AN

HOMILY,

TO BE READ IN

THE TIME OF PESTILENCE;

THE

CONTAINING

TRUE CAUSES OF THE SAME; AND LIKEWISE A MOST
PRESENT REMEDY FOR AS MANY AS BE ALREADY,

OR HEREAFTER SHALL BE, INFECTED WITH
THAT DISEASE.

GATHERED OUT OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES,

BY

JOHN HOOPER,

BISHOP OF WORCESTER AND GLOUCESTER.

A. D. 1553.

To all Pastors and Curates within the King's Majesty's Diocese of Worcester and Gloucester.

EVEN as we be blind and unthankful for God's favourable mercies, wherewithal he followeth us in health, wealth, and prosperity; so we be blind, and unsensible for his most just plagues, wherewithal he punisheth us in sickness, scarcity, and troubles. And now, amongst other tokens of his displeasure and wrath, he hath sent us in divers places one of the extremest plagues that ever he devised to punish man withal in this life, the plague of pestilence.

Forasmuch as he meaneth thereby not only to kill and destroy the bodies of such, as by this plague he purposeth to take out of this mortal life: but also without repentance and turning of his mercy in Christ before death, the souls of such as depart from hence, must needs perish by God's just judgment. And not only this will be the end of such as it pleaseth God to strike to death by this his servant and messenger, the plague of pestilence; but also the like danger of his displeasure remaineth to me, and to all others that have the cure and charge of the people's souls in this the King's Majesty's most noble realm, over whom God and he hath made us watchmen and overseers, to admonish and warn the people of all dangers and plagues that God shall send for their punishment; in case we admonish not in time the people committed unto our charge of such plagues as for sin he purposeth to punish us withal: for then their loss and damnation shall be required at our hands.

For the discharge of myself, and also for the better instruction of such as have cures within this diocese of Worcester and Gloucester (and yet not best able to discharge them), and furthermore for the profit and salvation of the people, amongst whom it may

please God to send his fearful plague of pestilence: I have thought it my bounden duty (seeing at all times I cannot comfort the sick myself) to collect or gather into some short sermon or homily a medicine and most pleasant help for all men against the plague of pestilence: and in the same also to provide some present remedy for such as shall be infected with that disease. And for the better understanding of the medicine, I will use this order, that all learned physicians do use in their practice: first, I will shew the chiefest cause of their pestilence; and then, what remedy is best to be used against it, and to heal it when it hath infected any man.

And although I will speak herein somewhat as other physicians have done; yet because they have spoken already more than I can in the matter, though it be a great deal less than the matter of the disease requireth (for none of them have shewed any certain remedy, be their reason never so good), I will briefly, as by the way, somewhat speak of this disease, as they do but as a preacher of God's word, and as a physician for the soul, rather than for the body, treat of the sickness and the remedy thereof, after the advice and counsel of God's word, who supplieth all things omitted and not spoken of, concerning this most dangerous plague, by such as have written, besides the Scripture of God, their mind touching the same. For indeed the chief cause of all plagues and sickness, is sin which, remaining within all men, worketh destruction, not only of the body, but also of the soul, if remedy be not found.

And whereas Galen saith, that "all pestilence cometh by the corruption of the air, that both beast and man drawing their breaths in the corrupt air, draw the corruption thereof into themselves," he saith well; yet not enough. He saith also very naturally, that when the air is altered from its natural

equality and temperature to too much and intemperate heat and moisture, pestilence is like then to reign. For as he saith in the same place, that "heat and moisture distempered be most dangerous for the creatures of the world," yet that is not enough. As Ezekiel saith, where God sendeth all these distemperances, and yet if Noah, Daniel, and Job were in the midst of them, they shall be safe. Even so saith David also: "Though they die at the right hand ten thousand fold, and die at the left hand ten thousand fold, the plague shall not touch him that sitteth under the protection of the Highest."

And whereas reason hath many good and probable arguments in this matter touching the cause of pestilence; as that it should come sometimes by reason of such humours as be in the body disposed and apt to corrupt, then is the man quickly (by drawing and breathing as well the corruption of himself, as the infection of the air) infected. And that such humours, as be gross and inclined to corruption, rise of evil and immoderate diet; and that the infection taketh its original and beginning from such beasts, carrions, and other loathsome bodies as rot upon the face of the earth, not buried: or else from moorish, standing, and dampish waters, smokes, or other such unwholesome moistures, so that towards the fall of the leaf, both the air that man liveth in, as also man's body itself, be more apt and disposed to putrefaction in that time than in any other for divers natural causes.

These causes are to be considered as natural and consonant to reason: yet there be reasons and causes of pestilence of more weight, and more worthy of deep and advised considerations and advertisements than these be. And the more, because they lie within man, and be marked but by very few, and hide themselves secretly, till they have poisoned the