A09461:83
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.
Furthermore, all men must here be warned to take heed, that they use not such means as have no warrant. Of this kind ⟨p. 132⟩are all charms or spells, of what words soever they consist: characters and figures either in paper, wood, or wax: all amulets, and ligatures, which serve to hang about the neck or other parts of the body, except they be grounded upon some good natural reason;1 as white peony hung about the neck, is good against the falling sickness: and wolf dung tied to the body is good against the colic, not by any enchantment, but by inward virtue. Otherwise they are all vain and superstitious: because neither by creation, nor by any ordinance in Gods word, have they any power to cure a bodily disease. For words can do no more but signify, and figures can do no more but represent. And yet nevertheless these unlawful and absurd ⟨p. 133⟩means are more used & sought for of common people, then good physic. But it stands all men greatly in hand in no wise to seek forth to enchanters, and sorcerers, which indeed are but witches and wizards, though they are commonly called cunning or wise men and women. It were better for a man to die of his sickness, then to seek recovery by such wicked persons. For if any turn after such as work with spirits, and after soothsayers, to go an whoring after them, 2the Lord will set his face against them, and cut them off from among his people. When Ahazia was sick, he sent to Beelzebub to the god of Ekron to know whether he should recover or no: as the messengers were going, the Prophet Elijah met them, and said, Go and return ⟨p. 134⟩to the King which sent you, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord, Is it not because there is no God in Israel, 3that thou sendest to inquire of Beelzebub the god of Ekron? therefore thou shalt not come down from thy bed on which thou art gone up, but shalt die the death. Therefore such kind of help is so far from curing any pain or sickness, that it rather doubleth them and fasteneth them upon us.