First, then, we consider this _exitus mortis_ to be _liberatio à 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 à 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 should be the house of life, becomes death itself if God leave us there. That which God threatens so often, the shutting of a womb, is not so heavy nor so discomfortable a curse in the first as in the latter shutting, nor in the shutting of barrenness as in the shutting of weakness, when _children are come to the birth, and no strength to bring forth_.[351]