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

Beside, What vile ingratitude is in this? What! are all your remaining mercies worth nothing? You have buried a child, a friend: Well, but still, you have a husband, a wife, other children; or if not, you have comfortable accommodations for your selves, with health to enjoy them; or if not, yet you have the Ordinances of God, it may be an interest in Christ, and in the Covenant, pardon of sin, and hopes of glory. What! and yet sink at this rate, as if all your mercies, comforts, and hopes, even in both worlds, were buried in one grave. Must Ichabod be written upon your best mercies, because mortality is written upon one? Fie, fie, What shameful ingratitude is here?

Beside, What vile ingratitude is in this? What! are all your remaining mercies worth nothing? You have buried a child, a friend: Well, but still, you have a husband, a wife, other children; or if not, you have comfortable accommodations for your selves, with health to enjoy them; or if not, yet you have the Ordinances of God, it may be an interest in Christ, and in the Covenant, pardon of sin, and hopes of glory. What! and yet sink at this rate, as if all your mercies, comforts, and hopes, even in both worlds, were buried in one grave. Must Ichabod be written upon your best mercies, because mortality is written upon one? Fye, fye, What shameful ingratitude is here?

And really friend, Such a carriage as this under the rod, is no small provocation to the Lord to go on in Judgment, and make a full end of all that remains, so that affliction shall not rise up the second time.

What if God taking notice how little thou regardest the many undeserved favours thou yet possessest, should say, Well, if thou thinkest them not worth the owning, ⟨p. 26⟩neither do I think them worth the continuing. Go death, there's a husband, a wife, other children yet left, smite them all. Go sickness and remove the health of his body yet left; go losses and impoverish his estate yet left; go reproach and blast his reputation which is yet sweet. What would you think of this? And yet if you be out of Christ, you are in danger of a far sadder stroke than either or all yet mentioned. What if God should say, Prizest thou not my mercy? Hast thou no value for my goodness, and forbearance towards thee? Is it nothing that I have spared thee thus long in thy sins and rebellions? Well then, I will stretch out my hand upon thy life, cut off that thread which hath kept thee so many years from dropping into hell.