N00460:163
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.
4. That the direct aim of the New-Covenant is life and Salvation. I do not say that all who are any way comprehended under it shall certainly obtain Salvation, the Scripture assures us that the case stands far otherwise: the fig tree which is planted in the vineyard may prove barren, and be a cumber to the ground, & for that reason may be cut down: the Gospel may, and very frequently doth eventually, prove to be a savour of death in them that perish, 2. Cor. 2.15.16. Many are at last found unbelievers and so procure ⟨p. 83⟩Damnation to themselves. But this is certain that God introduced the New-Covenant […] the deficiency of the Old-One, in point of being able to give life to fallen men, Gal. 3.21, If there had been a law that could have given life, verily Righteousness should have been by the law. It was because man had destroyed himself, and there was no remedy provided for him in the first Covenant, that God revealed another in which there was one: and what could the direct aim of this be, but that a number of that unhappy race might be delivered from eternal death, and made partakers in Salvation? There was enough to destroy all mankind in the former Covenant, the curses of it were amazing: if it had not been for the Salvation which is provided in this it had never been promulgated; life therefore and immortality are said to be brought to light by the Gospel, 2. Tim. 1.20. And this consideration also gives no little •ift to the Hope of Godly Parents: it must have some comfort in it, to think that the Covenant in which my Babe died, was a Covenant of life and peace. And yet farther.
4. That the direct aim of the New-Covenant is life and Salvation. I do not say that all who are any way comprehended under it shall certainly obtain Salvation, the Scripture assures us that the case stands far otherwise: the fig tree which is planted in the vineyard may prove barren, and be a cum•er to the ground, & for that reason may be cut down: the Gospel may, and very frequently doth eventually, prove to be a savour of death in them that perish,