troubled therewith and the significations of them so far as the Lord hath enabled me I have also examined the Name of the Disease and found out the Mystery thereof but although the REKETS be the general name to all degrees and sorts of this Malady yet when the diseased are troubled with such JOYNTS and RIBS as they call DOUBLE this they call the TENT See Arnoldus Bootius in libello De Affectibus Omissis in Cap. De Tabe Pectoreâ If you then ask me What means this Name I answer By a Metonymy of the Adjunct it signifyeth and expresseth Souldiers and Armies For Castra the Latine word by interpretation Tents among the Romans is very often put to express an Army or Armies in the Field where Tents were used as among the Holy Writers Tents are put for Habitations and Houses because in former times the Israelites dwelt in Tents and sometimes Shepberds dwellings because their habitations in the Fields were constantly such But because among us here is no use of Tents but in time of War it must signifie naturally according to its Name and doth confirm that such Joynts were in signification a combining of Generals and Commanders with Souldiers of Parl. with Souldiers and Fortifying by Lands with Soldiers and though by Sea there is no use of Tents yet the Denomination is given to all for the outward likeness of the Types although proper but to Two of them and that not without example as the Crown and Sceptre are used in speech when by them we mean nothing but a Kingdome Thus the Wise God knoweth every word in our Tongues and when men or women give names to things they know not what nor why doth oftentimes so overrule them that they speak the Truth in a Mystery So did the High-Priest not knowing what he spake prophesy of our Saviour The MYSTERY of the THREE GENERAL REMEDIES AFter the Mystery of the REGETS and TENT and of each SYMPTOME thereof the three forenamed Vulgar REMEDIES are not without their Mystery The first Remedy is SWINGING such children from side to side and TOSSING them up and down and TURNING them Topsey Turvey This is ordinarily taken to be and used as a Remedy against that Disease but careful observation and experience teacheth the contrary that it is vain Thus for a Remedy against our evil Regents we were promised when we should change from a Kingdom to a Common-wealth we should have all amended But that then failing we were made to beleeve how such a Protector would indeed perform what others had promised and when he had deceived we must have a piece and the worst piece of a House of Commons to over-rule us who pleaded the Justice of their own cause as the rest did although the people never received Justice from any of them And was not this Tossing England from side to side and up and down When we were sometime under a King and Parliament we were up when we were subject to a Few or One of our Fellow-Subjects we were down At last we were turned Topsey Turvey when the Heels the Souldiers possest the place and RULE of our Superiors the King and Parliament And this was a False Remedy The Second REMEDY is the Lifting up such sick children by the Armes The meaning of which thing will by Gods grace be understood if we remember in what sense I declared to you from Holy Scripture and the reason thereof Armes are to be taken which is in signification of Armies This Remedy Lifting the sick children up by the Armes is a False Remedy and never used with success But it is much to be observed that above all other Remedies which are wont to be applied to such children there are none so much abhorred by them as this for when it is done they will complain and cry out The Mystery hereof is that when the childe of England should be lifted up by the Armes at which time the weight of the body depends upon the Armes that is the Armies and at that time the Armes also are lifted up and lifting up signifieth raising to honor Psal 113. 7. He raiseth up the poor out of the dust and lifteth the needy out of the dunghill ver 8. That he may set him with Princes even with the Princes of his people The poor Patients which were troubled with the Regents would least of all endure and most of all complain against the Tyranny of the Soldiers and Army bearing rule that is the Lifting up by and of the Armes This was fulfilled to the utmost when the Agitators of the Army pluckt and threw out of the Parliament house that Piece remaining and left of the Whole House of Commons and for a short space under the greatest indignation of the people ruled alone The Third REMEDY generally famous but False is the letting of the diseased children Blood Behinde the Ear. And how true it hath been in the Antitype that the Head our Royal Head our Dear Lord the KING should for a pretended cure of our miseries be let blood behinde the Eare that is in the Neck by cutting off his Head to the encrease of our miseries I abhorre to think and much the more because it was plotted and acted by men which were Professors of the austerest religion But let not the Profession of Religion be branded for this cause Were not those that had the chiefest hand in our Lord Christs death one of his Disciples and the Priests Is not he that hath been guilty of so much of the blood of the Saints that the City of Rome is become drunk therewith counted the most Holy Father the Pope and with him the Fathers of the Clergy This is the craft of the old Serpent when he cannot destroy the Church by open enmity to endeavour it by seeming friends But for the real Cure and true REMEDIES of the Disease we call the REKETS as we take it according to the letter it may for good cause be accounted wonderful in that regard also and therein like unto the Leprosie The Leprosie was a Disease not curable by any Art or Power of man For thus answereth Ahab unto the King of Syria who sent unto him desiring that he would heal his servant Naaman of the Leprosie concluding the curing of that Disease to be a Divine work above mans strength 2 King 5. 7. Am I God to kill and to make alive that this man doth send to me to recover a man of his Leprosie To which purpose and more plainly speaketh our Saviour Luk. 4. 27. Many Lepers were in Israel in the time of Elizeus the Prophet and none of them was cleansed saving Naaman the Syrian Even so neither is the malady of the Rekets curable by any Art or Physician upon the Earth although I doubt not all men both Learned and unlearned beleeve the contrary perswaded from what they see that divers children afflicted very much with this Disease at length become found and perfect But although it cannot
called the seventh from Adam Jude 14. in which place son is to be understood For Henry VII is the First Margarite his daughter Q to James IV. King of Scotland the Second James V the third Mary Q. of Scotland his daughter the Fourth James VI King of Great Britain the fifth King Charles I the sixth K. Charles II the seventh And this is a good Argument to prove that King Charles II the seventh of a sea earth is not to be understood so to cure the Kings-evil as in a literal sence which some of these and more of his Predecessors have done but in some speciall and mystical way as I have declared And this computation agrees in another account if we reckon by the daughter of Queen Margarite and her issue for Queen Margarite daughter to King Henry VII first married to King James IV had issue James V after married to Archibald Douglas Earl of Angus by him had issue Margarite As King Henry VII the first Margarite Queen to King James IV the second Margarite her daughter by Archibald Earl of Angus and Wife to Matthew Stuart Earl of Lenoix the third Henry Lord Darley her son husband to Mary Queen of Scotland the fourth King James his son King of Great Britain the fifth King Charles I the sixth King Charles II the seventh For which cause I do humbly beseech the Kings Majesty that a Law may be enacted by the King and his Parliament for the deserved punishment of such diabolical impostures as this is which is frequently committed in this land by seventh sons taking upon them the Royal Prerogative of our Kings with the touch of their hands to cure the Kings-evil For the practice here of tends much to the dishonour of God and of our good King and to the delusion of his Majesties Subjects But one thing more touching the Rekets must not be forgotten that is to say the time when that Disease first seized upon Children in this Kingdome and had that name of Rekets given unto it It was the third year after our Royall Soveraigns Nativity or the next unto it when the weekly Bill of Mortality mentioned one to have been buried of the Rekets in the Moneth of May and no mention thereof in any of the said Bils before that time As I have found by search in the Parish Clerks Register kept in their Hall For as the time when Darius took the Babylonian Kingdom is exprest Dan. 5. 31. to be when he was about threescore and two years old that the Jews might observe as judiciously H. Broughton hath noted upon that place that at the time they were carried into captivity which was about the time of Darius his birth the Jews might then know the Lord had a Deliverer born for them So the Nation of England may learn Gods special care that he did not send them the Disease of the Rekets till He was born who should free them from the Miserie 's signifyed thereby and from the Disease it self Hitherto of the Kings-Evil as it pertaineth to the King and Kingdom of England Whereas I said The sins and calamities of this Nation with the Causers of them were pointed at by the Name and Disease of the Rekets and not the Name of our Deliverer but in the other the Kings-Evil yet notwithstanding it doth appear who shall be our Deliverer albeit not in the Name of the Disease or the Symptomes of the Rekets yet in the quality of the Persons which are troubled therewith The Patients so afflicted are Children and no other partly but not principally that we might be left without all pretence of any other inferior cause but be constrained to look up to the Hand which hath smitten us and yet we will not but in despight of reason seek about after this and that cause most vainly Again partly it is to let us understand that the afflictions foreshewn thereby should fall upon the childe of God Thirdly and principally the Rekets is laid on children that by the quality of the person afflicted by it it being the childs disease we may understand him that shall free us from it and what is signified thereby As it is called the Kings-evil not because it is caused by or laid upon but cured by the King So is it called and to be called the Childes disease because a childe shall heal it Surely you will ask me What childe We finde in Holy Scripture that our Saviour hath called himself barely by the name of the Son If the Son shall make you free saith our Savior you shall be free indeed And since we finde that God doth communicate his own Name to Princes calling them Gods and hence it seems to have been first used among Princes to name themselves in the plural number though single by the word we and us imitating as it were the Lord Almighty who is One and Three he doth seem to express by this word the childes Disease the Disease of the childe above all other children the childe a son of the King After which manner the son and daughter of the King of Spain is called infante and infanta that is the son and daughter childe as being well enough exprest alone to understand what son and daughter is meant thereby So when we say the childes Diseases 〈◊〉 may be well understood that Disease which the Childe 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 above all children that is the Kings son shall heal In which expression of childe is also shewn first that our King shall be when this is done a childe albeit not according to the vulgar use of the word in our English tongue yet according to the signification of that word which in the Hebrew signifieth sometimes a childe in years else where a yong man although not very properly by the Translators rendred also a childe where in Daniel it signifieth a yong man calling the three companions of Daniel three children that he shall then be yong in years How great a matter of comfort is hereby administred unto us that are the people of the land that the Lord is so pleased that the King shall not differ the making us a happy nation to his old age but go about it and perfect the Lords work while he is yong Secondly here is an Argument of Almighty Gods great Power and Mercy that he should frame his Majesties heart to clemency as not to suffer him although his Royal Father was murthered to break out in cruel and unjust revenge It is the Lords doing and it is marvellous in our eyes And lest any man should thus object This Disease of the Rekets is common to women children as well as to men as that it should not seem thereby to point at a cure to be performed by the King in regard of the sex as to be performed by the son more than the daughter of a King let him take a view of those great Types of our Savior the Prophets whereof although the most part were men yet
against our Gracious Soveraign and by designing his Majesty the Time and Person are both made known For it is not probable that from the present French King such fruit shall proceed by his conversion to the Reformed Religion or so easing the burthens of his Subjects having seized already lately on Aurange and Marseilles two great receptacles for those of the Religion and their ancient Liberties and who still threatneth Geneva Now here I must take leave to assume liberty to draw an Argument from that which is not yet fullfilled but begun only accounting it as already done For thus doth S. Paul from the certain conversion of the Jews which was then to be but neither in his time nor to this day fulfilled Rom. 11. perswade the Christians not to despise that people but account them as brethren And the Holy Ghost assuring us of the burning of the City of Rome a thing not yet accomplished adviseth the people of God to leave that City lest they should perish with it Revel 18. 4. Thus I having already declared and by the fore-going reasons proved that K. Charles II will perform by Gods Grace undoubtedly in England all the promised matters do by probable conjecture infer that it shall in France be performed by him also For to do such great matters is not every day seen None of all the Kings of France since King Clovis nor French Kings have cured the putrid sores of that Kingdom None of the 27. Kings and Queens of England from the Confessor have done that till now Nor is it probable that any of the French Kings there educated would be of the Reformed Religion And as much unlikely it is that any of those Kings should take away all the Corruption in Justice and Manners But since it must be done how probable may it seem that it can be done by none else but by him who hath done the like in England and may do the same in France unto which Kingdom he hath a most just Title So much for my first Argument Secondly It is not likely that God will honour him who hath not the right as him who hath the just Title to that Crown with so glorious a work in that place For the Crown of France by just Title is devolved upon our Gracious Soveraign from Edward III King of England in right of his mother Queen Isabella She was daughter unto Philip the Fair King of France which Philip had three sons successively Kings of France viz. Lodowik Hutin Philip the Tall and Charles the Fair all which dying without issue Isabella their only sister remaining alive was married unto Edward II King of England by whom she had issue Edward III to whom our Royal Soveraign is the next heir by descent from him Against whose right the French do only pretend the Salique Law by which no daughter of France is admitted to the Crown but when and by what sufficient authority there enacted their Lawyers give us no satisfaction And the Reasons why the Person is not so expresly designed for France as here before for England are of moment 1. Because by setting us to enquire after that Prince who shall work so great a happiness to that Kingdom we are thereby driven to finde out the causes for which most probably God may give as He hath formerly given Kingdoms to Princes and extraordinary possessions to others Princes such an opportunity and blessing we may thereby light upon the very Person For God hath made all things for his own Glory and all men but specially Princes induing them for that purpose with great power and those which suffer great things for his sake and stand for him and love his people he seldome sends them away without some ample recompence in this life Yet it was needful that the King whom the Lord had appointed for the happiness of England should be more clearly discovered as it hath pleased God to do touching our Royall Soveraign For who could conjecture that a Prince who had been so exceedingly enraged by the wickedness of some should be so merciful as to spare his cruel enemies and to be so loving and merciful to his people so tender toward those whose consciences cannot admit that for fear of man which their sincere love to God made them to deny if God had not more expresly shewn King CHARLES II to be that Good Prince For which cause the King which shall be the Deliverer of France is more obscurely figured because he is already discovered in the Type of Englands Helper 2. Because the assurance of what shall be by our Soveraign done in France to Gods people there which cannot be until he rule there as King shall appear unto his Royal Majesty when God shall move his Heart to begin in England first so that the Lord would have him to hasten that great weighty and heroick work Now let us look back to the causes which the Lord seemeth to have respect unto in making King CHARLES so happy and see if we can finde like Examples Observe his unjust and cruel sufferings Shall a Prince who after the murther of his Royal Father under the pretence of Justice by the most unjust Judges which ever sate in Judgement and by feigned Holiness was banished with the whole Royal Family as malefactors and the King himself made a Traytor and his precious life hunted after shall his Innocence with the rest of that Royal house against none of whom the least crime or cause was objected only make his people happy May a King who hath suffered such wrongs and done such excellent things for God and his people expect no blessing but a bare restitution God owes no man any thing but what we receive is of gift yet the Lord Almighty hath not wont but in such cases to shew his acceptance and make recompence Nebuchadrezzar for fighting against the City of Tyre which rejoyced at the captivity of the Jews when they were carried unto Rabylon received the Kingdom of Egypt as a reward of his labor Ezek. 29. ver 18. Son of man Nebuchad-rezzar King of Babylon caused his Army to serve a great service against Tyrus every head was made bald and every shoulder was peeled yet had he no wages nor his army for Tyrus for the service which he served against it Ver. 19. Therefore thus saith the Lord God Behold I will give the land of Egypt unto Nebuchad-rezzar King of Babylon and he shall take her multitude and take her spoil and take her prey and it shall be the wages for his army Ver. 20. I have given him the land of Egypt for his labor wherewith he served against it because they wrought for me saith the Lord God And did not the Lord bestow upon Queen Elizabeth of blessed memory for her imprisonment for maintaining of Gods true Religion for resisting the Spaniard befriending the French against the League and protecting the Neatherlands the Kingdom of Ireland For what of that Kingdom had all her
by which not only our late Soveraign but divers of his Innocent Subjects have had their blood spilt to the defiling and making guilty too many of this our land Our great Oppressions and Oppressors are parallel to those there named in the Prophet And as they were promised deliverance but that afar off and not yet accomplished so are we and ours near at hand through the Mercy of God toward those that fear him by the administration of our Good King V. 16. Wash you make you clean saith the Prophet put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes cease to do evil V. 17. Learn to do well seek judgement relieve the oppressed judge the fatherless pleade for the widow Have not our Sins been such as that the Cause of the Oppressed the Poor the Fatherless and the Widow hath not so much as come before those which sate in Parliament a Court of the utmost redress Or if peradventute by unwearied labour and violent importunity they have prevailed so far as to be heard have they judged the cause of the Poor and Fatherlesse and not perverted their Judgement and have they pleaded for the widow and not wrested her cause to please and favour the rich man Who is ignorant that they have not so done And thus complaineth the good Prophet V. 23. Thy Princes are rebellious and companions of theeves every one loveth gifts and followeth after rewards they judge not the fatherless neither doth the cause of the widow come unto them Our great Governors also were Companions of Theeves because they suffered us without all remorse to be robbed or spoiled no great matter of whom and yet farther because they took bribes by doing whereof they become Thieves fellows in that they require gifts as a Thief doth a Travellers purse or else we and our cause shall fall under them Of which sort of gifts though given secretly and in the bosome some have come to light notwithstanding and of the rest we may definitively pronounce They were Receivers and Expecters of Bribes because then them no greater Respecters of Persons in Judgement to be found as we learn from Solomon Pro. 28. 21. To have respect of persons is not good because for a piece of bread that man will transgress May we not likewise say properly with the Prophet ver 21. How is the faithful City become an harlot it was full of judgement righteousness lodged in it but now murderers The hypocritical service of God which the Jews performed consisting in outward and formal worship how like was it to our wonted frequent Praying Fasting and Thanks-giving and the most strict enjoyning of rest on the Sabbath For the Lord took no pleasure neither in those because not proceeding from syncerity nor in the outward hypocritical worship of the Jews saying v. 13. Bring no more vain oblations incense is an abomination unto me the New Moons and Sabbaths the calling of Assemblies I cannot away with it is iniquity even the solemn Meeting And for the reason for which God did despise all this was not the cause of the Jews and ours here in England all one expressed v. 15. Your hands are bloods that is defiled and polluted with innocent blood To which people for their great sins their heavy punishment the Prophet expresseth v. 7. Your Countrey is desolate your Cities are burnt with fire your Land strangers devour in your presence and it is desolate as overthrown by strangers Part of this hath been fulfilled upon the Nation of the English in Fire Sword and Famine in the Kingdom of Ireland by the bloody Irish and the other part in England when we were devoured by friends and foes in a consuming war of our own nation and our neighbours as if we were eaten up by strangers All which sins of these sinfull Jews of which the Lord complains as well of the great as of the small and the negligence of those which should have applied the remedies and the general despair none hoping for amendment the Prophet doth Allegorically describe in the nature of a spreading disease from head to foot and seizing upon the vital parts For thus speaks the Prophet v. 6. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it but wounds and bruises and putrifying fores they have not been closed Heb. crushed neither bound up nor mollified with ointment and before ver 5. The whole or every head is sick and the whole or every heart faint Yet to put them in comfort in such a hopeless condition of sin and sorrow when he had before told them in the same verse Why should ye be stricken any more ye will revolt more and more he foretelleth them of better times and a change from all their wickedness and afflictions by sending them good Magistrates and taking away wicked men in the following verses Ver. 24. Therefore saith the Lord the Lord of hosts the mighty One of Israel Ah I will ease me of mine adversaries and avenge me of mine enemies Ver. 25. And I will turn my hand upon thee and purely purge away thy drosse and take away thy tinn Ver. 26. And I will restore thy Judges as at the first and thy Counsellors as at the beginning afterward thou shalt be called the City of righteousnesse the faithfull City In which part of the Prophecy as the Jews estate runs parallel to England as I have shewn and as under the Type of a disease in the same Chapter the Prophet describes allegorically their sins and sufferings so hath the Lord God miraculously by two Diseases of the body of man described unto us mystically the people of England and such as resemble the Diseases set down in the Text our sins and our calamities And as by Isaiah are described the instruments of their wo under the notion of a disease no lesse are the Authors of our miseries comprehended in the mystery of the fore-named diseases and over and above what Person shall be our deliverer Observe that it is there said ver 5. Every Head is sick and every Heart faint and v. 6. From the sole of the Foot even unto the Head there is no soundnesse in it but wounds and bruises and putrifying or corrupt sores Like unto this Disease are those Two Maladies one whereof is called the Rekets the other the Kings evil They are thus alike the Rekets is a disease of the head yea of every head for it is not that disease if it be without that Symptome any time the Kings-evil is a noysome infirmity full of bruises or hollow apostemated swellings and sores which run with filthy mattur But that I may perswade my Reader that these Two Diseases may signifie somewhat more then what all diseases do Gods just displeasure against and punishment of sin I shall shew examples of diseases in Holy Scripture which do plainly confirm what I here affirm of these One of these diseases is mentioned Exo. 9. ver 8. And the Lord said unto