A39690:442
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. Plea.
O but I have sinned in this Relation, and now God hath punished my sin in dissolving it. O saith one, my heart was set too much upon it, I even idolized it, ⟨p. 241⟩that was my sin. And saith another, I wanted due affections, and did not love my Relation, at least not so spiritually as I ought, that was my sin. Now God is visiting me for all the neglects and defects that have been in me towards my Relation.
O but I have sinned in this Relation, and now God hath punisht my sin in dissolving it. O saith one, my heart was set too much upon it, I even idoliz'd it, ⟨p. 241⟩that was my sin. And saith another, I wanted due affections, and did not love my Relation, at least not so spiritually as I ought, that was my sin. Now God is visiting me for all the neglects and defects that have been in me towards my Relation.
1. Answer.
There is no man so throughly sanctified, as not to fail and come short in many things pertaining to his relative duties. And to speak as the thing is, the corruptions of the holiest persons are as much discovered in this, as in any other thing whatsoever. And it's a very common thing for Conscience, not only to charge these failures upon us, but to aggravate them to the uttermost when God hath made the separation. So that this is no more than what is usual and very common with persons in your case.