A39690:346
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.
Ah, Reader, little dost thou know, what stings there are in the afflictions of others! Surely you have no reason to think the Lord hath dealt more bitterly with you than any. It's a gentle stroke, a merciful ⟨p. 114⟩dispensation if you compare it with what others have felt.
18. Consid. If God be your God, you have really lost nothing by the removal of any creature-comfort.
God is the Fountain of all true comfort; creatures, the very best and sweetest, are but Cisterns to receive and convey to us what comfort God is pleased to communicate to them; and if the Cistern be broken, or the pipe cut off, so that no more comfort can be conveyed to us that way; he hath other ways and mediums to do it by, which we think not of; and if he please, he can convey his comforts to his people without any of them; and if he do it more immediately, we shall be no losers by that; for no comforts in the world are so delectable and ravishingly sweet, as those that flow immediately from the fountain.
God is the Fountain of all true comfort; creatures, the very best and sweetest, are but Cisterns to receive and convey to us what comfort God is pleased to communicate to them; and if the Cistern be broken, or the pipe cut off, so that no more comfort can be conveyed to us that way; he hath other waies and mediums to do it by, which we think not of; and if he please, he can convey his comforts to his people without any of them; and if he do it more immediately, we shall be no losers by that; for no comforts in the world are so delectable and ravishingly sweet, as those that flow immediately from the fountain.