A39690:412
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.
3. Answer.
You complain of the suddenness of the stroke, but another will be ready to say, had my friend died in that manner, my affliction had been nothing to what it now is; I have seen many deaths contrived into one: I saw the gradual approaches of it upon my dear Relation, who felt every tread of death as it came on towards him, who often cried with Job, Chap. 3. 20. Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life to the bitter in soul? which long for death but it cometh it not, and dig for it more than for hid treasures: which rejoice exceedingly and are glad, when they can find the grave.
You complain of the suddenness of the stroke, but another will be ready to say, had my friend died in that manner, my affliction had been nothing to what it now is; I have seen many deaths contrived into one: I saw the gradual approaches of it upon my dear Relation, who felt every tread of death as it came on towards him, who often cryed with Job, Chap. 3. 20. Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life to the bitter in soul? which long for death but it cometh it not, and dig for it more than for hid treasures: which rejoyce exceedingly and are glad, when they can find the grave.
That which you reckon the sting of your affliction, others would have reckoned a favour and privilege. How many tender Parents, and other Relations who loved their friends as dearly as your selves, have been forced to their knees upon no other errand but this, to beg the Lord to hasten the separation, and put an end to that sorrow, which to them was much greater than the sorrow for the dead.