WILLIAM HUGH was a native of Yorkshire. He was educated at Corpus Christi college, Oxford. In 1543, he took the degree of master of arts. At that time he was almost wholly occupied as tutor. Afterwards falling under the notice of lady Denny, he was appointed her chaplain, and enabled to pursue his studies with less interruption through her assistance. He was the author of a small work, entitled, “The Troubled Man's Medicine," which went through several editions in the sixteenth century. He also translated into English, "The Book of Bertram, the priest, intreating of the body and blood of Christ." This able and ancient argument against transubstantiation was of considerable use in removing the errors of popery in England. Another work, in which he combated the popish error that infants dying unbaptized would not be saved, he dedicated to queen Catharine Parr. Hugh died at Oxford in 1549, from breaking a blood vessel.

The Troubled Man's Medicine is inserted in the present collection, having been a popular work during the reformation. It also presents a specimen of a species of writing different from other reformers of that day, although it afterwards prevailed to a considerable extent, namely, attempting to illustrate scriptural arguments by reference to facts of ancient history. Although inferior in force to more simple scriptural argumentation, it was preferable to the scholastic reasonings so commonly brought forward by the Romish divines. It marks a change in the writings of theologians, and, under the divine blessing, would have considerable effect upon many nobility and gentry of that day who had entered upon literary studies. It appeared desirable to include one piece of this description in the present collection, and we cannot but remark the clearness with which the author states the scripture doctrine of justification by faith only, when he returns to the bible from his quotations out of human literature. The whole is here reprinted, excepting a few expressions which would now be obsolete.

THE

TROUBLED MAN'S MEDICINE.

BOOK I.

TO COMFORT A MAN BEING IN TROUBLE, ADVERSITY, OR SICKNESS.

PART THE FIRST.

The results of abundance and wealth, and those of poverty and adverse fortune, should cause us to endure the latter with thanksgiving.

MOST gentle friend Urban, I plainly perceive, not so much by your letters as by the report of other men, that you are not joyful, neither of a quiet mind, but rather unquieted, sad, and pensive, in that fortune, which in her inconstancy, as you say, only is constant, doth not, according to her old tenure, favour you, in that the world, which for the most part is not theirs that are of God, good, and virtuous, does not, as it has done, smile upon you.

As all things are common among them which are trusty and faithful friends, so, doubtless, are the very affections of the mind, which at length is well known of me, not by hearing but by proof, not by reading but by experience. For as your joyful and prosperous state made me to rejoice, so your adverse fortune and sadness causes me likewise to be sad. Wherefore it shall be expedient, and my part, to find some way or means whereby this heaviness, wherewith both our minds as yet are equally occupied, may be set aside, or at the least restrained. To increase your substance with cattle, gold, or silver, my mind is willing, but my power is impotent. To teach you how these things may be procured I have not learned.

But that medicine only which learned men have counted most present to a sick and sorrowful heart, I will endeavour, though peradventure not skilfully, yet friendly to minister.

The medicine is brotherly counsel and friendly communication.

This, saith Plutarch, writing to Apollonius, is to a sick mind the best physician. Words and voices, saith Horace

in his epistles, do mitigate grief and put away the greatest part of sorrow.

Surely I think that as the diseases of the body are healed by confections made of herbs and other things proceeding out of the apothecary's shop; so the diseases of the mind are only to be cured with comfortable and unfeigned words, flowing out of a friendly and faithful heart.

Isocrates, in his Oration of Peace, saith, "I would ye should chiefly know, that whereas many sundry remedies are found of the physicians against the sickness and maladies of the body; against the disease of the mind there is none, saving friendly words." Wherefore Apollo, accounted chief, and of the physicians in manner the god, in Ovid, complains grievously, that the disease of his mind could be cured with no herbs, and that the arts which did profit every man could not refrain his troublous affection.

I would wish the muses were so favourable unto me that I might gather such herbs in their gardens, that would well purge your mind of this heaviness; as it is not to be approved in any man, who is partaker of reason, but especially in a man of Christ's religion; how beit, alas, so great is the blindness of our foolish nature, we think those things which are not lamentable, are to be lamented; and those which are not horrible in reality, are greatly to be feared.

In this point I may compare us to unwise children, which vehemently fear them that use evil-favoured visors, thinking that they are spirits, devils, and enemies of their health; whereas if they had the wit boldly to pull off the visors, they should see hidden under them gentle countenances, and faces of their friends, kinsmen, or, peradventure, most loving fathers.

Or else we may be justly likened unto raging Ajax, who in his fury and madness used the hogs which God had prepared for his sustenance and wholesome nourishment, as though they had been his deadly enemies, and ordained to his utter destruction.

What childishness or worse than madness is it, to bewail, and not to take in good worth, adversity, misfortune, or poverty, which happen to us, not by chance, but by the providence and will of our heavenly Father, who worketh every thing for the best towards them that love him, as St. Paul saith to the Romans, ch. viii. who formeth and fashioneth us according to his own will, who maketh us

rich and poor, sick and whole, fortunate and miserable, at his pleasure, and all for our good, profit, and advantage. Lest thou be deceived, I would not have thee imitate the common sort, ascribing worldly miseries to the stars, to fate and fortune; playing therein the part of the dog, which bites the stone that is hurled at him, not blaming the hurler thereof; but rather imitate the example of David, who blamed not Shimei railing at him outrageously, but imputed his despites unto the Lord, by whom he was thought to be sent, and attributed them, with thanks, to God, of whom, by the testimony of scripture, cometh both death and life, riches and poverty, good and evil. This witnesseth the Psalmist, saying, The Lord doth advance and suppress, the Lord maketh the rich and eke the poor.

But thou wilt say, peradventure, If we were certain that our misfortunes and miseries were sent unto christian men by God, they would be much more tolerable; but when we see our cattle die by stinging of serpents, or by contagion, from which they might have been safe if they had been diligently observed; or when we fall into diseases, whereof we might have been clear, if unwholesome meats and diet, infected places or persons had been avoided; or when we are robbed or suffer other losses by negligence of our servants, or evil will of our neighbours; or where we see that we might have been in good case if this chance or that chance had been escaped, if this thing or that thing had not been done-finally, when we see ourselves, by such or like chances as I have spoken of, come to misery, we think it rather to be imputed to evil fortune, than to the hand of God, by the same mean seeking or working our welfare.

men.

Truly, whosoever is of this opinion, in my judgment, seems to be ignorant that God is provident and careful for Also to lack the knowledge of his most holy and wholesome scriptures. In Matthew x. it is written, that a sparrow, which is a bird of small estimation, cannot fall to the ground, without our heavenly Father, neither a hair of a man's head. And shall we, which are the sheep of his pasture, his people, and his sons, whom he regardeth a thousand times more than the sparrows, think that the loss of those things which we have enjoyed, be they riches, health, or any other worldly things, either the miss of them which we have desired, can chance without his will and godly providence ?

Who so foolish as to think that while God regards the hairs of our heads, which are neither greatly profitable nor necessary, he will contemn and neglect things which pertain to the sustaining and necessity of the whole body.

Who knows not that Job's substance decayed by divers chances, as by tempests and thunders, by thieves and robbers, his children destroyed by the falling of a house? which things to the infidel would have seemed bare chance, and not afflicted by any godly power, yet in deed, as it is manifest in the history, these were nothing else but means or instruments which the Lord used to the performance of his will.

Holy Job, of all christian men much to be followed, after he had lost all, and was brought to extreme misery, did not accuse his carpenters for building of a ruinous house, neither did he cry out upon fortune as the unfaithful do, nor yet found fault at his herdmen, in that they drove not his cattle diligently into the safe stables, but, considering the true cause of his calamities and wretchedness, said, Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I shall go hence. The Lord did give me wealth, and the Lord hath taken it away; as it pleased the Lord, so it is done; his name be blessed.

David, in his Psalms, evidently shows that our calamities come none otherwise but by the will and permission of God, which trieth us as the gold is tried in the fiery furnace, being never the worse therefore, but better and purer. Thou, saith he, O Lord, hast proved us, and as silver is wont with fire, thou hast examined us; thou hast brought us into snares, and laid tribulations upon our backs. Thou hast made men our enemies, and set them in our necks; we have passed by fire and water. Jeremiah, in ch. iii. of his Lamentations, confirms this, pronouncing such words, Who saith that it should be done, the Lord not commanding? Do not good and evil proceed from the mouth of the Highest? The Gentiles, as blind as they were, of this thing were not altogether ignorant.

The Greek poet, Hesiod, asks what is the cause that some men are vile, some noble, some rich, other some poor? he maketh answer himself, and saith, The will of the mighty God-which saying I would wish to be as well believed of christian men, as it was truly spoken by a blind heathen.

Seeing therefore that misfortunes, lack or loss of riches,