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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 Gods...
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 Gods...
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 Gods...
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 Gods...
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 Gods...
Flavel, John

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 Gods...


Salem: Nathaniel Coverly, Jun., 1802.

Quarter calf with plain boards, slim 12mo, 7 x 4.25 inches; (2), ix, (1), 11-144pp. Printed on laid paper with natural toning. Front flyleaf detached; board just hanging on. Leather dry and chipping down the joints. Old repairs including leather cords and unusual paper infills to rear board, mis-positioned cover patch. Spine label, "Property of the Newton Theo. Institution" and large manuscript bookplate to pastedown, "Gift of Warren Ave. Bapt. Church". Text is clean and crisp, about Good with strong provenance and wonderfully wonky old repairs.

The bestseller by Puritan minister John Flavel (c.1630-1691). First appearing in 1674, it saw copious editions until around 1820, after which excerpts could be found in mourning compilations like The Suffering Christian's Companion, but new editions dried up. It would seem his flavor of consolation resonated less with nineteenth-century audiences. Flavel addresses the acceptable quantity and qualities of grief, "the boundaries of sorrow," engaging a tough love style of consolation that recalls a bossy advice columnist in a modern lifestyle magazine. His words to women losing their children are particularly brutal—suggesting they just have more children, and for women unable to have more children, "as a dry tree," he responds, "Suppose what you say, that you have no hope, nor expectation of another child remaining to you; yet if you have a hope of better things than children, you have no reason to be cast down: Bless God for higher and better hopes than these." (118)

To general mourners, he says: "That the death of your relation was so sudden and surprizing, was much your own fault, who ought to have lived in the daily sense of its vanity"(122); and, "Rule 7. In the day of your mourning for the death of your friends, seriously consider your own death as approaching, and that you and your dear friend are distinguished by a small interval and point of time... Could you but look into your own graves more seriously, you would be able to look into your friend's grave more composedly." (143)


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