A09461:95
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.
Hitherto I have entreated of the two-fold preparation which ⟨p. 153⟩is to go before death: now follows the second part of Dying-well, namely, the disposition in death. This disposition is nothing else but a religious and holy behaviour specially towards God, when we are in, or near the agony and pang of death. This behaviour contains three special duties. The first is, to die in or by faith. To die by faith is, when a man in the time of death doth with all his heart rely himself wholly on Gods special love and favour and mercy in Christ, as it is revealed in the word. And though there be no part of mans life void of just occasions whereby we may put faith in practise, yet the special time of all is the pang of death, when friends, and riches, and pleasures, and the outward senses, & temporal life, & all earthly ⟨p. 154⟩helps forsake us. For then true faith maketh us to go wholly out of our selves, and to despair of comfort and salvation in respect of an earthly thing; & with all the power & strength of the heart, to rest on the pure mercy of God. This made Luther both think and say, that men were best Christians in death. An example of this faith we have in David, who when he saw nothing before his eyes but present death, the people intending to stone him, comforted him at that very instant (as the text saith) in the Lord his God. 1And this comfort he reaped, in that by faith he applied unto his own soul the merciful promises of God; as he testifieth of himself: Remember (saith he) the promise made to thy servant, 2wherein thou hast caused me to trust. It is ⟨p. 155⟩my comfort in trouble: for thy promise hath quickened me. Again,3 My flesh failed and my heart also, but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever. Now look what David here did, the same must every one of us do in the like case. When the Israelites in the wilderness were stung with fiery serpents,4