N00460:127
The mourners cordial against excessive sorrow discovering what grounds of hope Gods people have…
The mourners cordial against excessive sorrow discovering what grounds of hope Gods people have concerning their dead friends / by Samuel Willard, teacher of a church in Boston. ; [Five lines from II Corinthians]
Boston: printed by Benjamin Harris, 1691
Title page typeset from the transcription.
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.
1. The persons hoping; and they are such •s are not barely Christian by profession, but ••e also true believers in State. For tho• this hope is offered to all persons where the Gospel comes, yet there are none that have really embraced it but they, and though ⟨p. 58⟩the goodness of the person hoping, doth not contribute any thing to the good estate of the person for whom this hope is conceived, (for every one must be saved by his own faith, and not that of another, which is of Gods free-giving, and not o• our meriting,) yet there is an hope which godly men may entertain with respect unto their dead, which others cannot do upon the same reason: yea and there are arguments of comfort to be drawn from their hope, by such as these, which others cannot derive unto themselves without falsehood; as will be made to appear in the sequel of this discourse.
2. The persons hoped for: they are such […] sleep: i. e. such as we have any grounded hope concerning, that they died in Christ; and this is not the lot of all men; nor yet of all such as live under the Dispensation of Gospel Ordinances, and have been externally related to the Covenant: and it is a thing very evident that the hope here intended hath all its strength from Christ; and therefore the thing hoped must derive from an interest in him, and by consequence it must hold proportion with the reason which we had to conclude that they had such an interest, for, to be without Christ, and to be without hope, do run parallel, Eph. 2.12.
2. The persons hoped for: they are such 〈…〉 sleep: i. e. such as we have any grounded hope concerning, that they died in Christ; and this is not the lot of all men; nor yet of all such as live under the Dispensation of Gospel Ordinances, and have been externally related to the Covenant: and it is a thing very evident that the hope here intended hath all its strength from Christ; and therefore the thing hoped must derive from an interest in him, and by consequence it must hold proportion with the reason which we had to conclude that they had such an interest, for, to be without Christ, and to be without hope, do run parallel,