of friends in the country.  I know that the very sight of those who have been witnesses of our better fortune, doth but serve to reinforce a calamity.  I know the contagion of grief and infection of tears, and especially when it runs in a blood.  And I myself could sooner imitate than blame those innocent relentings of nature, so that they spring from tenderness only and humanity, not from an implacable sorrow.  The tears of a family may flow together like those little drops that compact the rainbow, and if they be placed with the same advantage towards Heaven as those are to the sun, they too have their splendour; and like that bow, while they unbend into seasonable showers, yet they promise, that there shall not be a second flood.  But the dissoluteness of grief, the prodigality of sorrow, is neither to be indulged in a man’s self, nor complyed with in others.  If that were allowable in these cases, Eli’s was the readyest way and highest compliment of mourning, who fell back from his seat and broke his neck.  But neither does that precedent hold.  For though he had been Chancellor, and in effect King of Israel, for so many years (and such men value, as themselves, their losses at an higher rate than others), yet, when he heard that Israel was overcome, that his two sons Hophni and Phineas were slain in one day, and saw himself so without hope of issue, and which imbittered it farther, without succession to the government, yet he fell not till the news that the ark of God was taken.  I pray God that we may never have the same parallel perfected in our publick concernments.  Then we shall need all the strength of grace and nature to support us.  But on a private loss, and sweetened with so many circumstances as yours, to be impatient, to be uncomfortable would be to dispute with God.  Though an only son be inestimable, yet it is like Jonah’s sin, to be angry at God for the withering of his shadow.  Zipporah, though the delay had almost cost her husband his life, yet, when he did but circumcise her son, in a womanish peevishness reproached Moses as a bloody husband.  But if God take the son himself, but spare the father, shall we say that He is a bloody God?  He that gave His own son, may He not take ours?  It is pride that makes a rebel; and nothing but the over-weening of ourselves and our own things that raises us against Divine Providence.  Whereas Abraham’s obedience was better than sacrifice.  And if God please to accept both, it is indeed a farther tryal, but a greater honour.  I could say over upon this beaten occasion most of those lessons of morality and religion which have been so often repeated, and are as soon forgotten.  We abound with precept, but we want examples.  You, sir, that have all these things in your memory, and the clearness of whose judgment is not to be obscured by any greater interposition, should be exemplary to others in your own practice.  ’Tis true, it is an hard task to learn and teach at the same time.  And, where yourselves are the experiment,