A39690:107
A token for mourners, or, The advice of Christ to a distressed mother bewailing…
A token for mourners, or, The advice of Christ to a distressed mother bewailing the death of her dear and only son wherein the boundaries of sorrow are duly fixed, excesses restrained, the common pleas answered, and divers rules for the support of Gods afflicted ones prescribed / by J.F.
London: printed for Robert Boulter, 1674
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.
Reader, If this be thy case, Thou hast reason to challenge the first place among the mourners. Its better for thee to bury ten sons, than to remit one degree of love or delight in God. The end of God in smiting, was to win thy heart nearer to him, by removing that which estranged it; How then dost thou cross the very design of God in this dispensation? Must God then lose his delight in thy fellowship, because thou hast lost thine in the creature? Surely when thy troubles thus accompany thee to thy closet, they are sinful and extravagant troubles.
Fourthly, Then you may also conclude your sorrows to be excessive and sinful, When they so overload and oppress your bodies, as to endanger your lives, or render them useless and unfit for service.
Worldly Sorrow works death, 2 Cor. 7. 10. that is, Sorrow after the manner of worldly men, sorrow in a mere carnal natural 1way, which is not relieved by any spiritual reasonings and considerations: This falls so heavy sometimes upon the body, that it sinks under the weight, and is cast into such diseases as are never more wrought off, or healed in this world. Heaviness in the heart of a man makes it stoop, saith Solomon, Prov. 12. 25. The stoutest body must stoop under heart pressures.
Worldly Sorrow works death, 2 Cor. 7. 10. that is, Sorrow after the manner of worldly men, sorrow in a meer carnal natural 1