The twelve Years of the Woman's Affliction with her Hæmorrhage is a typical Number of the Church's impure State for above twelve Hundred Years. And whether some of the primitive Church did not, by the said twelve Years of the Woman, understand twelve Ages, I appeal to[90] Irenæus, to whom I refer my Readers, Accordingly this typify'd Woman of the Church, should be the same with the Woman[91] in the Wilderness, that, as St. John says, was twelve Hundred and sixty Days or Years there sustained; and by whom many Protestants, as well as the Fathers, understand the Church universal. When the said twelve Hundred and sixty Days or Years of the Church's being in the Wilderness, did commence or will end, is none of my Business to enquire or ascertain. But as this Woman in the Gospel is said after twelve Years Affliction, to be cured of her Disease by Jesus; so it is the Opinion of the Fathers, that the Church universal, after twelve Hundred Years of her Wilderness State, will be purified and sanctified by the Gifts of the Spirit of Christ, and enter upon a more holy, peaceable, and happy Condition, absolutely freed from her Issue of Blood, which, through Persecution and War, she has for many Ages labour'd under. It is not my Concern to collect all the Authorities of the Fathers to this Purpose; but only say, that if at the End of twelve Hundred and sixty Days or Years, the Church, like the Woman, be not cur'd of her Hæmorrhage and mystical Wounds and Sores; if her present impure and unsound State be not chang'd into an holy, healthy, and peaceable one; many good Protestants, as well as the Fathers, are mistaken, and abundance of Prophecies of the Old and New Testament, that have been hereunto urged, will lose their Credit.
But who are meant by the Physicians of the Woman, that have had the mystical Hæmorrhage and Diseases of the Church Under Cure all this while? Who should, but pretended Ministers, of the Gospel? Ministers of the Gospel are not only by the Fathers call'd metaphorically[92] spiritual Physicians; but our Divines and Preachers of all Denominations like the Metaphor, and think themselves able Physicians at the Diseases of the Church, which they are forward to prescribe and apply Medicines to, whenever, in their Opinion, she stands in need of them. Whether our Divines like to be accounted the Physicians of the Text before us, I much question; but it is certain that[93] Eusebius Gallicanus expressly says, that our Divines and pretended Philosophers are meant by them; and venerable Bede[94] upon the Place is of the same Mind too.
The Woman of the Gospel is said[95] to suffer many Things of many Physicians, and was nothing better'd, but rather grew worse; that is, she grew worse not in time only, but through the Use of her Physicians, who were her[96] Tormentors. So the Diseases of the Church in time have increased, for all the Use she has made of her spiritual Physicians, the Clergy. In every Age has the Church been degenerating in Morals and Principles, as any one knows, that is able to make an Estimate of Religion in times past; and all along have her ecclesiastical Quack Doctors contributed to her ill State of Health. As many Physicians with their different Applications tormented the poor Woman; so our many Empericks in Theology with their different Schemes of Church Government and various Systems of Divinity, like so many Prescriptions for Cure, have increased the Divisions, widen'd the Wounds, and inflamed the Sores of the Church. And if the Woman's Issue of Blood be, according to the Fathers, a particular Type of the Blood of the Church, that is shed in Persecution and War; our Theological Pretenders to Physick, have been so far from providing and prescribing a good Stiptic in this Case that they have been the Occasion of the Effusion of much Christian Blood; there having been many a War and Persecution, that these Incision Doctors, who should be all Balsam, have been the Cause of.
The Woman spent all her Living, all her yearly Income, upon her Physicians, and as it seems to a bad Purpose; so very great and large Revenues of the Church, are expended on her ecclesiastical Doctors in spiritual Physick: And to what End and Purpose? Why, to open and widen the bleeding Wounds of the Church, which they should heal and salve up. It is now about twelve Hundred Years, like the twelve Years of the Woman, that the Clergy, our Practitioners in Theological Physick, have received of the Church vast Fees, Stipends and Gratuities (for before that time her Doctors prescrib'd freely) to take care of her Health and Welfare; but unless God provide in due time a Medicine of his own, she is likely to continue in a diseased and sorrowful Condition for all them.
One would think that the Woman of the Gospel might have had more Wit than to lay out all she was worth upon Physicians to no good Purpose; one would think that after some Experience of their Insufficiency to cure her, she might have forborn seeing them, and reserved the Remains of her Estate for better Uses: So the Fees and Revenues of the Church, after due Experience of the Inability of her spiritual Doctors to heal her Sores, might have been in my Opinion better employ'd, and the Church of Christ more out of Danger of Wounds and Sickness, by Sin and Error. Certain it is, that many an Issue of Blood, through Persecution and War, had been prevented; if such barbarous and blood thirsty Doctors of Ecclesiastical Physick, had never been so fee'd and hired to take care of the Welfare of the Church, which, for all their Spiritual Medicines, will continue in a languishing Condition, till heal'd by the Virtue and Graces of the Spirit of Christ in his foresaid appointed Time.
So much then to the mystical Interpretation of the Story of the Cure of the Issue of Blood in this Woman. Every minute Circumstance of it is thus to be allegorized, if need was. Whether the Clergy will like this parabolical Explication of it, I neither know nor care. They have their Liberty with Atheists and Infidels to believe as little of it as they think fit; and I hope they'll give me leave with the Fathers of the Church to believe as much of it as I please. But whether they approve of this allegorical Interpretation of this supposed Miracle or not; they must own, that if the Church, after the foresaid twelve Ages, should be purified and sanctified; if her Errors and Corruptions, of which the Woman's Uncleanness is a Type, should be heal'd; if War and Persecution, typified by her Issue of Blood, should then entirely cease; if all Christians should then be united in Principle, Heart and Affection, and made to walk in a peaceable and quiet State, as the Woman was[97] bid to go in Peace; if the Church should then come behind Jesus (which[98] is a Figure of future Time) and rightly touch by Faith, and apprehend his[99] Garments or Words of Prophecy, about which Christians have hitherto been pressing and urgent; and if the Gifts of the Spirit, like Virtue on the Woman, should then be poured forth upon the Church to the absolute Cure of her present Diseases, we must, I say, allow the Story of this Woman to be an admirable Emblem and typical Representation; and the Accomplishment of it most miraculous and stupendous; and not only an indisputable Proof of the Power and Presence of Christ with his Church, but a Demonstration of his Messiahship, in as much as an almost infinite Number of Prophecies of the Old Testament, will thereupon receive that Accomplishment, which hitherto, by no shadow of Reason, can be pretended to.
After such a mystical Healing of the Hæmorrhage of the Church, there's no doubt on't, but the Story of this Woman in the Gospel will be allow'd to be typical and emblematical. In the mean time, without making a Parable of the Story of her, I assert, there is little or nothing of a Miracle to be made of her Cure, unless we were at a greater Certainty about the Nature of her Disease, and the Manner, rationally speaking, of Jesus's healing of it. And so I pass to the Consideration of
2. Another Story of a miraculous Cure perform'd by Jesus on another Woman, and that is on her, who[100] had a Spirit of Infirmity, eighteen Years, and was bow'd together, and could in no wise lift up herself——being bound of Satan, &c. This too, as I suppose, is with our Divines a great Miracle, and one of the greatest that Jesus wrought, or it had not been specify'd, but cast indiscriminately into the Number of all manner of Diseases, which he heal'd. And for the sake of the Letter, and to please our Divines, whom I would not offend wilfully, I will allow, that Jesus might lay his Hands on, and speak comfortably to such a drooping, stooping, and vaporous Woman, full of Fancies of the Devil's Temptation and Power over her; and she might thereupon recover, and be afterwards of a more cheerful Heart, and erect Countenance, freed from the whimsical Imagination of being Satan-ridden: And what of all that? Where's the Miracle? If the Story of such a Miracle had been related of any Impostor in Religion, of an Arch-Heretick, or Popish Exorcist, our Divines would have flouted at it; they would have told us, there was nothing supernatural and uncommon in the Event, nor any thing at all to be wonder'd at in it. Taking the Devil out of this Story, and there's no more in it, than what's common for a simple, melancholy, and drooping Woman, to be chear'd and elated upon the comfortable Advice and Admonition of a reputedly wise and good Man. And the putting the Devil into the Story, in another Case, our Divines would have said was only the Fancy of the Woman, or the Device of the Miracle-Monger, to magnify his own Art and Power. And if Infidels, Jews, and Mahometans, should say so of this Story of Jesus, they would be no more unreasonable in their Conjectures and Solutions of this Miracle, than we should have been in another and parallel Case.
The Pope, when last at Benevento, is said to have exorciz'd a Dæmon out of a young Maid, which our Divines no more believe than Infidels do. But it is not at all impossible or improbable, that a young Woman might be troubled with Vapours, and go droopingly upon it, whom the holy Father, of whose Prayers and Sanctity she had a good Opinion, might relieve with his Talk, and give another Turn to her Thoughts and Temper: And if she fancy'd herself before possess'd with a Dæmon, or rather, if the Pope's Partizans persuaded her so, it's not unlikely to make a Miracle on't. Just so may Infidels, with their Descants on this Miracle before us, reduce and lessen it: And what must we Believers do then? Why, we must find out a Way to ascertain the Truth and Greatness of the Miracle, or give it up. We must determine certainly what was the Woman's Distemper, and how the Cure of it by ordinary Means was impossible, or make no more Words about it.
And how can we come at the Knowledge of this Woman's Disease, but by the original Words of the Evangelist. St. Luke says, she was one πνευμα εχουσα ασθενειας, that had a Spirit of Weakness, that is, was poor-Spirited and pusilanimous; and if she was συγκυπτουσα, bow'd down upon't, its no more than might be expected of a disconsolate, melancholy and dejected Person. Here then is the Disease of the Woman: If it had been worse, St. Luke, the Physician, if he was of Sufficiency in his Art, should better have express'd himself; so as to give us another Conception of it. And if Satan had not been brought into the Tale, whom it is easy, by reasoning as above, to exorcise out of it, here is a no more grievous Distemper, than what upon the comfortable Exhortations of a wise Man may be cured. And do what our Divines can, they can make literally no more of this Story.