A09461:41
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.
This preparation is twofold: general, & particular. General preparation is that whereby a man prepares himself to die through the whole course of his life. A duty most needful that must in no wise be omitted. The reasons are these: First of all death which is certain is most uncertain. I say it is certain, because no man can eschew death. And it is uncertain 3. ways: first, in regard of time: for no man knoweth when he shall die: secondly, in regard of place: for no man knows where he shall die, whether in his bed or in the field, whether by sea or by land: thirdly, in respect of the kind of death; for no man knows whether he shall die of a lingering ⟨p. 54⟩or sudden, of a violent or natural death. Hence it follows, that men should every day prepare themselves to death. Indeed if we could know when, where, and how we should die, the case were otherwise, but seeing we know none of these: it stands us in hand to look about us. A second reason serving further to persuade us, is this: The most dangerous thing of all in this world is, to neglect all preparation. To make this point more manifest, I will use this comparison: A certain man pursued by an Unicorn, in his flight falls into a dungeon, & in his fall takes hold and hangs by the arm of a tree: now as he thus hangs looking downward, he sees two worms gnawing at the root of the tree, and as he looks upward he sees an hive of most ⟨p. 55⟩sweet honey, whereupon he climes up unto it, and sitting by it he feeds thereon. In the mean season while he is thus sitting, the two worms gnaw in pieces the root of the tree: which don, tree and man & all fall into the bottom of the dungeon. Now this Unicorn is death: the man that flieth is every one of us, and every living man: the pit over which he hangeth, is hell: the arm of the tree is life it self: the two worms are day and night, the continuance whereof is the whole life of man: the hive of honey is the pleasures, and profits, and honours of this world, to which when men wholly give themselves not considering their ends, till the tree root, that is, this temporal life be cut off: which being once done, they plunge themselves quite into the gulf of hell. ⟨p. 56⟩By this we see, that there is good cause that men should not defer their preparation till the time of sickness, but rather every day make themselves ready against the day of death.