Englands sickness, comparatively conferred with Israels Divided into two sermons, by ThoEnglands sicknes, comparatively conferred with Israels Diuided into two sermons, by Tho

If they will have Rome a sanctuary, let them take along with them Petrarcha's catachresicall speech,¹ calling it a Sanctuary of Errors. What particular Church then may not err? now can it err, and be sound? Be the error small, yet the ache of a finger keeps the body from perfect health. The greater it is the more dangerous. Especially, 1. either when it possesseth a vital part, and affecteth, infecteth the Rulers, of the Church. It is ill for the feet, when the ^cHead is giddy, 2. or when it is infectious and spreading, violently communicated from one to another, 3. or when it carries a colour of truth. The most dangerous vice, is that which bears the countenance, and wears the cloak of virtue, 4. or when it is fitted to the humour, and seasoned to the relish of the people. Sedition, affectation, popularity, covetousness, are enough to drive an error to an heresy. So the disease may prove a Gangrene, and then enserecidendum, ne pars sinceratrabatur: no means can save the whole, but cutting off the incurable part: Pereat unus potius quam unitas. 2 Ignorance is a sore sickness in a Church, whether it be in the superior or subordinate members. Especially when the Priests lips preserve not knowledge. Ill goes is with the body when the […] are blind. Devotion without instruction often winds it self into superstition. When learnings head is kept under Avarice's girdle, the land grows sick. Experience hath made this conclusion too manifest. Our fore-fathers felt the terror and tyranny of this affliction; who had golden Chalices, and wooden Priests, that had either no Art, or no hart to teach the people. Sing not, thou Roman Siren, that Ignorance is the dam of devotion, to breed it: it is rather a dam to stifle, restrain and choke it up. Blindness is plausible to please men, not possible to please God. Grant that our ⟨p. 34⟩faults in the light, are more heinous then theirs who wanted true knowledge. ^fEx furibus enim leges eos gravius puniunt, qui interdiù furantur: For the laws do punish those thieves most severely, that fear not even by day to commit outrages. Yet in all reason, their sins did exceed in number, who knew not when they went awry or what was amiss. Rome hath (by a strange and incredible kind of doctrine) gone about to prove that the health, which is indeed the sickness, of a Church, Ignorance.