N30070:13
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 God's afflicted ones prescribed. / By John Flavel, Preacher of the Gospel of Christ at Dartmouth in Devon. ; [Two lines of Latin text]
Boston: printed by S. Kneeland, 1730
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.
I dare not say that ever I felt my Heart discontentedly rising and swelling against God: no, I could still justify him, when I most sensibly smarted by his Hand: If he had plunged me into a Sea of Sorrow, yet I could say in all that Sea of Sorrow, there is not a drop of Injustice: But it was the over-beating, and over-acting of my fond and unmortified Affections and Passions that made so sad Impressions upon my Body; and cast me under those Distempers which soon embittered all my remaining Comforts to me.
I dare not say that ever I felt my Heart discontentedly rising and swelling against God: no, I could still justifie him, when I most sensibly smarted by his Hand: If he had plunged me into a Sea of Sorrow, yet I could say in all that Sea of Sorrow, there is not a drop of Injustice: But it was the over-beating, and over-acting of my fond and unmortified Affections and Passions that made so sad Impressions upon my Body; and cast me under those Distempers which soon imbittered all my remaining Comforts to me.
It was my earnest Desire so soon as I had Strength and Opportunity for so great a Journey, to visit you; that so (if the Lord had pleased) I might both refresh, and be refreshed by you, after all my sad and disconsolate Days. And you cannot imagine what Content and Pleasure I projected in that Visit; but it proved to us, as all other Comforts of the same ⟨image ?⟩kind ordinarily do, more in Expectation, than in Fruition: For how soon after our joyful Meeting and Embraces, did the Lord overcast and darken our Day, by sending Death into your Tabernacle, to take away the Desire of your Eyes with a Stroke! to crop off that sweet and only Bud from which we promised our selves so much Comfort. But no more of that, I fear I am gone too far already. It is not my Design to exasperate your Troubles, but to heal them; and for that Purpose have I sent you these Papers, which I hope may be of Use both to you and many others in your Condition, since they are the After Fruits of my own Troubles; Things that I have commended not to you from another Hand, but which I have (in some measure) proved and tasted in my own Trials.