A token for mourners, or, The advice of Christ to a distressed mother bewailing…

First, It was the death of a Son. To bury a child, ¹any child, must needs rend the heart of a tender Parent; for what are children but the parent multiplied: a child is a part of the parent made up in another skin. But to lay a Son in the grave, A Son which continues the name, and supports the family; this was ever accounted a very great affliction.

1. 1[Greek or Hebrew]. Graec Comic.〈non-Latin alphabet〉. Graec Comic.

Secondly, This Son was not carried from the Cradle to the Coffin, nor stripped out of its Swathing, to be wrapped in its Winding clothes: Had he dyed in infancy, before he had engaged affection, or raised expectation, the affliction had not been so pungent and cutting, as now it was. Death smote this Son in the flower and ⟨p. 4⟩Prime of his time. He was a man (saith the Evangelist) ver. 12. a young man, (as Christ calls him) ver. 14. he was now arrived ^*at that age which made him capable of yielding his Mother all that comfort which had been the expectation and hope of many years, and the reward and fruit of many cares and Labours: Yet then when the endearments were greatest, and her hopes highest, even in the flower of his age, he is cut off. Thus Basil bewailed the death of his Son: Filius mihi erat adolescens, solus vitaesuccessor, solatium senectae, gloria generis, flos aequalium, fulcrum domu, saetatem gratiosissimam agebat: hic raptus periit, qui paulo ante jucundam vocem edebat, & jucundissimum spectaculum parentis oculis erat. I once had a Son who was a young man, my only successor, the solace of my age, the glory of his kind, the prop of my family, arrived to the endearing age: then was he snatched from me by death, whose lovely voice but a little before I heard, who lately was a pleasant spectacle to his Parent.