Select thoughts, or, Choice helps for a pious spirit a century of divine breathings for a ravished soule, beholding the excellencies of her Lord Jesus / by J. Hall ...

LI.

It is worth observing how nature hath taught all living creatures to be their own physitians; The same power that gave them a being hath led them to the means of their own preservation: No Indian is so savage, but that he knows the use of his Tobac∣co and Contra-yerva; yea even the brute creatures are bred with this skill: The Dog when he is stomack-sick can go right to his proper Grass; the Cat to her Nep; the Goat to his Hemlock; the Weasel to Rue; the Hart to Dittany; the sick Lyon can cure himself with an Ape; the Monkey with a Spider; the Bear with an Ant-heap; the

Panther with mans dung; and the Stork is said to have taught man the use of the glyster; to what purpose should we instance when the case is universal? The Toad hath recourse to his Plantain∣leaf; the Tortois to his Peni∣royal; & in short, there is none but knows his own medicine: As for the reasonable crea∣ture, in all the civilized re∣gions of the world, we may well say now of every nation as it was of old said of Egypt, That it is a countrey of Phy∣sitions: There is not an hus∣wife, but hath an Apothe∣caries shop in her Garden; which affords her those re∣ceipts, whereby she heals the ayls of her complaining family. Onely mankinde is

mortally soul-sick, and na∣turally neither knows, nor seeks, nor cares for remedy. O thou that art the great Phy∣sitian in Heaven, first cure our insensibleness; make thou us as sick of our sins, as we have made our selves sick by sin, and then speak the word, and we shall be whole.