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

It is not magnanimity, but stupidity to make light of Gods corrections, and for this the afflicted are smartly taxed, Jer. 5. 3. I have smitten them but they have not grieved. When God smote Job in his person, children, and estate, he arose and rent his mantle, and put dust upon his head, to show he was not senseless and unaffected, and yet blessed the afflicting God, which as plainly showed he was not contumacious and unsubmissive.

It is not magnanimity, but stupidity to make light of Gods corrections, and for this the afflicted are smartly taxed, Jer. 5. 3. I have smitten them but they have not grieved. When God smote Job in his person, children, and estate, he arose and rent his mantle, and put dust upon his head, to shew he was not senseless and unaffected, and yet blessed the afflicting God, which as plainly shew'd he was not contumacious and unsubmissive.

Secondly, We must allow the mourning afflicted soul, a due and comely expression of his grief and sorrow, in his complaints both to God and men.

Its much more becoming a Christian ingenuously to open his troubles, than sullenly to smother them. There's no fin in complaining to God, but much wickedness in complaining of him. Griefs are eased by groans, and heart pressures relieved by utterance. This was Davids course, and constant way, who was a man of afflictions, Psal. 142. 2, 3, I poured out my complaint before him, I showed before him my trouble: when my spirit was overwhelmed within me, then thou knewest my path.