A39690:250
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.
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.
I have often wondered at that Golden sentence in Seneca, My thoughts of the dead (saith 1he) are not as others are; I have fair and pleasant apprehensions of them; for I enjoyed them as one that reckoned I must part with them, and I part with them, as one that makes account to have them.
- 1Habui enim illos tanquam amissurus amisi tanquam habeam. Seneca Ep. 63.
He speaks no doubt of that enjoyment of them, which his pleasant contemplations of their virtuous actions could give him; for he was wholly unacquainted with the comfortable and heart-supporting doctrine of the Resurrection. Had he known the advantages which result thence, at what a rate may we think he would have spoken of the dead and of their state? But this you profess to believe, and yet sink at a strange rate. O suffer not Gentilism to out-vie Christianity: Let not Pagans challenge the greatest believers to out-do them in a quiet and cheerful behaviour under afflictions.
He speaks no doubt of that enjoyment of them, which his pleasant contemplations of their vertuous actions could give him; for he was wholly unacquainted with the comfortable and heart-supporting doctrine of the Resurrection. Had he known the advantages which result thence, at what a rate may we think he would have spoken of the dead and of their state? But this you profess to believe, and yet sink at a strange rate. O suffer not Gentilism to out-vye Christianity: Let not Pagans challenge the greatest believers to out-do them in a quiet and chearful behaviour under afflictions.