A09461:42
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.
But some will say, it shall suffice if I prepare my self to pray when I begin to be sick. Answ. These men greatly deceive themselves; for the time then is most unfit to begin a preparation, because all the senses & powers of the body are occupied about the pains and troubles of the disease: and the sick party is exercised partly in conference with the Physician, partly with the minister about his souls health and matters of conscience, and partly with friends that come to visit. Therefore there must some preparation go before in the time of health, when the whole man ⟨p. 57⟩with all the powers of body and soul are at liberty. Again, there be some others which imagine and say, that a man may repent when he will, even in the time of death: and that such repentance is sufficient. Ans. It is false which they say; for it is not in the power of man to repent when he himself will; when God will, he may. It is not in him that willeth or runneth, but in God that hath mercy. And Christ saith that many shall seek to enter into heaven, and shall not be able. But why so? because they seek when it is too late, namely, when the time of grace is past. Therefore it is exceeding folly for men so much as once to dream that they may have repentance at command: nay it is a just judgement that they should be condemned of God in death, that ⟨p. 58⟩did condemn God in their life: and that they should quite be forgotten of God in sickness, and did forget God in their health. Again I answer, that this late repentance is seldom or never true repentance. It is sick like the party himself, commonly languishing and dying together with him. Repentance should be voluntary (as all obedience to God ought) but repentance taken up in sickness, is usually constrained & extorted by the fear of hell, & other judgements of God: for crosses, afflictions, and sickness will cause the grosses• hypocrite that ever was to stoop and buckle under the hand of God, and to dissemble faith and repentance and every grace of God, as though he had them as fully as any of the true servants of God: whereas indeed ⟨p. 59⟩he wants them altogether. Wherefore such repentance commonly is but counterfeit. For in true & sound repentance men must forsake their sins; but in this the sin forsakes the man; who leaves all his evil ways only upon this that he is constrained to leave the world.