N00280:57
The high esteem which God hath of the death of his saints. As it…
The high esteem which God hath of the death of his saints. As it was delivered in a sermon preached October 7. 1683. Occasioned by the death of the Worshipful John Hull Esq: who deceased October 1, 1683. / By Samuel Willard teacher to a church in Boston. ; [Four lines of quotations]
printed by Samuel Green for Samuel Sewall, 1683
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.
2. Their eternal being in another World bears a Relation to their Death; Of all the changes which they pass through, this is in some respect the greatest: The Death of Believers is appointed to be the narrow passage through which they are to be conducted from their Earthly Cottage to a Palace of Kingly Glory: It is the Ceremony in which an honourable discharge is given to these faithful Soldiers from their fore Warfare here below, to ride home to their City in triumph: It is their dis-banding from the Church Militant, to go to and become Members of the great Sanhedrin of the Church Triumphant, and this is a great and a notable transaction and must needs therefore be precious, and taken such care for, as that it may answer in glory to the great design of it.
2. Their eternal being in another World bears a Relation to their Death; Of all the changes which they pass through, this is in some respect the greatest: The Death of Believers is appointed to be the narrow passage through which they are to be conducted from their Earthly Cottage to a Palace of Kingly Glory: It is the Ceremony in which an honourable discharge is given to these faithful Souldiers from their fore Warfare here below, to ride home to their City in triumph: It is their dis-banding from the Church Militant, to go to and become Members of the great Sanhedrim of the Church Triumphant, and this is a great and a notable transaction and must needs therefore be precious, and taken such care for, as that it may answer in glory to the great design of it.
USE I. For Information: We may hence collect,
VSE I. For Information: We may hence collect,
1. That the Title of a Saint is a most honourable Title: or that it is the greatest honour and privilege in the World to be a Saint; this is the honour that all His Saints have, that their Death is precious in His sight: and there is no Worldly Title, though never so glittering and glorious, that involves in it such a privilege as this is: they that have them may live in great splendour among Men, and be followed with the stately Solemnities of Funeral Pomp to their House of Darkness: but in God's account (which is alone to be set by) they are in their Deaths of no more value than so many Beasts,