A39690:134
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.
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, 1 Sam. 25. 32. who when he perceived how proper and seasonable they were, said, Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, who sent thee this day to meet me, and blessed be thy advice.
Secondly, Having cleared this, and shown you wherein the sin and danger lyes; my way is prepared to the second thing proposed: namely, to disswade 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 Abigalls were to David, 1 Sam. 25. 32. who when he perceived how proper and seasonable they were, said, Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, who sent thee this day to meet me, and blessed be thy advice.
I am sensible how hard a task it is I here undertake; to charm down, and allay mutinous, raging, and tumultuous passions; to give check to the torrent of passion is ordinarily but to provoke it, and make it rage and swell the more.
The work is the Lords, and wholly depends upon his power and blessing. He that saith to the Sea, when the waves thereof roar, be still; can also quiet and compose the stormy and tumultuous Sea that rages in the breasts of the afflicted, and casts up nothing but the froth of vain and useless complaints of our misery, or the dirt of sinful and wicked complaints of the dealings of the Lord with us.