ur dignity, in
respect of very mean creatures, who are physicians to themselves. The
hart that is pursued and wounded, they say, knows an herb, which being
eaten throws off the arrow: a strange kind of vomit. The dog that
pursues it, though he be subject to sickness, even proverbially, knows
his grass that recovers him. And it may be true, that the drugger is as
near to man as to other creatures; it may be that obvious and present
simples, easy to be had, would cure him; but the apothecary is not so
near him, nor the physician so near him, as they two are to other
creatures; man hath not that innate instinct, to apply those natural
medicines to his present danger, as those inferior creatures have; he is
not his own apothecary, his own physician, as they are. Call back
therefore thy meditation again, and bring it down: what's become of
man's great extent and proportion, when himself shrinks himself and
consumes himself to a handful of dust; what's become of his soaring
thoughts, his compassing thoughts, when himself brings himself to the
ignorance, to the thoughtlessness, of the grave? His diseases are his
own, but the physician is not; he hath them at home, but he must send
for the physician.

IV. EXPOSTULATION.

I have not the righteousness of Job, but I have the desire of Job: _I
would speak to the Almighty, and I would reason with God_.[28] My God,
my God, how soon wouldst thou have me go to the physician, and how far
wouldst thou have me go with the physician? I know thou hast made the
matter, and the man, and the art; and I go not from thee when I go to
the physician. Thou didst not make clothes before there was a shame of
the nakedness of the body, but thou didst make physic before there was
any grudging of any sickness; for thou didst imprint a medicinal virtue
in many simples, even from the beginning; didst thou mean that we should
be sick when thou didst so? when thou madest them? No more than thou
didst mean, that we should sin, when thou madest us: thou foresawest
both, but causedst neither. Thou, Lord, promisest here trees, _whose
fruit shall be for meat, and their leaves for medicine_.[29] It is the
voice of thy Son, _Wilt thou be made whole?_[30] that draws from the
patient a confession that he was ill, and could not make himself well.
And it is thine own voice, _Is there no physician?_[31] that inclines
us, disposes us, to accept thine ordinance. And it is the voice of the
wise man, both for the matte