N00280:62
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.
4. That the Death of a Saint calls for solemn and serious observation by the living. It is an awful thing for a Righteous man to die, and no man lay it to heart; for the Godly▪ to be taken away, and none consider it: if the Saints death be so precious in the sight of God, then it is certain that there are great and weighty reasons in the very circumstances of their dying which Men ought to regard: there is a great ⟨p. 14⟩change made in that place from whence the poorest and meanest Saint is removed: there is no such desolation and impoverishing brought upon a Land, as when Death comes commissioned by God, to seize, gather up, and carry away from us those Jewels; one of them is of more worth than ten thousand of wicked Men, and a greater loss it is (whether Men will believe it or no) to be stripped of one of them, then of a multitude of those unprofitable things that cumber the Ground, and are a burden to the Earth they tread upon.
4. That the Death of a Saint calls for solemn and serious observation by the living. It is an awful thing for a Righteous man to die, and no man lay it to heart; for the Godly▪ to be taken away, and none consider it: if the Saints death be so precious in the sight of God, then it is certain that there are great and weighty reasons in the very circumstances of their dying which Men ought to regard: there is a great ⟨p. 14⟩change made in that place from whence the poorest and meanest Saint is removed: there is no such desolation and impoverishing brought upon a Land, as when Death comes commissioned by God, to sieze, gather up, and carry away from us those Jewels; one of them is of more worth than ten thousand of wicked Men, and a greater loss it is (whether Men will believe it or no) to be stript of one of them, then of a multitude of those unprofitable things that cumber the Ground, and are a burden to the Earth they tread upon.