A39690:248
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.
9. Consid. The hope of the Resurrection should powerfully restrain all excesses of sorrow in those that do profess it.
Let them only mourn without measure, who mourn without hope. The husbandman doth not mourn when he casts his seed-corn into the earth, because he sows in hope; and commits it to the ground with an expectation to receive it again with improvement. Why thus stands the case here, and just so the Apostle states it, 1 Thes. 4. 13, 14. But I would not have you to be ignorant brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not even as others which have no hope; for if we believe that Jesus dyed and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.
Q. D. Look not upon the dead as a lost generation: Think not that death hath annihilated and utterly destroyed them. O no, they are not dead, but only asleep; and if they sleep, they shall awake again. You don't use to make out-cries and Lamentations for your children and friends when you find them ⟨p. 81⟩asleep upon their beds. Why? Death is but a longer sleep, out of which they shall as surely awake as ever they did in the morning in this world.