not, in that kind, and so cannot have it by
his own hand, he sends a donative of health in sending his physician.
The holy king St. Louis, in France, and our Maud, is celebrated for
that, that personally they visited hospitals, and assisted in the cure
even of loathsome diseases. And when that religious Empress Placilla,
the wife of Theodosius, was told that she diminished herself too much in
those personal assistances and might do enough in sending relief, she
said she would send in that capacity as a Christian, as a fellow-member
of the body of thy Son, with them. So thy servant David applies himself
to his people, so he incorporates himself in his people, by calling them
his brethren, his bones, his flesh;[123] and when they fell under thy
hand, even to the pretermitting of himself, he presses upon thee by
prayer for them; _I have sinned, but these sheep, what have they done?
Let thine hand, I pray thee, be against me and against my father's
house_.[124] It is kingly to give; when Araunah gave that great and free
present to David, that place, those instruments for sacrifice, and the
sacrifices themselves, it is said there by thy Spirit, _All these things
did Araunah give, as a king, to the king_.[125] To give is an
approaching to the condition of kings, but to give health, an
approaching to the King of kings, to thee. But this his assisting to my
bodily health, thou knowest, O God, and so do some others of thine
honourable servants know, is but the twilight of that day wherein thou,
through him, hast shined upon me before; but the echo of that voice,
whereby thou, through him, hast spoke to me before, then when he, first
of any man, conceived a hope that I might be of some use in thy church
and descended to an intimation, to a persuasion, almost to a
solicitation, that I would embrace that calling. And thou who hadst put
that desire into his heart, didst also put into mine an obedience to it;
and I, who was sick before of a vertiginous giddiness and irresolution,
and almost spent all my time in consulting how I should spend it, was by
this man of God, and God of men, put into the pool and recovered: when I
asked, perchance, a stone, he gave me bread; when I asked, perchance, a
scorpion, he gave me a fish; when I asked a temporal office, he denied
not, refused not that; but let me see that he had rather I took this.
These things thou, O God, who forgettest nothing, hast not forgot,
though perchance he, because they were