again in such poor parishes as would admit us:  Then I saw it was high time not only to prescribe strong purgative medicines in the pulpit (contempered of the myrrh of mortification, the aloes of confession and contrition, the rhubarb of restitution and satisfaction, with divers other safe roots, seeds, and flowers, fit and necessary to help to carry away by degrees the incredible confluence of ill humours and all such malignant matter as offended), but also to put pen to paper and appear in print (as in this imperfect and impolished piece, which as guilty of an high presumption here in all humility begs your Lordship’s pardon) wherein my chief scope is to personate the Good Samaritan, that, as he cured the wounded traveller by searching his wounds with wine and suppling them with oil, so I have here both described the rise and progress of our national malady, and also prescribed the only remedy, that I might be in some kind instrumental, under God and your Highness, in the healing of the same ...  My Lord, as it must needs grieve you to see these three distressed kingdoms lie like a body without a head, so it may also cheer you to consider that the Comforter hath empowered you (and in this nick of time you only) to make these dead and dry bones live.  You may by this one act ennoble and eternize yourself more in the hearts and chronicles of these three kingdoms than by all your former victories and the long line of your extraction from the Plantagenets your ancestors ...  It is a greater honour to make a king than to be one.  Your proper name minds you of being St. George for England; you surname prompts you to stand for order:  then let not panic fears, punctilios of human policy, or state formalities, beguile you (whom we look upon as Jethro’s magistrate, who was a man of courage, fearing God, dealing truly, and hating covetousness) of that immarescible crown of glory due to you, whom we hope that God hath designed to be the repairer of the breach and the temporal redeemer of your native country.”

Evidently Dr. Griffith was a silly person, more likely to make a cause ridiculous than to help it.  There were things in his sermon and its accompaniments, however, that might harm the King’s cause otherwise than by the bad literary taste of the defence.  There was a tone of that revengeful spirit which it was the policy of all the more prudent Royalists to disown.  Hence the publication annoyed even in that quarter.  The unpardonable offence, however, was the address to Monk.  He was studying to be as secret as the grave, had signified his leanings to the King by not a single public word, and indeed had hardly ceased to swear he stood for the Commonwealth.  And here was an impudent Doctor of Divinity spoiling all by openly assuming and announcing the very thing to be concealed.  Monk was excessively irritated; the Council of State sympathized with him; and so, “to please and blind the fanatical party” for the moment, Dr. Griffith was sent to Newgate.[1]