N00460:167
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.
7. We no where read in the Scripture that the Children of Godly ones dying in their infancy did eternally perish. Tho' we know that Gods Electing Grace is free, and that there is no express word of promise upon this account, God having seen meet to reserve his own Counsels in this affair within his Bosom; yet there is this farther to encourage our hopes, that we do not find in the Word ⟨p. 87⟩of God, either such a Doctrine delivered, or such an example recorded, that any one such did miscarry. That David had any particular revelation extraordinary we read not, (and we may well enough, according to the tenor of Faith suppose that he had not) about that Child of his, and yet, tho' it were begotten in Adultery, and he had followed that with Murder, and other grievous sins; upon his true repentance, and his fasting and praying in particular for that Child, he is enabled to Comfort himself with this Hope, 2. Sam. 12.23. I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me. For it would be a poor argument of comfort we must think him to draw, if we suppose he argued only from a consideration of his own Death; nor could he expect or desire to go to him, but upon the Hope that he was gone to Glory.
7. We no where read in the Scripture that the Children of Godly ones dying in their infancy did eternally perish. Tho' we know that Gods Electing Grace is free, and that there is no express word of promise upon this account, God having seen meet to reserve his own Counsels in this affair within his Bosome; yet there is this farther to encourage our hopes, that we do not find in the Word ⟨p. 87⟩of God, either such a Doctrine delivered, or such an example recorded, that any one such did miscarry. That David had any particular revelation extraordinary we read not, (and we may well enough, according to the tenour of Faith suppose that he had not) about that Child of his, and yet, tho' it were begotten in Adultery, and he had followed that with Murder, and other grievious sins; upon his true repentance, and his fasting and praying in particular for that Child, he is enabled to Comfort himself with this Hope, 2. Sam. 12.23