A39690:149
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.
Thirdly, This affliction for which thou mournest, may be the greatest mercy to thee that ever yet befell thee in this world. God hath now made thy heart soft by trouble, showed thee the vanity of this World; and what a poor trifle it is which thou madest thy happiness: There is now a dark cloud spread over all thy worldly comforts. Now, O now, if the Lord would but strike in with this affliction, and by it open thine eyes to see thy deplorable state, and take off thy heart for ever from the vain world which thou now seest hath nothing in it; and cause ⟨p. 47⟩thee to choose Christ the only abiding good for thy portion. If now thy affliction may but bring thy sin to remembrance, and thy dead friend may but bring thee to a sense of thy dead soul, which is as cold to God and spiritual things, as his body is to thee; and more loathsome in his eyes than that corps is, or shortly will be to the eyes of men: Then this day is certainly a day of the greatest mercy that ever yet thou sawest. O happy death, that shall prove life to thy soul.
Thirdly, This affliction for which thou mournest, may be the greatest mercy to thee that ever yet befel thee in this world. God hath now made thy heart soft by trouble, shewed thee the vanity of this World; and what a poor trifle it is which thou madest thy happiness: There is now a dark cloud spread over all thy worldly comforts. Now, O now, if the Lord would but strike in with this affliction, and by it open thine eyes to see thy deplorable state, and take off thy heart for ever from the vain world which thou now seest hath nothing in it; and cause ⟨p. 47⟩thee to chuse Christ the only abiding good for thy portion. If now thy affliction may but bring thy sin to remembrance, and thy dead friend may but bring thee to a sense of thy dead soul, which is as cold to God and spiritual things, as his body is to thee; and more loathsome in his eyes than that corps is, or shortly will be to the eyes of men: Then this day is certainly a day of the greatest mercy that ever yet thou sawest. O happy death, that shall prove life to thy soul.