"He doth not only prescribe the medicine...."

Almighty God, the great and omnipotent physician of our souls, is so passionately charitable, that he undertakes the cure himself; he visiteth in person the patient, affording him his corporeal presence in our assumed nature; he doth not only prescribe the medicine, but will stand likewise to the cost of the cure, and that after a strange manner, by taking upon him our infirmities, our miseries and grief: Veri languores nostros tulit, et delores nostros ipse portavit [“Surely he that bore our infirmities and carried our sorrows” (Isa 53:4)].

— from “A Sermon Preaches Before Her Majesty the Queen-Dowager, The 13th Sunday after Pentecost, 1686,” Edward Scarisbrick, S.J.

Edward Scarisbrick (alias Nelville) SJ was an English priest who, like many of the men of the Scarisbrick family of Scarisbrick Hall, in Lancashire, entered the Society of Jesus (Jesuits). Sent to England during the English Protestant Revolt, Scarisbrick was named by Titus Oates as part of the “Popish Plot”— a specious conspiracy against the life of King Charles II. As the shifting fortunes of Catholics at this time went, so went Scarisbrick’s. Once hunted as a priest, he was soon vaunted by the Catholic King James II as royal chaplain. When James II was deposed after the Glorious Revolution, Scarisbrick fled to France although he eventually returned to live out his days in Lancashire.