Advice to Mourners Under the Loss of Dear Relations, Title page – Preface
ADVICE TO MOURNERS Under the Loss of Dear RELATIONS.
In a FUNERAL-SERMON, long since preach'd by the late Reverend Dr. Thomas Manton, D. D.
And now occasionally published on the much lamented Death of Mrs. Ann Terry, who died the 9th of November, 1693.
With a short Account of some Passages of her Life, and Papers left under her own Hand.
LONDON, Printed by I. D. for Ionathan Robinson, at the Golden Lion in St. Paul's Church-yard. 1694.
THE PREFACE.
READER;
THAT which occasioned this Discourse and Preface, is a late Stroke of Providence, in translating a Daughter of Abraham from hence to Abraham's Bosom, where she now rests in the delightful Expectations of her full Resurrection unto Life Eternal. She was a Person whom I well knew, and greatly valued, and that I did discern by free and frequent Conversation with her, Treasures of Knowledg and Grace richly abiding in her; and with great Iudgment and Savour pertinently brought forth by her, in order to her fuller Satisfaction and Edification in what concern'd her Soul, as to its Duty whilst embodied, and its full Bliss when it was to be removed hence. She ever was concern'd to know her Duty, and the true Matter, Grounds and Usefulness of her Christian Hope, in order to the effectual influencing of her concerned Spirit in her determined Services and Station. She ever was solicitous to know her VVork, and to discharge her Trust as a Christian, and answerably to her Relations and Family, wherein she behaved her self not as without Law to God, but as under Law to Christ; and so deported her self with true and commendable Exemplariness as a VVife, a Mother, and a Mistress, and as one full of Thoughts and Care therein to abide with God, and to approve her self to him in his own solemn Day of Iudgment. She was a Person of great Exercises through the tedious Urgencies of her long and many bodily Infirmities, which she bore with Patience, and providently improved unto the great Advantage of her better Part. She would not suffer Sense to sit in Iudgment upon Providence, but fetch'd her Measures of God's dealing with her from that Faith, and from those Thoughts which took their Directory from God's own Sacred Oracles. She concealed her Resentments of her Troubles (so far as I could see) from all save only such as she judged able judiciously to minister to her Satisfaction. Her Objections were not trivial, but such as did require considerable Resolutions of, which she was very apprehensive, observant, and (I think) tenacious of. Her Troubles hindered not her Converse with God in Solitudes, nor the fit Indearments and Improvements of both relative and friendly Converse. She is now gone to the Felicity and Imployments for which she was, through Grace and holy Industry, considerably prepared. And what her Spirit breath'd for and after, may be discerned in part by these few Instances of her Closet-work, which her sorrowful Husband hath thought fit to communicate to the World. 'Tis such a Wife as he has lost, as that the Sense and unavoidable Remembrances of that Loss may well urge sorrowful Nature to its Tears and Groans. And of these, considerable Measures are needful and allowable, but Provocations to excessive Grief, through such a Stroak, render it needful that Christian Bounds and Limits to such Sorrows be seasonably proposed and well considered. And therefore this Funeral Text is fitly offered to the Mourners Thoughts by the Apostle that recorded it, and by the Reverend Author who has fitly insisted upon that Clause. The serious Perusal whereof, and of these few Memoirs of the Deceased, so devoutly contemplative for her own Good, and for the Benefit of others, is really judged worthy of due Consideration, both by the Publisher, and by thy true Friend, in and for the great Disposer of Times and Lives, whilst,
I am thine, in all Christian Services, Matthew Silvester.