N00941:332
Meat out of the eater. Or, Funeral-discourses occasioned by the death of several relatives.…
Meat out of the eater. Or, Funeral-discourses occasioned by the death of several relatives. Work accommodated unto the service of all that are in any affliction; but very particularly such as are afflicted with the loss of their consorts or children. / By Cotton Mather. ; [Four lines from I Corinthians]
Boston: printed by B. Green & J. Allen for Benjamin Eliot, 1703
Title page typeset from the transcription.
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.
And the Affection which these Relatives have to each other, Sometimes is Raised unto the more of Rapture, upon the most Religious and Honourable Principles. When tis thus, I may use the Exclamation, which Tertullian of old, writing to his Consort, used about a Christian Marriage; Unde ⟨p. 200⟩Suffician• ad Enarrandam foelicitatem Ejas Matri•onij! who can declare the Happiness of such a Marriage! Our Ezekiel was a Prophet as well as a Priest, and a man full of God and Christ and Heaven; a man of a most Holy and Heavenly Character. He had the Glory of the Lord, and the Presence of His Angels, in his Eyes; And yet his Consort was, The Desire of his Eyes. And yet! Said I? Nay, rather let me say, Therefore she was so. Breeding will do very much to. Endear Consorts unto one another; But Virtue will do more. The Filthy Papists decry the Married State, as if it were a very Polluted State, and inconsistent with the most Consummate Sanctity. But the Bible calls them, Dogs for it; and it is well known that Insandous Abominations at the same time are continually perpetrated by those Impious Dogs. The Nazarites that were, Purer than Snow, whiter than Milk, & brighter than Pearl, by their Vow of Holiness did not become Defiled by being Married. The Married Society was well called by Paph••• tius of old, An Holy Chastity. The Holy Martyr Bradford, whom they have sometimes well styled, An Angel of God, when there was talk of hope that he might be ⟨p. 201⟩delivered out of Prison, being asked, what he would do upon his Deliverance, answered, He would Marry. What an Heavenly man was Enoch the Seventh from Adam? A man so full of Heaven, that God would never let him Die, but would fetch him away to Heaven both Body and Spirit, without putting him to the Trouble of undergoing a Separation of Body & Spirit. And yet this Walker of God was a Married man, and had both Sons and Daughters. It may be, there never were two men, more full of Grace and Heaven, than Moses & Isaiah: They both of them were taken into Heaven before they dyed; and Saw the Son of God with His Angels about Him, in His Glory there. And yet these were Married men. The Solace of the Married State, is mightily advanced by the Christian Religion.