The Unfortunate Traveller and Other Works (34 page)

Galen
⁹²
might go shoe the gander
⁹³
for any good he could do; his secretaries had so long called him divine that now he had lost all his virtue upon earth. Hippocrates
⁹⁴
might well help almanack-makers, but here he had not a word to say: a man might sooner catch the sweat with plodding over him to no end, than cure the sweat with any of his impotent principles. Paracelsus,
⁹⁵
with his spirit of the buttery
⁹⁶
and his spirits of minerals, could not so much as say ‘God amend him' to the matter.
Plus erat in artifice quam arte
:
⁹⁷
‘there was more infection in the physician himself than his art could cure.' This mortality first began amongst old men, for they, taking a pride to have their breasts loose basted with tedious beards, kept their houses so hot with their hairy excrements, that not so much but their very walls sweat out saltpeter with the smothering perplexity. Nay, a number of them had marvellous hot breaths, which sticking in the briars of their bushy beards could not choose but, as close air long imprisoned, engender corruption.

Wiser was our Brother Bankes
⁹⁸
of these latter days, who made his juggling horse a cut, for fear if at any time he should foist,
⁹⁹
the stink sticking in his thick bushy tail might be noisome to his auditors. Should I tell you how many pursuivants with red noses, and sergeants with precious faces,
¹⁰⁰
shrunk away in this sweat, you would not believe me. Even as the salamander with his very sight blasteth apples on the trees, so a pursuivant or a sergeant at this
present, with the very reflex of his fiery faces,
¹⁰¹
was able to spoil a man afar off. In some places of the world there is no shadow of the sun:
Diebus illis
¹⁰²
if it had been so in England, the generation of Brute
¹⁰³
had died all and some. To knit up this description in a pursenet,
¹⁰⁴
so fervent and scorching was the burning air which enclosed them, that the most blessed man then alive would have thought that God had done fairly by him if He had turned him to a goat, for goats take breath, not at the mouth or nose only, but at the ears also.

Take breath how they would, I vowed to tarry no longer among them. As at Turwin I was a demi-soldier in jest, so now I became a martialist in earnest. Over sea with my implements I got me, where hearing the King of France and the Switzers were together by the ears, I made towards them as fast as I could, thinking to thrust myself into that faction that was strongest. It was my good luck or my ill, I know not which, to come just to the fighting of the battle, where I saw a wonderful spectacle of bloodshed on both sides. Here unwieldly Switzers wallowing in their gore like an oxe in his dung; there the sprightly French sprawling and turning on the stained grass like a roach new taken out of the stream. All the ground was strewed as thick with battle-axes as the carpenter's yard with chips: the plain appeared like a quagmire, overspread as it was with trampled dead bodies. In one place might you behold a heap of dead murthered men overwhelmed with a falling steed instead of a tombstone; in another place a bundle of bodies fettered together in their own bowels. And as the tyrant Roman Emperor used to tie condemned living caitiffs face to face to dead corpses, so were the half-living here mixed with squeezed carcases long putrefied. Any man might give
arms that was an actor in that battle, for there were more arms and legs scattered in the field that day than will be gathered up till Doomsday. The French King himself in this conflict was much distressed; the brains of his own men sprinkled in his face; thrice was his courser slain under him, and thrice was he struck on the breast with a spear. But in the end, by the help of the Venetians, the Helvetians or Switzers were subdued, and he crowned a victor, a peace concluded, and the city of Millaine
¹⁰⁵
surrendered unto him as a pledge of reconciliation.

That war thus blown over, and the several bands dissolved, like a crow that still follows aloof where there is carrion, I flew me over to Münster
¹⁰⁶
in Germany, which an Anabaptistical brother named John Leiden kept at that instant against the Emperor and the Duke of Saxony. Here I was in good hope to set up my staff for some reasonable time, deeming that no city would drive it to a siege, except they were able to hold out. And prettily well had these Münsterians held out, for they kept the Emperor and the Duke of Saxony play for the space of a year, and longer would have done but that Dame Famine came amongst them, whereupon they were forced by messengers to agree upon a day of fight, when, according to their Anabaptistical error, they might all be new christened in their own blood.

That day come, flourishing entered John Leiden the botcher into the field, with a scarf made of lists like a bow-case, a cross on his breast like a thread-bottom, a round-twilted tailor's cushion buckled like a tankard-bearer's device to his shoulders for a target, the pyke whereof was a pack-needle, a tough prentice's club for his spear, a great brewer's cow
¹⁰⁷
on his back for a corslet,
¹⁰⁸
and on his head for a helmet a huge high shoe with the bottom turned upwards, embossed as full of hobnails as ever it might stick. His men were all
base handicrafts, as cobblers and curriers
¹⁰⁹
and tinkers, whereof some had bars of iron, some hatchets, some coolstaves,
¹¹⁰
some dung-forks, some spades, some mattocks, some wood-knives, some addises
¹¹¹
for their weapons. He that was best provided had but a piece of rusty brown bill bravely fringed with cobwebs to fight for him. Perchance here and there you might see a fellow that had a canker-eaten skull
¹¹²
on his head, which served him and his ancestors for a chamber-pot two hundred years, and another that had bent a couple of iron dripping-pans armour-wise to fence his back and his belly; another that had thrust a pair of dry old boots as a breastplate before his belly of his doublet, because he would not be dangerously hurt; another that had twilted
¹¹³
all his truss full of counters, thinking, if the enemy should take him, he would mistake them for gold and so save his life for his money. Very devout asses they were, for all they were so dunstically
¹¹⁴
set forth, and such as thought they knew as much of God's mind as richer men. Why, inspiration was their ordinary familiar,
¹¹⁵
and buzzed in their ears like a bee in a box every hour what news from heaven, hell and the land of whipper-ginnie.
¹¹⁶
Displease them who durst, he should have his mittimus
¹¹⁷
to damnation
ex tempore
.
¹¹⁸
They would vaunt there was not a pea's difference betwixt them and the apostles: they were as poor as they, of as base trades as they, and no more inspired than they, and with God there is no respect of persons. Only herein may seem some little diversity to lurk: that Peter wore a sword, and they count it flat hell-fire for
any man to wear a dagger; nay, so grounded and gravelled
¹¹⁹
were they in this opinion, that now, when they should come to battle, there's never a one of them would bring a blade, no, not an onion blade, about him, to die for it. It was not lawful, said they, for any man to draw the sword but the magistrate; and in fidelity (which I had wellnigh forgot), Jack Leiden, their magistrate, had the image or likeness of a piece of a rusty sword, like a lusty lad, by his side. Now I remember me, it was but a foil neither, and he wore it to show that he should have the foil of his enemies, which might have been an oracle for his two-hand interpretation.
Quid Plura
?
¹²⁰
His battle is pitched. By pitched I do not mean set in order, for that was far from their order; only as sailors do pitch their apparel to make it storm-proof, so had most of them pitched their patched clothes to make them impierceable: a nearer way than to be at the charges of armour by half. And in another sort he might be said to have pitched the field, for he had pitched or rather set up his rest whether to fly if they were discomfited.

Peace, peace there in the belfry: service begins. Upon their knees before they join falls John Leiden and his fraternity very devoutly. They pray, they howl, they expostulate with God to grant them victory, and use such unspeakable vehemence a man would think them the only well-bent men under heaven. Wherein let me dilate a little more gravely than the nature of this history requires or will be expected of so young a practitioner in divinity: that not those that intermissively
¹²¹
cry ‘Lord, open unto us, Lord, open unto us' enter first into the Kingdom; that not the greatest professors have the greatest portion in grace; that all is not gold that glisters. When Christ said ‘The Kingdom of Heaven must suffer violence' he meant not the violence of long babbling prayers, nor the violence of tedious invective sermons without wit, but the violence of faith, the violence of good works, the violence of patient suffering.
The ignorant snatch the Kingdom of Heaven to themselves with greediness, when we with all our learning sink into hell.

Where did Peter and John, in the third of the Acts, find the lame cripple but in the gate of the temple called Beautiful? In the beautifullest gates of our temple, in the fore-front of professors, are many lame cripples, lame in life, lame in good works, lame in everything. Yet will they always sit at the gates of the temple. None be more forward than they to enter into matters of reformation, yet none more behindhand to enter into the true temple of the Lord by the gates of good life.

You may object that those which I speak against are more diligent in reading the Scriptures, more careful to resort unto sermons, more sober in their looks, more modest in their attire than any else. But I pray you let me answer you: doth not Christ say that before the Latter Day the sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood? Whereof what may the meaning be but that glorious sun of the Gospel shall be eclipsed with the dim cloud of dissimulation; that that which is the brightest planet of salvation shall be a means of error and darkness? And the moon shall be turned into blood: those that shine fairest, make the simplest show, seem most to favour religion, shall rent out the bowels of the Church, be turned into blood, and all this shall come to pass before the notable day of the Lord, whereof this age is the eve?

Let me use a more familiar example, since the heat of a great number hath outraged so excessively. Did not the devil lead Christ to the pinnacle or highest place of the temple to tempt him? If he led Christ, he will lead a whole army of hypocrites to the top or highest part of the temple, the highest step of religion and holiness, to seduce them and subvert them. I say unto you that which this our tempted Saviour with many other words besought his disciples: ‘Save yourselves from this froward generation. Verily, verily, the servant is not greater than his master.' Verily, verily, sinful men are not holier than holy Jesus, their maker. That
holy Jesus again repeats this holy sentence: ‘Remember the words I said unto you: the servant is not holier nor greater than his master'; as if he should say: ‘Remember them, imprint in your memory, your pride and singularity will make you forget them, the effects of them many years hence will come to pass.' ‘Whosoever will seek to save his soul shall lose it': whosoever seeks by headlong means to enter into heaven and disannul God's ordinance shall, with the giants
¹²²
that thought to scale heaven in contempt of Jupiter, be overwhelmed with Mount Ossa and Pelion, and dwell with the devil in eternal desolation.

Though the High Priest's office was expired when Paul said unto one of them ‘God rebuke thee, thou painted sepulchre', yet when a stander-by reproved him saying ‘Revilest thou the High Priest?' he repented and asked forgiveness.

That which I suppose, I do not grant. The lawfulness of the authority they oppose themselves against is sufficiently proved. Far be it my under-age arguments should intrude themselves as a green weak prop to support so high a building. Let it suffice, if you know Christ you know his Father also; if you know Christianity you know the fathers of the Church also. But a great number of you, with Philip, have been long with Christ and have not known him, have long professed yourselves Christians and have not known his true ministers. You follow the French and Scottish fashion and faction, and in all points are like the Switzers,
Qui quaerunt cum qua gente cadunt
,
¹²³
‘that seek with what nation they may first miscarry'.

In the days of Nero there was an odd fellow that had found out an exquisite way to make glass as hammerproof as gold. Shall I say that the like experiment he made upon glass, we have practised on the Gospel? Ay, confidently will I. We have found out a sleight to hammer it to any heresy whatsoever. But those furnaces of falsehood and hammerheads of heresy must be dissolved and broken as his was,
or else I fear me the false glittering glass of innovation will be better esteemed of than the ancient gold of the Gospel.

The fault of faults is this: that your dead-born faith is begotten by too-too infant fathers. Cato,
¹²⁴
one of the wisest men in Roman histories canonized, was not born till his father was fourscore years old. None can be a perfect father of faith and beget men aright unto God, but those that are aged in experience, have many years imprinted in their mild conversation, and have, with Zachaeus, sold all their possessions of vanities to enjoy the sweet fellowship, not of the human, but spiritual Messias.

Ministers and pastors, sell away your sects and schisms to the decrepit Churches in contention beyond sea. They have been so long inured to war, both about matters of religion and regiment, that now they have no peace of mind but in troubling all other men's peace. Because the poverty of their provinces will allow them no proportionable maintenance for higher callings of ecclesiastical magistrates, they would reduce us to the precedent of their rebellious persecuted beggary: much like the sects of philosophers called Cynics, who when they saw they were born to no lands or possessions, nor had any possible means to support their estates, but they must live despised and in misery, do what they could, they plotted and consulted with themselves how to make their poverty better esteemed of than rich dominion and sovereignty. The upshot of their plotting and consultation was this: that they would live to themselves, scorning the very breath or company of all men. They professed, according to the rate of their lands, voluntary poverty, thin fare and lying hard, contemning and inveighing against all those as brute beasts whatsoever whom the world had given any reputation for riches or prosperity. Diogenes was one of the first and foremost of the ringleaders of this rusty morosity, and he, for all his nice dogged disposition and blunt deriding of worldly dross and the gross felicity of fools, was taken notwithstanding a little after very fairly a-coining money in his cell. So fares it up and down
with our cynical reformed foreign Churches. They will digest no grapes of great bishoprics forsooth, because they cannot tell how to come by them. They must shape their coats, good men, according to their cloth, and do as they may, not as they would; yet they must give us leave here in England that are their honest neighbours, if we have more cloth than they, to make our garment somewhat larger.