The mourner directory, guiding him to the middle way betwixt the two extremes, defect,…The mourner directory, guiding him to the middle way betwixt the two extreams, defect,…

Love filled your Heart to your living Child, Sorrow fills your Heart for your dead Child. You had a lively frame of Heart, when your Child was living, but now it is dead through over-much sorrow, you have laid your dead Child in your Bosom in the room of that Activity of Soul that before you had towards God, and you lay claim to the ⟨p. 131⟩dead Child, this dead Child is my Child: Alas this Child that is dead is mine! But whose is your H•art and Love, God's, or your Child's? Take heed, this be not the true answer during this fit of excessive sorrow, it is not all God's, •or all the Child's, but you have divided it between both, and given half to the Living God, and half to the Dead Child. That sorrow that causeth you to make this division is excessive sorrow.

Q. 9. Is not that sorrow for your dead over-much, when it all runs out to them, that you are not sensible of, nor concerned for the Calamities of the Church, nor Afflictions and Sufferings of the People of God? All your sorrow is contracted, and all your Tears run in this one Channel for your dead Father, or Mother, Husband, Wife, or Children; are not the Concerns of the Church of God greater than your Selfish Matters? Are not the Sufferings, and Calamities, Martyrdom by Burning, and Wracking, and Torturing of many dear to God, greater Evils than the Natural death of your Relations? Did Christ shed his Blood for his Church, and amongst all your Tears for your dead, cannot you drop one for the Suffering Church of God? Are Men shedding their ⟨p. 132⟩Blood, and for this cannot you shed a Tear, when you have so many for one dead Child, or Husband, or Wife? Should not the Concerns of the Glory of God in Public Affairs lye nearer your Heart than a dead Relation, and wound deeper, and make you sorrow more? You are ready to die with grief for one Child. I will tell you of one that lost two Sons in a Battle at once, when also the Ark of God was taken; and when he heard of the death of his two Sons he bore up, but as soon as mention was made of the taking of the Ark of God, he fell down and died. This was Eli,