CURE BY Y E TOUCE. 415 



both supports the body politic, and keeps up the denizens 

 and subjects thereof in vigour and courage. 



*My lord [i.e. the bishopj, the eminent and well-deserved 

 place your honour enjoys in the king's presence, as well as in 

 his princely and royal palace, being clerk to the closet of his 

 sacred majesty, does not only place you near your sovereign, 

 but puts you at his right hand, by whose clean hands the 

 royal gold, which is used at our daily healings, is presented to 

 OUT sacred majesty. And this makes you as great a judge as 

 observer of these his wonderful and miraculous cures, so fre- 

 quently made good by his sacred hands ; the which, as they 

 have been infinite in numbers, so ought they to be accounted 

 miraculous in their nature.' 



Thus inferentially, you see, my lord bishop testifies to 

 the fact ; and were time and space more propitious, dozens of 

 bishops might be cited who testified directly. Are we to 

 believe this mass of evidence ? Do / believe it ? not, that is 

 to say, in any reserved non-natural sense, but plainly, liter- 

 ally, chapter by chapter, phrase by phrase, line by line, word 

 by word f 



Ay, to be sure I believe (using the words of a bishop to 

 Dr. Colenso), that, ' if viewed in relation to the subject it 

 really refers to the state, mentally and morally, of those to 

 whom it was addressed, and the effect it was intended to 

 convey it will bear the pressure of any test applied to it.' 

 Should some disparager of the divinity of kings affirm the 

 contrary, then my reply is (again quoting the same bishop's 

 words), f l must attend to other duties than a controversy 

 with one who has been so ably encountered.' 



To doubt the efficiency of royal touch is, let us admit, for 

 peace and quietness' sake, impossible; but having studied 

 candidly every aspect of the case, and weighed impartially a 

 vast array of evidence, I am unable to indorse the extreme 

 opinion, that the gold, silver, or other token given by the 

 sovereign was absolutely without influence on the malady. 



