A39690:499
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.
5. Rule.
If you would bear your affliction with moderation, compare it with the affliction of other men, and that will greatly quiet your spirits.
You have no cause to say God hath dealt bitterly with you, and that there is no sorrow like your sorrow: Look round about you and impartially consider the conditions that others are in: and they nothing inferior to you in any respect. You have one dead child, Aaron had two at a stroke, Job all at one stroke: and both these by an immediate stroke from the hand of God. Some godly Parents have lived to see their children dye in their sin by the hand of Justice: others have seen them live to the dishonour of God, and breaking of their own spirits: and would have esteemed it a mercy if they had dyed from the womb, and given up the ghost when they came out of the belly, as Job speaks.
You have no cause to say God hath dealt bitterly with you, and that there is no sorrow like your sorrow: Look round about you and impartially consider the conditions that others are in: and they nothing inferiour to you in any respect. You have one dead child, Aaron had two at a stroke, Job all at one stroke: and both these by an immediate stroke from the hand of God. Some godly Parents have lived to see their children dye in their sin by the hand of Justice: others have seen them live to the dishonour of God, and breaking of their own spirits: and would have esteemed it a mercy if they had dyed from the womb, and given up the ghost when they came out of the belly, as Job speaks.