t this _exitus mortis_ shall be _introitus in vitam_, our issue in
death shall be an entrance into everlasting life. And these three
considerations: our deliverance _a morte, in morte, per mortem_, from
death, in death, and by death, will abundantly do all the offices of the
foundations, of the buttresses, of the contignation, of this our
building; that he that is our God is the God of all salvation, because
_unto_ this _God the Lord belong the issues of death_.

First, then, we consider this _exitus mortis_ to be _liberatio a morte_,
that with _God the Lord are the issues of death_; and therefore in all
our death, and deadly calamities of this life, we may justly hope of a
good issue from him. In all our periods and transitions in this life,
are so many passages from death to death; our very birth and entrance
into this life is _exitus a morte_, an issue from death, for in our
mother's womb we are dead, so as that we do not know we live, not so
much as we do in our sleep, neither is there any grave so close or so
putrid a prison, as the womb would be unto us if we stayed in it beyond
our time, or died there before our time. In the grave the worms do not
kill us; we breed, and feed, and then kill those worms which we
ourselves produced. In the womb the dead child kills the mother that
conceived it, and is a murderer, nay, a parricide, even after it is
dead. And if we be not dead so in the womb, so as that being dead we
kill her that gave us our first life, our life of vegetation, yet we are
dead so as David's idols are dead. In the womb we have _eyes and see
not, ears and hear not_.[347] There in the womb we are fitted for works
of darkness, all the while deprived of light; and there in the womb we
are taught cruelty, by being fed with blood, and may be damned, though
we be never born. Of our very making in the womb, David says, _I am
wonderfully and fearfully made_, and _such knowledge is too excellent
for me_,[348] for even that _is the Lord's doing, and it is wonderful in
our eyes_;[349] ipse fecit nos, _it is he that made us, and not we
ourselves_,[350] nor our parents neither. _Thy hands have made and
fashioned me round about_, saith Job, _and_ (as the original word is)
_thou hast taken pains about me, and yet_ (says he) _thou dost destroy
me_. Though I be the masterpiece of the greatest master (man is so), yet
if thou do no more for me, if thou leave me where thou madest me,
destruction will follow. The womb, which