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
all this scarcely did they then beleeve the Prophets For how soon had they forgotten the miracles which Moses did before them when being told more then once that God had promised to bring them into the land of Canaan to give it them for a possession after that he had performed his promise in bringing them out of the land of Egypt had led them by a pillar of fire and a cloud yet being pursued by the Egyptians they murmured against the Lord beleeved not his servant Moses concluding they should be then slain by the Egyptians Exo. 14. 12. Isaiah who was so far acquainted with the Lords mind that he expresly told King Hezekiah as a signe which was required by the king by the going back of the shade of the Sun on the Diall of Ahaz ten degrees the recovery of the king and the lengthening of his life fifteen years 2 King 20. yet complaineth the Prophet that what he prophesied was neither understood nor beleeved Isa 53. 1. Who hath beleeved our report and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed Likewise when Jeremiah prophesied to the Jews and what he foretold of their captivity came fully to pass then false Prophets which prophesied of their sudden return were more credited by the People For that remnant of the People which was left behind by Nebuchadnezzar in Jerusalem after thrise carrying them away into Chaldea the first in the third year of Jehojakim Dan. 1. 2. the next in Jehojakims the third in Jehojachins reign and with him plainly did not beleeve Jeremiah nor Ezekiel prophesying unto them the destruction and burning of their City and Temple boasting notwithstanding that they should not be nor the City any more taken calling Jerusalem the Caldron and themselves the flesh Ezek. 11. 3. concluding thereby that the City was made for them and they for the City so as that they should not be parted So for the Necessity of the work that the children of God might have a firm foundation on which their faith should be built the Holy Pen-men of Scripture were fully inspired by God so as no word in Holy Scripture written by the Prophets and Apostles is there found which God did not miraculously inspire into the mindes of those Holy men Concerning his Apostles and Evangelists Christ promised that they should be guided into all truth Joh. 16. 13. and Peter saith 2 Pet. 1. 20. That no Prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation whose meaning is not as the Papists pretend That no private or single person may expound the Scripture nor as it is by us commonly expounded That every Pen-man of the Books of God was inspired by Gods Spirit and wrote not his own private conceits but this No Prophecy of the Scripture so called because it contains the Almighty's counsel is of any private interpretation not only as it is free from the mixture of humane inventions which are contrary to the mind of God but there is not one word therein nor syllable which was not dictated unto them by the holy Ghost And this is fully to my purpose For we know that the Scripture is the Word of God and he that expoundeth and applieth it as he ought preacheth nothing but the Word of God but the first is of no private but the other is of private interpretation But for the times which followed the Lord promised they should be such as that in them old men should dream dreams and young men should see Visions and that their Sons and their Daughters should prophesie Act. 21. 17. and that their servants and handmaids should have Gods Spirit poured upon them Joel 12. 29. signifying that in those times which began sooner after our Lords Ascension and now are very ordinary and mean persons should have such an extraordinary measure of Divine knowledge exceeding the foregoing ages as that they may be accounted all Prophets and Prophetesses But Daniel declareth in what manner and by what means this great knowledge shall be attained thereby expounding what the Prophet Joel and out of him S. Luke speaketh Dan. 12. 4. Many shall run to and fro and knowledge shall be encreased Where by running to and fro is to be understood Labour and Search that is Study So for that these times are within the ages of great light which as it was promised so we have by experience found it fullfilled that common people which are bred up under able Teachers and Prophets and which give themselves to search into the written Mysteries of Salvation are not so fat-hearted and stupid as not to understand and not to beleeve the Word of God preached unto them but are able by Gods Spirit to search the Scriptures and to discern whether those things which are delivered unto them from their Prophets be true or not And therefore for this cause there is no need of a fully illuminated Prophet to be among us either lest we should want sure guides or be deluded with errors having both the Old and New Testament for our direction which sure word of Prophecy the ancients were partly or wholly without As for the foreknowledge of things which are to come there is neverthelesse still and will be a profitable use and necessity thereof and a part thereof contained in the Visions which are written in Holy Scripture and the searching of them commended unto us by the Spirit of God saying Whatsoever was written in former time was written for our learning another part in those Signes which God hath sent and will send into the world as miracles to be considered by us For the words of our Saviour fully declare that there should be Signes of things which were to follow in the heavens on the earth and in the waters Luk. 21. 25. And there shall be Signes saith he in the Sun and in the Moon and in the Stars and upon the earth distress of Nations with perplexity the Sea and waters roaring v. 26. Mens hearts failing them for fear and looking after those things which are coming on the earth But to what purpose had the Prophecies and Visions of Daniel and Ezekiel and the most mystical Vision of the Canticles and those of the Revelation of S. John with others been as they are left unto us unexpounded if God had denied wholly unto us a Prophetical Spirit to presage what was to be afterward and what was contained in the Holy Visions For there is little difference whether the Lord sends the Vision to us at first or by them unto us what he intends to do Therefore it is to be gathered from the fore-named Scriptures by diligently weighing and comparing them one with another that the distinction of the Old Prophets which lived and prophesied before our Saviours Incarnation I understand Prophets or Seers most properly so called for the other were their ordinary Preachers as may be collected from sundry Scriptures especially from Neh. 6. 7. from those which have since and now live under the Gospel doth
six Prophets sent unto them and in the time of miserable afflictions Now although I cannot but acknowledge that I have not heard almost of any Prophet of future events in these times who hath not been a deceiver or deceived or who hath used any lawful way to expound Divine Visions saving Interpreters of Holy Scripture whose rules if men would follow them and adjoyn fasting and prayer after the Prophet Daniels example in the like cases they would some of them using the right means undoubtedly attain the desired end For it maketh no difference but there is still the same way of interpreting Visions sent from God and enrolled in Scripture or sent from him and presented before our eyes yet so as what I laid down before as a rule be remembred what the old Prophets understood in an instant or soon after and fully we have it not given to us to finde out but by labour and by degrees and using fasting and prayer as common to both not to perfection Whereunto let this be added because Christian people are according to promise more enlightened in their understandings then those of old times those Prophecies and Visions which are now to be interpreted are by those that hear them expounded to be examined in the ballance of right reason agreeable to the Holy Word when most of the old Visions were to be credited because a Prophet pronounced them who could not lye For this was appointed to be the touchstone of a Prophet the certainty of his predictions in the event Deut. 18. 22. When a Prophet speaketh saith the Lord in the name of the Lord if the thing follow not nor come to pass that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken but the Prophet hath spoken it presumptuously thou shalt not be afraid of him Now let us see since the Lord hath used in evil and wicked times to send among his people Admonitions and Forewarnings also of their sorrows like as of their deliverances their captivity in Egypt and going out their going into Babylon and their return and when there is no cause imaginable why he should not do the like unto us in England if God hath not by immediate and wonderful Messages from himself warned us of our sins and forewarned us of our afflictions and what will be the end of them For the calamities which the children of God have suffered in these Three Kingdomes of England Scotland and Ireland are so great as like and equal to them never any Nation upon whom the Name of God hath been called hath undergone by whomsoever considering that monstrous and universal Massacre in Ireland as the chief part and the general Injustice and Hypocrisie in England and sufferings from our own brethren who profest so frequently love pity and compassion toward us a treachery which we never suspected the next If therefore the Lord is wont to foreshew great troubles is it improbable that he hath forewarned his dear children of the greatest which ever befell the Church of God And if all injustice be a sin and oppression a crying sin is it unlikely that the greatest Injustice and Murther that ever was committed all circumstances considered since the crucifixion of our Saviour Jesus Christ the Murther of our Innocent Soveraign Lord King CHARLES the first and the revenge thereof should be also foreshewn us Nor is what I speak concerning Gods foreshewing of matters concerning the Church so strange a Doctrine and incredible but that divers Reverend and Learned men have observed the Portents and applied the Events unto the Signes when they have plainly seen them fulfilled among the rest and above others the Magdeburg Century Writers have done it carefully collecting the Signes and Portents which befell in every age and while others say That Signes are interpreted when they are fulfilled implying thereby that they were of that nature that they were capable of being expounded before their fulfilling Whensoever such miraculous Signes are expounded though after their events God procureth unto himself the praise of his Providence Fore-knowledge Power and Truth c. but if we neglect to consider such Signes we deprive our selves of our own mercy by neglecting those comforts which the Lord of tender mercies sends expresly to support his fainting children under the rod of their enemies For but consider if the Signes which are sent by him to premonish if as it is in Job man regardeth not we do not unthankfully frustrate the end I say and scope for which they were sent As for the end and issue of these evils in this and in the two other counited Kingdoms as he hath dealt with other nations it is not improbable but he hath in his great and endless Mercy so dealt with us signifying together with their calamities how he would farther and at last shew himself toward them The Lord unto the servitude which the Israelites were to endure in a land which was not theirs 400 years doth annex this comfortable news and the issue of their captivity and in a Vision that in the fourth generation they should come out thence and with great substance Gen. 15. and by Moses did promise them the possession of the land of Canaan On the contrary he hath unto the pomp pleasures and delicacies of the City of Rome foretold and foreshewn the burning and devastation thereof and that it shall never be built again by the Type of a Milstone cast into the Sea by an Angel and saying Rev. 18. 25. Thus with violence shall that great City Babylon be thrown down and shall be found no more at all Wherefore it is full as likely that Almighty God with our Sins and Sorrows hath foreshewn whether he will utterly forsake England and cast us off or with our true repentance which he will give us take away our long continued miseries Listen now O Reader I bring you glad glad tidings from a far Countrey as cold water to thy thirsty soul but according to the sense of the holy Proverb that i such news as have been expected these twenty years but hitherto in vain and therefore almost despaired after so many changes and frustrated expectations said to be from a far Countrey when they are long in coming as if from far and so in great danger of miscarrying because I tell you what is much feared And this is sent thee O England from thy merciful God by the hands of him from whom considering the crimes of too many undeserved in respect of so many frustrations of hopes and promises made by all others much feared even by our Gracious Lord King CHARLES through the Power and Mercy of God Almighty restoring him unto his just and undoubted Right and Inheritance of his Three Kingdomes and for the sakes of that small number who have mourned and do mourn for all the abominations of this Kingdome so long continued and who have continually sought the Lord to give us our True and Lawful Soveraign whom blessed be the Lord we now
Two Diseases I will and may affirm justly That if it be probable that the Lord hath been wont to foretell Great Troubles to Nations and Kingdomes and the issue of them and if it be certainly true that in all respects no Nation under Heaven upon whom the Name of God or Christ hath been called hath felt such miseries and so great in so short a space as the English have done in the last twenty years unless they have been predicted by the REKETS and KINGS-EVIL there was never of these great things any Divine Forewarning mentioned in any History Much less was any Prediction like to these but such as did quickly vanish after their appearance in a moment as it were or if any have been of longer continuance their matter and argument hath not been so copious But these Two Diseases the REKETS and KINGS-EVIL have been stable and constant the eldest of which in the Prodigious Healing thereof hath continued six hundred years The former of which as the Leprosie in time of the Law was to typifie the Great Cleanser Christ Jesus our spiritual King who was anointed with oyl of Grace above his fellows and as the Balm of Gilead and Pool of Bethesda were made to foreshew that Merciful Physician who with his blood should heal our sins and miseries and wash us from impurity was determined to shew Gods Providence Power Justiee and Mercy to poor England by the Hand and Government of his anointed Servant K. CHARLES II. Whose Person I say is with the other evils designed in the second Disease the KINGS-EVIL He is that Physician to cure those wounds and putrified sores which our State-Physicians as they have been often called have made and caused The things which are foreshewn are in General our Sins and our Calamities 2. The Authors those that have caused our miseries and 3. he which shall be our Deliverer The method of this discovery is plain for the Persons which have been and shall be the Authors of these contrary effects are plainly described as if it were by their names these in the one this in the other Disease The Sins and Calamities which some have been guilty of and which almost all have suffered are shewn unto us as under the Allegory and Type of Diseases in so plain a manner as that the Diseases are nothing else but in every part and circumstance living pictures of what we have done and suffered and but Metaphorical names of the very things And either they are the very pictures and likeness of the things which I would have them signifie and in this respect we give their natural signification or else they are Metaphorical expressions of such things and bear some good proportion unto the things which I shew they typisie Which Metaphors are not wrested and strained but easie and taken from Holy Scripture and used here in that signification in which they are there used Nor is there any Trope or Figure which is less hard to be understood nor more usual in our mother tongue or the Latine Greek or Hebrew tongues then Metaphors insomuch that for using of names to certain things we do not only commonly but by necessity borrow the names of other things that is use Metaphors Such are these expressions in ordinary and familiar use To be in high or low place that is to be honorable or without honor and it is taken from places high and low in a Physical notion so to be poor when there is little flesh upon any creature is borrowed from that word which properly signifies want of things necessary but is made to signifie being lean c. The SIGNIFICATION of the REKETS in each particular FIrst of all let us examine the Name of REKETS and therein shall we finde the names of those men which have caused our miseries The word Regentes is a Latine word signifying those that are Rulers and Governors whether in the highest or in a lower degree indifferently from rego to rule from which Latine word Regentes is derived a French word and English given to such a Person which exerciseth Regal authority though not a King as the Queen wife to the French King is by courtesie called Queen Regent to distinguish her from the Queen mother as if she had regal authority and like to the King The Vice-royâ— of Scotland are called Regents of Scotland This is the thing Governors taking upon them Regall authority not being Kings and under Kings are meant by this word REKETS with no greater alteration of letters but the very same which hath been found in our English tongue elsewhere For of Regents leaving out the letter n is made Regets as of Tenent which signifieth an opinion maintained by a man is made Tenet signifying the very same thing the letter n being omitted there also both which words we know are used promiscuously at this day And both Regent and Tenent Participles of the present tense and this from Teneo Then in Regets the letter g is turned into k and of Regets is made REKETS which change is also found in our English tongue Ghaucer in the Shipmans Prologue no. 13. saith His barge was called the Maudelain For that vessel which the Poet there and Barclay in his Poeme called The Ship of fools in sundry places calleth a barge we at this day do name as is well known a barke with the like mutation of g into k For the calling of it as we do REKETS pronouncing of it as if it were written with i in the first syllable there is little difference in the sound whether it be written with e or i for the letter i there sounds not full but like the sound of e insomuch that sometimes e is pronounced like as we would have i pronounced in RIKETS written with an i Thus is the letter e ordinarily pronounced in end metre Peter c. and in Devonshire well puteus is uttered as if the vowel and the word were the same with will voluntas Thus in the Name of this Disease are in the first place discovered those men who were the AUTHORS of our late CALAMITIES for according to the Name of the Disease they were not Kings but such as took upon them REGAL AUTHORITY For the Disease is not exprest by a word of the singular number REKET but plurally REKETS since not one single person but many were the causes of our miseries And in this Name the Cause is put for the effect for that those men were the cause of our evils the evils are called by the Names of such who were the Causes of them The Effects of Original Sin are called the Old man in relation to Adam who was the fountain thereof Regeneration and Holiness called the New man directing unto Christ Jesus the worker of it in Holy Scripture by a Metonymy of the Cause put for the Effect Thus our unjust and usurping High Governors being by the Name of the Disease marked out unto us the Nature and Symptomes of the