N00941:360
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.
Oh! That we might now to Day hear the voice of God, and not harden our Hearts.
Thirdly; It is the Hand of God, which takes away our Desirable Relatives: Well then, watch very much against all the Temptations of Satan, which may be likely to assault us under this Hand of God. Is the Desire of our Eyes taken away? It may now be said unto us; Luk. 22 31. Behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may Sift you as Wheat. All New Conditions have some New Temptations. When any Irksome Thing befalls us, and especially when we are deprived of the Desire of our Eyes, than which, what can be more I• is some? We may be sure, Satan will take advantage from it. For to have the Desire of our Eyes taken away, brings a Dark Time upon us. The Powers of Darkness may ere we are aware, hurry us on to unaccountable Inconveniences. Now more than ever is ⟨p. 220⟩that Counsel seasonable; Mat. 26. 41. Watch and pray, that ye enter not into Temptation. If God by taking away the Desire of our Eyes, being us particularly into a State of Widowhood, Oh! how solicitous ought we to be, of an Holy Widowhood! But that, it may be so, it should be a very Prayerful one. The very First Thing we are to do, as soon as we can Look about us, methinks it should be to Pray, and Fast, and Weep in secret places before the Lord, and beg of God, that He would pardon all our miscarriages in our Former Condition, and preserve us from all further miscarriages in the New, and Sad Condition that is now come upon us. Alas, what wrong steps, what foolish ones, and what fatal ones, are commonly taken in that State; by them who being Desolate, Continue not in Supplications & Prayers night and day! And they are never more unhappily taken, man in precipitated proceedings, unto Second Marriages. For tho' it were an indefensible Severity in many of the Ancients, absolutely to forbid them, nevertheless, tis a Dishonourable Levity to make too much Haste unto them, and especially for those Aged men, to whom a Jerome would say, Cogitate quotidie moriturum,