A27641:18
A learned treatise of the plague
A learned treatise of the plague wherein the two questions, whether the plague be infectious or no, and , whether and how far it may be shunned of Christians by going aside, are resolved / written in Latin by the famous Theodore Beza Vezelian.A learned treatise of the plague wherein the two questions, whether the plague be infectious or no, and , whether and how farr it may be shunned of Christians by going aside, are resolved / written in Latine by the famous Theodore Beza Vezelian.
London: printed by Thomas Ratcliffe, 1665
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
Now let us see whether this following Reason be of any more force. By those Names, say they, which in the holy Scripture are attributed to the ⟨p. 5⟩Plague, is sufficiently and thoroughly expressed, what the quality and manner of the same is. Now the Plague is called The hand of God, 2 Sam. 24. The word of God, 1 Chron. 21. and is also signified by the name of Arrows, Ps. 31. & 90. Therefore it cometh not of Infection: when as neither Hand, nor Sword, nor Arrow, woundeth by Infection. But besides that, peradventure I might worthily call into doubt, whether all these testimonies alleged deny this Argument also; for in another place, as Psalm 17. David calleth his Enemies the hand of God, who by natural means assaulted him. And when as the hand of God is said to have made us, Natural generation is not left out; and it is manifest, that in the Scripture all evils, and punishments whatsoever God sendeth unto Mankind, using either ordinary Laws of Nature only, or else using the service of Angels, are called Arrows. I demand moreover, what they call the quality and manner of the Disease? They will say, The nature thereof it self: But I say by those metaphorical terms of hand, sword, arrow, is no more signified of what manner or quality this Disease is in it self, than what is Hail or the Scab, when God is said with a stretched out hand to have smitten Egypt: And to be short, what is the force and nature of every Disease, when as in the additions of the Law, they are reckoned up amongst the Curses which God would send upon them? What then? surely then it belongeth unto the Physicians to search out the nature of Diseases, so far as they depend upon the laws of Nature; which we often see by them performed with such good success and certainty, that they can foreshow both them, and what issue they are likely to come unto. But concerning Supernatural and Divine causes of Sickness and other Miseries, those do Divines declare, teaching, That we must mount far above Nature, and all things appertaining unto Nature, when with our Prayers we deal about the avoiding and removing of them far away from us; for the true and principal cause of them is our Sins, wherewith God being provoked, doth raise and stir up against us all these inferior Causes, to be revenged on Mankind with just punishments.