Five disputations of church-government and worship

Sect. 24. Let this be considered of, as in any lower case. If a man see another fall down in the streets,¹ shall he refuse to take him up, because he is no Physician? If the Country be infected with the Plague, and you have a Sovereign medicine that will certainly cure it with all that will be ruled, will you let them all perish, rather then apply it to them, because you are not a Physician, and that when the Physicians are not to be had? If you see the poor naked, may no one make them clothes but a Taylor? If you see the enemy at the Walls, will you not give the City warning, because you are not a Watch-man, or on the Guard? If a Commander die in fight, any man that is next may take his place in case of Necessity. Will you see the field lost for a point of Order, because you will not do the work of a Commander? A hundred such cases may be put, in which its plain, that the substance of the work in which men can do a great and necessary good, is of the Law of Nature, though the regulating of them in point of order is oft from Positive Laws: but the Cessation of the obligation of the Positives about Order, doth not disoblige us from the common Law of Nature: For then it should allow us to lay by humanity.

Sect. 24. Let this be considered of, as in any lower case. If a man see another fall down in the streets,¹ shall he refuse to take him up, because he is no Physician? If the Country be infected with the Plague, and you have a Soveraign medicine that will certainly cure it with all that will be ruled, will you let them all perish, rather then apply it to them, because you are not a Physitian, and that when the Physitians are not to be had? If you see the poor naked, may no one make them cloaths but a Taylor? If you see the enemy at the Walls, will you not give the City warning, because you are not a Watch-man, or on the Guard? If a Commander die in fight, any man that is next may take his place in case of Necessity. Will you see the field lost for a point of Order, because you will not do the work of a Commander? A hundred such cases may be put, in which its plain, that the substance of the work in which men can do a great and necessary good, is of the Law of Nature, though the regulating of them in point of order is oft from Positive Laws: but the Cessation of the obligation of the Positives about Order, doth not disoblige us from the common Law of Nature: For then it should allow us to lay by humanity.