A39690:189
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.
He that appointed the seasons of the year, appointed the seasons of our comfort in Relations; and as those seasons cannot be altered, no more can these: All the course of providence is guided by an unalterable decree; what falls out casually to our apprehension, yet falls out necessarily in respect of Gods appointment.
O therefore be quieted in it, this must needs be as it is.
4. Consid. Hath God smitten your darling, and taken away the delight of your eyes with his stroke? Bear this stroke with patience and quiet submission; for how know you but your trouble might have been greater from the life, than it is now from the death of your children?
Sad experience made a holy man once to say, Its better weep for ten dead children, than for one living child: a living child may prove a continual dropping, yea, a continual dying to the parents heart. What a sad word was that of David to Abishai, 2 Sam. 16. 11. Behold, saith he, my Son which came out of my bowels seeketh my life. I remember Seneca in his consolatory Epistle to his friend Marullus, brings in his friend thus aggravating the death of his child: