A09461:80
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.
In the preservation of life 2. things must be considered: the means, and the right use of the means. The means is good & wholesome physic: which though it be despised of many as a thing unprofitable & needles, ⟨p. 125⟩yet must it be esteemed as an ordinance and blessing of God. This appears because the spirit of God hath given approbation unto it in the Scriptures. When it was the good pleasure of god to restore life unto king Hezekiah, 1a lump of dry figs by the prophets appointment was laid to his boil and he was healed. Indeed this cure was in some sort miraculous, because he was made whole in the space of 2. or 3. days, and the third day he went up to the temple: yet the bunch of figs was a natural or ordinary medicine or plaster serving to soften and ripen tumours or swellings in the flesh.2 And the Samaritan is commended for the binding up and for the pouring3 in of wine and oil into the wounds of the man that lay wounded between Jerusalem ⟨p. 126⟩and Jericho. Now this dealing of his was a right practise of physic:4 for the wine served to cleanse the wound and to ease the pain within: and oil served to supple the flesh and to assuage the pain without. And the Prophet Isaiah seems to con mend this physic, when he saith, From the sole of the foot there is nothing whole therein, 5but ••unds, and swellings, and sores full of corruption: they have not been wrapped nor bound up, nor mollified with oil. And whereas God did not command circumcision of children before the eight day, he followed a rule of physic observed in all ages, that the life of the child is very uncertain till the first seven days be expired, as we may see by the example of the child which David had by Bathsheba which died the seventh ⟨p. 127⟩