A divine herbal together with a forrest of thorns In five sermons. ... By…A divine herball together with a forrest of thornes In five sermons. ... By…

These Briers and Thorns have such pricking and wounding effects, in regard of three objects, whom they strike. For sins are like Thorns. 1. To men. 2. To Christ. 3. To the own consciences of the committers. First to men. Pliny mentioneth three sorts of Briers.¹

These Bryers and Thornes haue such pricking and wounding effects, in regard of three obiects, whom they strike. For sins are like Thorns. 1. To men. 2. To Christ. 3. To the owne consciences of the committers. First to men. Plinie mentioneth three sorts of Bryers.¹

1. 1Lib. 21. cap. 16.

1. The moorish Brier, that only grows in rank and fen•e places, & is nourished with rotten mud, and such squalid putrefaction. There is a generation of men like these briars, given to drunkenness, whose affections are fed only with the moisture of the pot. They cannot live but in fenny and moorish places. Pliny saith, that adders & toads love and eat the fruits of these briars; and it is the food of serpents. The effects of drunkenness (in like sort) is a condiment for the devil. Augustine somewhat near our purpose, when he compares drunken places to the fens; where are bred snakes and serpents, and such vile noxious things, which every year must be burned. It were a good turn, if these moorish brambles were stocked up by the roots. If you ask how you should rid them; I will not point you to the Fen-men, who to make quick dispatch of their annoyances, set fire on their fens: but I will give you another precedent. When a king asked how he might be rid of certain noisome fowls, which came abundantly flying into his land; one answered him. Nidos eorum ubique destruendos: that the only means was to destroy their nests in every place. So if you would be shut of these moorish briers, the course is to destroy their ⟨p. 127⟩