A09461:26
A salve for a sick man. or, A treatiseA salve for a sicke man. or, A treatise
A salve for a sick man. or, A treatise containing the nature, differences, and kinds of death as also the right manner of dying well. And it may serve for spiritual instruction to 1. Mariners when they go to sea. 2. Soldiers when they go to battle. 3. Women when they travel of child.A salve for a sicke man. or, A treatise containing the nature, differences, and kindes of death as also the right manner of dying well. And it may serue for spirituall instruction to 1. Mariners when they goe to sea. 2. Souldiers when they goe to battell. 3. Women when they trauell of child.
London: printed by John Legat, 1611London: printed by Iohn Legat, 1611
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
and when it is his pleasure to make men depend on his favour and providence, he makes them feel his anger and to be nothing in themselves, that they may wholly depend ⟨p. 26⟩upon, him and be whatsoever they are in him. This point being well considered, it is manifest that the child of God may pass to heaven by the very gulfs of hell. The love of God is like a sea, into which when a man is cast, he neither feels bottom nor sees bank. I conclude therefore that despair whether it arise of weakness of nature, or of conscience of sin; though it fall out about the time of death, cannot prejudice the salvation of them that are effectually called. As for other strange events which fall out in death, they are the effects of diseases. Ravings and blasphemings arise of the disease of melancholy and of frenzies, which often happen at the end of burning fevers, the choler shooting up to the brain. The ⟨p. 27⟩writhing of the lips, the turning of the neck, the buckling of the joints and the whole body, proceed of cramps and convulsions, which follow after much evacuation. And whereas some in sickness are of that strength, that three or four men cannot hold them without bonds, it comes not of witchcraft, and possessions, as people commonly think, but of choler in the veins. And whereas some when they are dead, become as black as pitch (as Bonner was) it may arise by a bruise, or an impostume, or by the black jaundice, or by the putrefaction of the liver: & it doth not always argue some extraordinary judgement of God. Now these and the like diseases with their symptoms & strange effects, though they shall deprive man of his ⟨p. 28⟩health, & of the right use of the parts of his body, and of the use of reason too: yet they can not deprive his soul of eternal life. And all sins, procured by violent diseases, and proceeding from repentant sinners, are sins of infirmity: for which, if they know them, and come again to the use of reason, they will further repent; if not, they are pardoned and buried in the death of Christ. And we ought not so much to stand upon the strangeness of any mans end, when we know the goodness of his life: for we must judge a man not by his death, but by his life. And if this be true, that strange diseases, and thereupon strange behaviours in death, may befall the best man that is: