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USE II. IF your hearts be filled with Sorrow for your Dead, and with a Sense of God's hand upon you; examine your Sorrow, what manner of Sorrow it is: For Sorrow, merely as Sorrow, I have not been pleading for, nor reproving the want of, under such a smarting Dispensation of Divine Providence; which may be the better managed by resolving the second Question propounded, which is this, When is our Sorrow for the Dead, kindly and pleasing unto God? And when a turbulent Passion, a vexation of Spirit, and provoking to God?

USE II. IF your hearts be filled with Sorrow for your Dead, and with a Sense of God's hand upon you; examine your Sorrow, what manner of Sorrow it is: For Sorrow, meerly as Sorrow, I have not been pleading for, nor reproving the want of, under such a smarting Dispensation of Divine Providence; which may be the better managed by resolving the second Question propounded, which is this, When is our Sorrow for the Dead, kindly and pleasing unto God? And when a turbulent Passion, a v•xation of Spirit, and provoking to God?

Ans. 1. Kindly Sorrow for our Dead, and pleasing unto God, is joined with lively Prayer. What is all our weeping for them in the Grave, without praying to God in Heaven? What is all our Lamentation for them without Supplication ⟨p. 47⟩to God? And the more kindly your Sorrow is, the more your Heart will relent, and melt, and the more fervent your Spirit in Prayer will be. While they were in their Health with you, it may be you tendered up Sick prayers to God; when they did live, your Prayers were dead, and dull, and slothful Prayers; when they were waking with you, you prayed with them in a drowsy, sleepy manner; when God roused you by their Death, you prayed after with more Life; when they fell asleep, God awaked you to more earnest and importunate Pleadings with him at the Throne of Grace. If fear, lest Mother and Children should be put to death by Esau, moved Jacob to mix his fearing and sorrowing, with Prayer and Wrestling; should not feeling of the stroke of Death upon a Mother, a Wife, a Child, put us on to the like praying to, and pleading with God? If he, when his case only was, it may be they must die, now should not we, when we must say, He, or she is already dead? If he did it to preserve life, may not we for the loss of their Life? He for the good of Preservation, we under the sense of our Afl ction.