And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them.
Ver. 6. Shall men seek death] Being brought through anguish of conscience, and fear of wrath, to that pitiful plight that Roger Bishop of Salisbury was, in King Stephen's time, through long and strait imprisonment. He was so hardly bestead (saith the historian) ut vivere noluerit, mori nescierit, that live he would not, die he could not Popish pardons, pilgrimages, dirges, &c., would not quiet or cure distempered consciences, or shake out the envenomed arrows of the Almighty, that stuck fast in them, haeret lateri lethalis arundo. A broken leg is not eased by a silken stocking. Nescio quomodo imbecillior est medicina quam morbus, said Cicero of his philosophical consolations; so may these well say of their Popish paltry applications, The medicine is too weak for the malady. The Papists say, that the reformed religion is a doctrine of desperation. This we are sure is true of theirs, as were easy to instance in Stephen Gardiner, Dr Pendleton, Francis Spira, Guarlaeus, Bomelins, Latomus, Crescentius.