelesnes they let publick distempers and hurts run on till they were less capable of any cure or patient of good applications Yea and by a superfluity of wanton cruelty they either widened the wounds and made their probes their punniards or else dressed them with poysoned spunges while they seem to purg them as one that is killed by a glyster or potion And at best by a most impupudent hipocrisie they have skinned over the hurts with some shew of setling what was shaken and of reforming what was amiss when indeed no men did more deform the beauty or ruine the welfare hinder the healing of the publique than these Healers by their enormious sins and outragious lusts by their unjust and violent actions by their partiality and impotency of their passions by their evil eyes their fowle breath and their rough hands which are the instruments of bad hearts and base minds Little or no publique healing is expectable from men that are
A SERMON PREACHED In St. Pauls Church London before the Right Honourable the Lord Major Lord General Aldermen Common Council and Companies of the Honourable City of London February 28. 1659. BEING A day of solemn Thanksgiving unto God for Restoring of the Secluded Members of Parliament to the House of Commons The Common Council And preserving the City and a Door of Hope thereby opened The fulness and freedom of future Parliaments The most probable means under God for healing the hurts and recovering the health of these three Brittish Kingdomes By JOHN GAVDEN D.D. Ezek. 21.26 27. Thus saith the Lord Remove the Diadem and take off the Crown this shall not be the same exalt him that is low and abase him that is high I will overturn overturn overturn it and it shall be no more untill he come whose it is and I will give it him Restat ut pauciores pluribus cedant hoc uno stant popularia imperia aliter casura H. Gro. Hist. Bet. l. 17. pag. 150. LONDON Printed for Andrew Crook at the Green Dragon in Pauls Church-yard 1660. Aleyn Major A Common Council holden the 29. of February 1659. Ordered that the thanks of this Court be given to Dr. Gauden who preached Yesterday before them at St. Pauls Church And that he from this Court be desired to print this Sermon SADLER To the right Honourable THOMAS ALEYN Lord Mayor of the City OF London THE Court of Aldermen and Common-Counsel AS by your Desire I was induced to preach the following Sermon so by your Order in Common Council I was requested to print what I preached I have obeyed you in both and supererogated in the later adding something prepared but omitted for want of time and a respect due to your expectation of a second and better course on that Festival This I have done not only as compliant with your Christian Commands but as solicitous to conform all my endeavours to the publick Good of your City and our common Countrey which a great part of the Church of Christ and many precious souls as well as mens bodies Lives Liberties Honours and Estates are embarqued All which have for our sins been long engaged in a tempest of War and sea of Blood nor have they been able to make any fair Port or happy Haven these many years since they lost their Pilots and Compass their King and Parliaments by the various Euroclydons of mens passions Lusts and Interests which have tossed them to and fro with every wind made great waste of all that is precious for Religion Justice and Honour besides Estates and Lives of men in the three Kingdomes threatning all either with speedy and utter Shipwrack by forreign Invasion or an everlasting storm by domestick confusions untill the unexpected and undecerned providence of God began to open to your and the Countryes prayers some door of hope by the prudent valiant and succesfull Conduct of the present Lord General Monck from whom all good men expect all good things nor can he deceive them without deceiving and destroying himself and his Countrie Your gratitude to God for this seasonable dawning of Mercy which seems to bespeak a great calm occasion'd your solemn Convention that day and my preaching to you In which work you cannot wonder if I endeavoured to shew my self a Work-man that needed not to be afraid or ashamed being very sensible with you of the great many and long hurts of the daughter of my people both in Church and State I then freely declared them to you I deplored them with you I proposed the methods of cure to you as fully as the time will permit and as freely as became my duty to my God and my conscience As I would not injure any man or fester the times so I abhor to flatter them which is the greatest injury a Preacher can do to Church and State Some I hear were offended then late of Christs of John Baptists and Saint Pauls preaching at the plain dealing I used which possibly was from thier overrawness and soreness more then from my roughness As I aim to do things faithfully personally so decently and discreetly Nor do I think I am to learn of those Censorious Catos how to preach any more then they will learn of me how to buy and sell or how to fight and war No man may wonder if I dare to reprove those sins which some dare to do or approve but dare not hear of or repent The parrhesie or freedom of my speech as a man a Christian and a Preacher was such as became my feeling of the publick miseries my desire of the publick tranquility and my sense of that fidelity I ow to God to my Countrey to you and to my own soul These are not times to palliate and speak smooth or soft things Never age had fouler humours or prouder tumours more felt and more painfull more hard and less mollified These I would help to cure that so we might recover publick health together with our wits and reason our Laws and Religion our good Confidence and Government our Peace and Unanimity all which we have lost since we lost our heads in Church and State Our full and free Parliaments consisting of King Lords and Commons in which the soule and life the honour and happiness of these Nations are bound up And no part of it is more concerned then your famous sometime flourishing and still populous City in whose happiness the whole Nation will be happy and in its misery all must be miserable Since London is not only as a ponderous Byas to the great bowl which draws all parts towards it but it is as the Mistress Lady or Queen to which every Village City and Countrey of the Nation as officious Hand-maids study to present all manner of costly comlyness not only feminine as the superfluity of peace and plenty but also masculine for London like Pallas is furnished as with men of Counsel and Conduct with Treasure and Strength with all sorts of Armes and Aminition being a Camera Imperii Britanii a vast Magazine of men and money a nursery of all Arts Mechanick Ingenuous and Military a great entertainer of Learning and a noble encourager of Religion wanting nothing to make it self and the Nation happy if it have such heroick minds and honest hearts and become so rich so great and so Christian a City 'T is true like plethorick bodies great care must be had how ill humours yea and good ones too are put into motion since the first cannot well be long kept in nor may the second be purged out The first threatning dangerous inflamations the second no less dangereus Evacuations Here Prudence Order Moderation Confidence and Unanimity are required besides Zeal and Courage in order to recover your and our former health in Church and State which was made up of an admirable temper and constitution till sin tumults violence and war cast us into these Feavers Convulsions and Confusions with which
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
{non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} in the harmony and orderly constitution of all the humors and parts of the body That nothing necessary for the well-being of the whole be wanting That all grand defects be supplyed That what is weak be strengthened what is dislocated be restored to its place That there be no dividing of what should be united That what is divided be gently closed and composed That there be no such redundancy or overgrowing of any humor or tumor in any part as to rob and weaken others or to swell and exceed in themselves or to deform and inflame the whole In brief the true and safe method of healing effectually the hurt of the daughter of my people is 1. Medicos optimos accersendo By calling to her help wise and worthy Physicians as I have formerly touched men of skill and experience of Honesty and Ability of honor and conscience who prize a publick Good Work above any reward and think it the highest temporal reward to do their country good in which they serve their God and their Saviour the Church and State they must be Physitians that are not by much study and practice run out to Atheism as some corn in lusty ground doth to straw and halm but such as know what belongs to Religio medici the piety of a Christian as well as the mystery of a Physitian my meaning is people must take special care in their choice of Parliament-men that they be not Mechanick or Mercenary or Military obtruders of themselves who have much to get and little to lose by troubles whose fortunes and estates must be vampt and mended by their practice upon the Church and State But such Gentlemen of quality and repute for wel-gotten and wel-used estates that they may deserve to be esteemed Heads and Fathers of their Tribes and not the Tails or Posteriors as the Scripture speaks to the reproach of some publick persons Such in whom the Country may have sufficient caution and security for their love of Justice Order and Peace by what they have to venture and lose in tumults wars and oppressions Commonly desperate minds attend desperate fortunes and the motto of such is Quocunque modo rem and oportet habere The multis utile bellum hoped advantages as Lucan observes in the Cesarian and Salust in the Catalinian and Appian in the other Civil Wars is the spark fewel and bellows for the most part to civil perturbations private not publique interests are usually looked at For how can it be that the full and found parts of the body Politique should hope to mend their condition by war any more than men that are well and not delirant or raving in a Feavor and madness should by bruising and beating and cutting and wounding themselves and all that are near them expect to make themselves more strong or more comely 2. When the Patient hath done himself so much right as to get good Physitians able and honest for the publique care Their work is First Morbum decernere vulnera perscrutari to find out the true disease to search the wounds througly and impartially yet with as little pain and disorder to the Patient as may be with a clear and judicious eye with a gentle but faithful hand with a tender but honest heart neither Physitians passion nor compassion must divert them from doing their duty It is the first step and a good advance to health to know truly what the hurts and disease is herein to be only conjectural or over-confident or fearful or perfunctory or palliating or complying not daring to search and discover the pudenda vulnera shameful wounds and lethales morbos deadly diseases which are discerned in the Patient but with smiles and fair words with healing questions with Physical or Anatomical lectures about Government as with lingering lenitives and petty cordials to supple and skin them over to silence and smother them with crying peace peace till we have done our work which is to undo you and all men but our selves or for State Physitians so to regard by a superpolitick policy the several partial novel and pretended interests that have been or are on foot as to take in among others even that of the very disease as if it were to be considered other ways than to be cured as if it must be continued tolerated and indulged yea and fed as a Wolf or Cancer in the body or brest with good nourishment least it prey upon the whole body This is for Physitians to be afraid and overawed by the Malignancy and predominancy of the disease at this rate Grex totus in agris Vnius scabie perit porrigine porci the whole herd or flock must be infected the patient will be like Gehazi condemned to an eternal plague and Leprosie of civil dissentions and oppessions of war and its black consequences Physitians after this course must turn very fools and become parasites to putrefactions if they dare not own or cannot attaque either the sourse and head of the disease or the streams and potency of it what do they meet and sit and consult or rather constult together they had as good cast their caps as thus lay their heads together when they have no mind to do the work nor courage to go through with the cure Not but that all great and noble cures not miraculous are the children of time and discretion for a while the sons of Zerviah were too hard for David and Solomon did not those acts of remarkable Justice against Joabs and Shimeis and Abiathars factious Priests insolent Soldiers and cursed cursers until the Kingdom was strengthned in his hand but this is certain as Christ did not raise to life Jarus his daughter till the Minstrils were all turned out So nor can the daughter of my people be recovered to firm and sure health till all pretended Civil Interests are by degrees either satisfied if just or crashed quashed and removed if not consistent with our Reformed Religion also with the Laws of the Land and the fundamentals of our excellent Government which are the true principles of publique health and till all Religions or Ecclesiastical pretended Interests are so tried and examined for many say they are Jews that are not and cry up their new Church ways when they may be but factors for the Synagogue of Satan vaporing of Christ and the Spirit when they are Antichrists and full of unclean spirits till I say all these on all hands be faithfully reduced and subjected to the grand interest of God and of our Lord Jesus Christ which consists in Justice and true Religion The measure of the first is our Laws enacted in full and free Parliaments The rule of the second are clear truths of Scripture which set forth the facienda morals necessary to be done by all to all men the credenda mysteries of Faith necessary to be believed also the special practiques of Christian
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
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
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
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
These hurts on the mental spirits or intellectual powers of a Nation are more dangerous than those that are incident by grosser wounds of outward immoralities which the Physick or dieticks of good Laws well executed will easily keep from predominating but the hurts which fall on Religion and Learning on the Reason and Conscience of a Nation are like frenetick distempers long a growing and long a going like the wounds on the head or cracks as we say of the brain hardly ever throughly cured when Heresie or Schism like a spiritual frenzy hath seised on any people as was evident in the Maniches Novatians Arians Donatists Nestorians Eutychians and others of ancient and modern ages There are further plagae per peccatum and proper peccatum hurts from sin and for sin the first hurts are by our own evil meritings as the self wounds of a drunkard the second by Gods just inflictings upon malefactors for he will not always leave the publique sins of a Nation without visiting with sore and publique punishments The first hurts are those from sins when they grow great and masterly boysterous and imperious either countenanced in Court or indulged in City or prevalent and neglected in Countries when prophaness and lying and swearing and drunkenness and uncleaness and murthers or the like faedities come to pollute a great or a considerable part of a Nation so as men make a mock of sin and glory in their shame when Rebellion Perjury Innocent-blood-shed and Sacriledge are drawn on like strait and pinching shoes at first with the shooing-horns of Religion and Reformation of publique necessity thrift and good Husbandry with antipathies against Idolatry and abhorrencies of superstition when Prince is bad and people worse and Priest or Prophet worst of all When from the Rulers or Teachers of a Nation wickedness as a plague of leprosie is spread over all the Land When there is a loathing of the heavenly manna a contempt of Word and Sacraments an indifferency to all Religion as little reverence in a Church at holy duties as in a Play-house and far less than in a Shire-house these fiery darts of mens own wanton lusts and the devils temptations do wound very deep they at once pierce and sear they hurt and stupifie they make men past feeling at length and only fit them for vengeance The second hurts are propter peecatum those which the just and angry God in his sore judgements inflicts on a people now incorrigible in ordinary ways and most severely on those that are called by his name and owned as the daughter of his people so the Jews by various hurts and healings were objects of Gods wrath and mercy till they had filled up the measure of sin See the Eastern Asiatick Greek Egyptick and African Churches how famous how fruitful how flourishing till wounded with sins overgrown with gross heresies and schisms noisom lusts base opinions and bad actions the sword of Gods vengeance by the barbarous inundations of Scythians Saracens Turks and other colluvies or scum of people at last so divided them that they are at this day almost utterly destroyed The arrows of presumptuous sins shot up against heaven fall on the heads of the shooters to their own hurt as Lamech speaks And as Solomon tells us wicked men sin against their own souls and so against the peace plenty honor health and welfare of their Nation and posterity Sin as Pliny says of Qucksilver is venenum omnium the pest and poyson of all things it urgeth God to be as a cruel one it provokes till there be no mediation intercession or remedy when men proudly and impenitently treasure up sin they treasure up withal wrath against the day of wrath till judgement break in like the flood on the old world or fall like fire from heaven without any to help or the earth open and swallow men up quick as Korah and his complices Here God is in Justice and Honor concerned to arise to bend his bow to whet his sword to be avenged on such a nation which is grown wantonly wicked which dares fight against God yea and challenge him whether he regard iniquity or no whether he be not such an one as themselves the wounds which men inflict on the Spirit Grace and Glory of God force him to wound them when there is no fear of God no shame or remorse or repentance for sin ideo conterimur quia non conterimur ideo vulneramur quia non vulnerantur as St. Bernard because our hearts are not broken nor our Spirits contrite within us for sin therefore the Lord of hosts breaks in upon us with one breach in the neck of another with famine plague sickness and death with intestine war divisions and endless distractions till Ephraim rise against Manasseh and Manasseh against Ephraim and Judah against both to eat as Canibals one anothers flesh and drink each others blood and thereby break the arm or strength of the whole Nation yea the very bones will be broken as when one choppeth wood when the sinews are cut in sunder all bonds of Law and Conscience of Reason and Religion of Justice and Charity of Unanimity and Unity are like Sampsons withes snapped in peices All these hurts mens own ways procure to them so that God appears either as a stranger and waifering man or an enemy yea as a cruel one in his sore judgements which like waves of the sea pursue one another Yet there was some mercy in this severity as to Israel and Judah a long time while God cut them short only but did not utterly forsake them or cast them out of his sight it may argue some hope that a Physician yet vouchsafes to mind and visit his Patient to apply any causticks or scarifyings which by pain may bring to sense and so to healing But there are coeca surda vulnera silent and unseen and at present unfelt yet very sore hurts and deep wounds bleeding inwardly which God may inflict as upon a particular soul so upon the spirit and genius of a whole Nation as to the generality of the people by giving them over by letting them alone Why should they be smitten any more being a rebellious stif-necked and back-sliding people profound to revolt bold Apostates falling from their duty to God and man yet glorying as if they were delivered to do all this wickedness by the test and approbation of providence discovered as they fancy in the prosperity of their impietie for a season Whereas indeed as St. Austin observes Severisimé punit Deus cum paenalis nutritur impunitas There need no greater punishment of a gangrene than to let it alone to leave it to it self This crudelis misericordia severe mercy St. Bernard passionately and wisely deprecates potius ure seca percute domine ne parcas ut parcas Rather lance O Lord and cut and burn by a merciful
cruelty than so spare me by a cruel clemency as to spoil and damn me for ever saith the devout man There are spiritual maladies and miseries too which give a people over to Dementation and astonishment to blindness and madness to seek after and trust in lying vanities and desperate hypocrisies to rest in the flatteries of successes or the applauses of the vulgar who think every one that prospers to be a God or a good Angel and every one that is unfortunate to be a Devil or a great offender as the Barbarians did St. Paul when the Viper seised on his hand and he shaked it off unhurt Hence any Idol of Superstition any meteor of Enthusiasm any glow-worm of fanatick fancy and fury serves the turn and instead of Gods candles and lamps of pure Religion in well-ordered Churches as golden candlesticks God takes away these burning and shining lights and leaves a people to the sparks they have kindled to be satisfied with their own delusions to believe lyes to rejoyce and glory in their evil and perverse ways and when God hath taken away his peace and truth from them both in Church and State they will fall under grievous violences oppressions and exactions of men whose mercies are cruel and their healings further hurts which shall make their very souls bow down to the ground that proud men may pass over them when nothing but fury and sedition at home nothing but war and invasion from abroad is in reason to be expected yet then some people will easily smile and fawn on their oppressors they poor wretches being prone to believe as Country fellows do the Montebanks that all is well and whole which powerful hands undertake to touch they will eccho peace peace in Church and State and cry up a Commonweal when indeed it is a common woe as to the grand interests of the Nation in the best and noblest yea in the most of its parts and members which can never be fully happy unless they be of one heart and mind of one Law and Religion as to the main Which leads me to the Third Particular The Medela or sanatio the seeming and pretended yea professed and boasted healing of the Nations hurts They have healed with saying Peace Peace {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} repetita duplicata firma certa pax nothing but peace enjoyed and peace to be expected says Zedekiah and Hananiah the false Prophets who lied in the name of the Lord We may observe the cunning of those Empiricks those false Physicians who are of no value they use this sweet welcome word of peace to the people which is a Catholicon comprehensive of all enjoiments for every want is a kind of war when they cry peace and repeat the crambe of peace peace and sing this song or {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} over and over again they hope as Demetrius and his fellow-craftsmen by crying Great is Diana of the Ephesians even to a raving and hoarseness to make the people believe that the image which came down from heaven was certainly a goddess wih this lullaby of peace peace do the Polititians and oppressors of a Nation seek to quiet the trefe and wayward people when they cry out of their ailes and oppressions as poor Micah did when the churlish Danites took away his gods and his Priests yet was he demanded what he ailed so to cry after them So the great Artists of State that they may the better set off their skill make as Montebanks larg Haranges specious and popular orations like Herod most artificial speeches mixed with preaching and praying and sprinklings of Scripture and Gods cause as guiled or syrupped bitter pils to give the better gusto still concluding with the Epiphonema of peace peace when behold nothing but usurpation and oppression grievous exactions and heavy loads bonds and chains and prisons are everywhere prepared for those that dare cry or complain or call for remedy Pessimi medicastri impensius ostentant artem None make ampler prefaces brags and spreadings of their skill and salves and rare feats than the most arrant Quacks and Cheats These as the Magicians of Egypt sometimes so enchant poor people that they believe all to be miraculous at least innoxious which comes from the tongues and hands of those who possess them as Heathens ascribed all blessings to their Idols the most crying Injustice must be thought the highest Justice the greatest contempt and curb the strongest oppression and delusion of a Nation the wildest and most partial toleration must be voyced for liberties yea for precious Christian Liberty purchased with much blood and treasure the grossest Anarchies and most snarled misgovernments whose wheels are oft taken off and whose weight drives heavily over the very heads and bellies Laws and Liberties of the Nation as that Romane Virago Tullia Hostilia did her chariot over her Fathers corps to the depression of the honor and freedom of Princes Peers and best of the people this is voyced peace peace the most irreligious licentiousness in doctrine opinion speech and manners must be reputed freedom of spirit the most novel and unjust just cause that ever was on foot must needs be cryed up for the Good Old Cause when 't is indeed quite contrary to the goodness of Equity and the antiquity of truth Such monstrous soloecisms there are in the world between some mens words and actions between the credulity of cowardly people and the reality of their enjoyments This is the cunning this the confidence and this the cruelty of some State Juglers and their Plebeian Parasites to boast of all they do or say is in order to peace paace when by Peace they mean as Salust expresseth it nothing but the servility or the solitude of a Nation that all interests sacred civil and military may truckle under their high and mighty power their tripple crowns submissis faucibus deferre imperium All that search and try their ways or wounds rather are offendors even for a word if they dare speak whisper think or weep ought but peace peace When such valiant such succesful such holy such praying such preaching such Saintly such Seraphick men have gotten power and place and plenty and palaces O now all is peace peace And the better to colour over the overthrow of three flourishing Nations which from the pile of three united Kingdoms are fillipped to the cross of an ill sodered Commonwealth some men must by all means pretend to set up as John of Leyden and his Complices did the Kingdom of Righteousness the Throne and Scepter of King Jesus Which is justly esteemed a Kingdom of peace being seldom or never advanced by an active war but only by a passive yet is this a principal decoy to impose upon vulgar people for who will not seem willing and forward to submit to Christs Kingdom that he may rule and reign But we are not
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
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
to the publique peace For the Law which is power regulated by wisdome and wisdome asserted by just power and both confirmed by the Parliamentary consent of all estates concerned this is the Radical moysture or native balsome by which the lamp of life is preserved in the body Politique as this decayes so spirit and vigor health and harmony peace and protection love and life decays Yea where force is necessary to be used yet it must be limited and commissionated by law else it is but a Lion broke loose or a ranging Bear or a ravening Wolf or as a mutinied Army no better then a tumultuary riot and violence like the fighting of a body with it self in fits of the falling sickness such new pits and cisternes will not hold any water for they are not onely crackt in the making and marred upon the wheels but they presently dash against one another as earthen pitchers they are by-paths of extravagant power and fallacious pretentions but not comparable in point of health and safety to the good old way bona antiqua probata which long time had liked and attested to be very good Such as put on in all haste Sauls Armour of Soveraignty which they never before essayed to wear nor have shoulders fit for it will soon find it not onely inconvenient for them but combersom dangerous and in the end pernicious if they mean indeed to kill those Gyants those Goliahs of uncircumcised enormities which defie God and Law it is better to take those smooth stones and that sling to which as Masters of assemblies or Magistrates or Parliament men or Justices they are wonted according to the Law and the duty of their place than to cumber and engage themselves in such uncoth high and heavy undertakings which are seldome other than disadvantagious and destructive as always dangerous to the counsellors and actors no less than to the publick peace and welfare for as Tacitus well observes Consilia callida inhonesta prima fronte laeta tractatu dura eventu tristia new and illegal projects are commonly pernicious and crying at last however they smile and flatter at first nor can any violence or success heal a Nation or a conscience where the Law smites by accusing and the conscience by condemning men for their wicked principles and unjust proceedings 7. When these pretended Healers leaving all wonted and approved medicines which Gods word and the laws of the land right reason and true religion do warrant or allow fly to their inchantments as if they would heal by charmes and cure by Philters or amulets as by carrying Bibles in their hands by using much Scripture phrase and expression by following sermons and fasts and prayers by affecting an odd kind of canting way of writing and speaking by zealous pretending of sanctity and Christian liberty or through reformations of advancing the cause of God and Kingdome of Jesus Christ by crying up providences and successes by conjuring up strange fears and hopes jealousies and expectations like so many Ghosts and Goblins to scare and amuse the common people Lastly by flying to raptures inspirations enthusiasms holy convulsions and such like quaking and quacking tricks as pretend no less to the skill of healing all the hurts of the daughter of my people than Wizards and cunning men do to cure all diseases of man and beast Thus the Temple of the Lord the Temple of the Lord is urged when they intend to destroy Church and State it is superciliously yea very surlily spoken to persons much better every way then themselves Stand by we are holier than you we are Abrahams seed and the true Israel of God The work of healing Church and State is the work of Saints as soone as they can agree what way to take what plaisters to make and what power to get into their hands that they may apply their rare Cataplasmes or Emplasters Thus some tell us there must be no King but King Jesus and themselves sitting on his right and left hand in all power Ecclesiastical Civil and Military judging the twelve tribes of Israel for they strongly fancy England to be Judea or the holy land and most of the people to be of late turned Jews Others will have no Bishops nor any thing that belonged to Bishops but onely their good lands and houses the spoiles of those Egyptians others will have no presbyters nor tythes nor Temples but arbitrary and unmercinary Preachers in occasional Barnes and Stables or sub dio in open fields who will do the work of Christ without mans wages It were well if their Souldiers would do so too in their holy wars which are voted by some to be the work of Jesus Christ some would have they know not what themselves but they attend further light by which they may better discerne the way of healing the Nations and their own hurts Mean time they look neither to the Law nor the Testimony neither to the rule of piety equity nor charity as if a little chattering of pious or rather impious nonsence were sufficient to cast out the legions of Divels or the clay and spittle of their lips were able to cure the many distempers of these Nations especially when the blindness boldness and folly of such Operators and Circulators is so manifest to all men that have eyes inlightned by reason or religion by Laws of God or man that I hope it shall proceed no further Have we need of mad men as Achish King of Gath speaks of David disfigured to a frenzy Are they likely to be healers of others whose diseases are so got into their crowns that they are not onely fantastick but fanatick to the tune of the Maniches and Circumcellians that is people of no just and honest of no settled or constant no rational or religious principles morbus destruit artem a good Physitian is not fit to be his own or others Physitian if he be distempered much less these men than who no men have discovered more craziness of mind and crookedness of manners having little fear of God and less reverence of men either their ambition or their indigence or their idleness or their Jesuitick juglings or their desperate designs to turn all into rapine blood and confusion makes them impatient that any men of better skill and honester wills than themselves should come nigh the Patient or apply those All-heals or Panaces and Catholicons which are no where to be found in their Pedlars packs or Apothecaries shops where poisons are set off with the specious titles and inscriptions of sanctity and liberty and light but in the known Laws of God and man rightly interpreted and impartially executed according to Equity Order and Charity not in those godly formalities or gracious extravagancies or illegal irregularities with which some vaporers have made so great flourishes for some years and so long afflicted the daughter of my people and would for ever have done
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