or dividing of the affections betwixt God and the creature, let all the streams meet and centre in thee only.

Fifthly, That you may be strengthened with all might in the inner-man to all patience, that the peace of God may keep your hearts and minds, labour to bring your hearts to a meek submission to the rod of your Father. We had fathers of the flesh who corrected us, and we gave them reverence, shall we not much more be in subjection to the Father of spirits, and live. Is it comely for children to contest and strive with their father? or is it the way to be freed from the yoke by struggling under it? O that your hearts may be in a like state with his who said, "Lord, thou shalt beat, and I will bear!" It was a good observation that one made,

"The soul grows wise by sitting still and quiet under the rod." And the apostle calls those excellent fruits which the saints gather from their sanctified afflictions," the peaceable fruits of righteous

ness."

Lastly, My heart's desire and prayer to God for you, is, that you may die daily to all visible enjoyments, and by these frequent converses with death in your family, you may be prepared for your own change and dissolution when it shall come.

O friends! how many graves have you and I seen opened for our dear relations! How oft hath death come up into your windows, and summoned the delight of your eyes! your eyes! It is but a little while and we shall go to them; we and they are distinguished but by short intervals.

Our dear parents are gone; our lovely and desirable children are gone; our bosom relations, who were as our own souls, are gone. And do not all these warning knocks at our doors acquaint us, that we must prepare to follow shortly after them?

O that by these things our own death might be both more familiar and easy to us! The oftener it visits us, the better we should be acquainted with it; and the more of our beloved relations it removes before us, the less of either snares or entanglement remains for us when our turn comes.

My dear friends, my flesh and my blood, I beseech you, for religion's sake, for your own sake, and for my sake, whose comfort is in great part bound up in your prosperity and welfare, that you read frequently, ponder seriously, and apply believingly, these scripture consolations and directions, which, in some haste, I have gathered for your use; and the God of all consolation be with you.

I am, your most endeared Brother,

JOHN FLAVEL.

A

TOKEN FOR MOURNERS.

And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, and said unto her, Weep not.-LUKE vii. 13.

To be above the stroke of passions, is a condition equal to angels; to be in a state of sorrow, without the sense of sorrow, is a disposition beneath beasts: but duly to regulate our sorrows, and bound our passions under the rod, is the wisdom, duty, and excellency of a Christian. He who is without natural affections, is deservedly ranked among the worst of heathens; and he who is able rightly to manage them, deserves to be numbered with the best of Christians. Though when we are sanctified, we put on the divine nature; yet till we are glorified, we put not off the infirmities of our human

nature.

Whilst we are within the reach of troubles, we cannot be without the danger, nor ought not to be without the fear of sin and it is as hard for us to escape sin, being in adversity, as to be calm in prosperity.

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How apt are we to transgress the bounds both of reason and religion under a sharp affliction, appears in most men's experience, so in this woman's example, to whose excessive sorrow, Christ puts a stop in the text:" He saw her, and had compassion on her, and said to her, Weep not."

The lamentations and wailing of this distressed mother, moved the tender compassions of the Lord in beholding them, and stirred up more pity in his heart for her, than could be in her heart for her dear and only son.

In the words, we are to consider both the condition of the woman, and the counsel of Christ with respect to it.

I. the condition of this woman, which appears to be very dolorous and distressed. Her groans and tears moved and melted the very heart of Christ, to hear and behold them: "When he saw her, he had compassion on her.”

How sad an hour it was with her when Christ met her, appears by what is so distinctly marked by the Evangelist in ver. 12. where it is said, "Now, when they came nigh to the gate of the city, behold, there was a dead man carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow: and much people of the city were with her."

In this one verse, divers heart-piercing circumstances of this affliction are noted.

1. It was the death of a son. To bury a child, any child, must needs rend the heart of a tender parent; for what are children but the parents multiplied? A child is a part of the parent made up in

another skin. But to lay a son in the grave, a son who continues the name, supports the family; this was ever accounted a very great affliction.

2. This son was not carried from the cradle to the coffin, nor stripped out of its swathing to be wrapt in his winding-cloth. Had he died in infancy, before he had engaged affection, or raised expectation, the affliction had not been so pungent and cutting, as now it was death smote this son in the flower and prime of his life. He was 66 a man," saith the Evangelist, ver. 12.—“ a young man," ," as Christ calls him, ver. 14.-he was now arrived at that age which made him capable of yielding his mother all that comfort which had been the expectation and hope of many years, and the reward and fruit of many cares and labours: yet then, when the endearments were greatest, and her hopes highest, even in the flower of his age, he is cut off.

" I

Thus Basil bewailed the death of his son: once had a son, who was a young man, my only successor, the solace of my age, the glory of his kind, the prop of my family, arrived to the endearing age; then was he snatched from me by death, whose lovely voice but a little before I heard, who lately was a pleasant spectacle to his parents."

Reader, if this had been thine own condition, as it hath been his who writes it, I need say no more to convince thee, that it was a sorrowful state indeed, in which Christ met this tender mother.

3. And what is yet more, he was not only a son, but an only son: so you find in verse 12. “He was the only son of his mother." One in whom all her