A39690:133
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.
O, tis a mercy to the afflicted to have a Barnabas with him, an interpreter, one among a thousand; and it will be the great sin, and folly of the afflicted to spill those excellent cordials prepared and offered to them, like water upon the ground, out of a froward, or dead spirit, under trouble. Say not with them, Lam. 3. 18, 19. My hope is perished from the Lord, remembering mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the Gall. Its a thousand pities the wormwood and gall of affliction should so disgust a Christian, as that he should not at any time be able to relish the sweetness that is in Christ, and in the promises. And thus I have dispatched the first part of my design, in showing you wherein the sin of mourners doth not lye, and in what it doth.
O, tis a mercy to the afflicted to have a Barnabas with him, an interpreter, one among a thousand; and it will be the great sin, and folly of the afflicted to spill those excellent cordials prepared and offered to them, like water upon the ground, out of a froward, or dead spirit, under trouble. Say not with them, Lam. 3. 18, 19. My hope is perished from the Lord, remembering mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the Gall. Its a thousand pitties the wormwood and gall of affliction should so disgust a Christian, as that he should not at any time be able to relish the sweetness that is in Christ, and in the promises. And thus I have dispatcht the first part of my design, in shewing you wherein the sin of mourners doth not lye, and in what it doth.
Secondly, Having cleared this, and shown you wherein the sin and danger lies; my way is prepared to the second thing proposed: namely, to dissuade Mourners from these sinful excesses of sorrows, and keep the golden bridle of moderation upon their passions in times ⟨p. 42⟩of affliction. And O that my words may be as successful upon those pensive souls that shall read them, as Abigail's were to David,