A LOYAL AND FATAL PRAYER.
It is related by Thoresby that Mr. John Jackson, a good old Puritan, and a member of the Assembly of Divines at Westminster, "was yet so zealously affected for King Charles I., when he heard of his being brought before a pretended high court of justice, that he prayed earnestly that God would please to prevent that horrid act, which would be a perpetual shame to the nation, and a reproach to the Protestant religion; or, at least, would be pleased to remove him, that he might not see the woful day. His prayer was heard and answered as to himself, for he was buried the week before" the execution of Charles took place.
FLAVEL'S "DAY OF HEAVEN."
This distinguished Nonconformist divine, who lived about the end of the seventeenth century, in his Treatise on the Soul of Man relates of himself—so at least it is understood, though he speaks in the third person—that for a day he was wrapt in such intimate spiritual communion with heaven, as exhausted the powers of physical nature, and for a time appeared to leave him on the brink of the grave. This singular season of trance he used to style "one of the days of heaven;" and he affirmed, that in that time there came to him more insight into the heavenly life, than he had all his days gained from books or sermons.
"Being on a journey, he set himself to improve his time by meditation; when his mind grew intent, till at length he had such ravishing tastes of heavenly joys, and such full assurance of his interest therein, that he utterly lost the sight and sense of this world and all its concerns, so that for hours he knew not where he was. At last, perceiving himself faint through a great loss of blood from his nose, he alighted from his horse, and sat down at a spring, where he washed and refreshed himself, earnestly desiring, if it were the will of God, that he might then leave the world. His spirits reviving, he finished his journey in the same delightful frame. He passed all that night without a wink of sleep, the joy of the Lord still overflowing him, so that he seemed an inhabitant of the other world." It was taken by his religious friends as a special promise of heavenly favour, that at the birth of Flavel a pair of nightingales made their nest close to the chamber of his mother, and welcomed him into the world with their delightful warble.
A ROYAL MEDICINE.
Even so late as the days of Queen Elizabeth, ignorance and superstition continued prime regulating powers in the practice of physic; accomplished as some of the physicians of the day were, it was, as Lord Bacon has affirmed, in every department excepting those that immediately touched their own profession. Sir William Bulleyn was not one of the least prominent and enlightened; but some of the prescriptions which he has left on record, attest a very deplorable state of things, existing little more than half a century before Harvey achieved his great discovery. Take for example this recipe for an
"Electuarium de Gemmis."
"Take two drachms of white perles; two little peeces of saphyre; jacinth, corneline, emerauldes, granettes, of each an ounce; setwal, the sweate roote doronike, the rind of pomecitron, mace, basel seede, of each two drachms; of redde corall, amber, shaving of ivory, of each two drachms; rootes both of white and red behen, ginger, long peper, spicknard, folium indicum, saffron, cardamon, of each one drachm; of troch. diarodon, lignum aloes, of each half a small handful; cinnamon, galinga, zurubeth, which is a kind of setwal, of each one drachm and a half; thin pieces of gold and sylver, of each half a scruple; of musk, half a drachm. Make your electuary with honey emblici, which is the fourth kind of mirobalans with roses, strained in equall partes, as much as will suffice. This healeth cold diseases of ye braine, harte, stomack. It is a medicine proved against the tremblynge of the harte, faynting and souning, the weaknes of the stomacke, pensivenes, solitarines. Kings and noble men have used this for their comfort. It causeth them to be bold-spirited, the body to smell wel, and ingendreth to the face good coloure."