N00460:147
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. No man can infallibly know anoth•rs good estate without divine revelation. The differencing notes by which Sincerity and Hypocrisy are to be distinguished are latent; God only knows them certainly. A man may make a great show, and carry it with a great deal of strict preciseness, and yet be rotten within. There are a great many that profess and walk orderly for along time, and yet they fall at last into some soul Apostasy; and it is not to be questioned but that there are others that never discover themselves to the world, but go off fairly to our apprehension, who yet dissembled, and deceived others, and it may be themselves too. The day will discover many mistakes and wrong guesses that were here made by the most discerning Christians. It is Gods alone prerogative to judge the heart.
1. No man can infallibly know anoth•rs good estate without divine revelation. The differencing notes by which Sincerity and Hypocrisy are to be distinguished are latent; God only knows them certainly. A man may make a great shew, and carry it with a great deal of strict preciseness, and yet be rotten within. There are a great many that profess and walk orderly for along time, and yet they fall at last into some soul Apostasy; and it is not to be questioned but that there are others that never discover themselves to the world, but go off fairly to our apprehension, who yet dissembled, and deceived others, and it may be themselves too. The day will discover many mistakes and wrong guesses that were here made by the most discerning Christians. It is Gods alone prerogative to judge the heart.
2. There are greater hopes concerning some than others, of some there are such probabilities as give us a great deal of settled satisfaction concerning them▪ their lives are so holy, their ⟨p. 72⟩Testimonies are so clear, their conversation so shining, that we hope without any doubt concerning them, having as much to set us down; as can rationally be expected for our satisfaction in their good state, others give only slight and more weak encouragements to our hope, and mix it with many occasions of fear and jealousy concerning them: and yet hope hath at least so much to say, that there is some probability, at least a possibility that they may be well, and this gives some relief, though not so much as the other.