N00460:188
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.
5. There are some that die with a great deal of Comfort, & professed Hope, & possibly assurance of their good estate, and joyful expectation of the Glory to be revealed in them. They are both ready and willing to die, and speak very comfortably concerning their after estate in another world; and this gives abundance of encouragement and comfort to their friends, and they are often ready to solace themselves in it. But the ground of this Hope is warily to be considered. It is indeed a very desirable thing in it self, to stand by and hear our dying Friend testifying of a good hope, for a blessed eternity. But then that which must derive strength to our Hope from hence must be gathered, not from the mere confidence of such a profession made by them, but by putting other circumstances thereto: And ⟨p. 105⟩there are these two more Especially.
5. There are some that dy with a great deal of Comfort, & professed Hope, & possibly assurance of their good estate, and joyful expectation of the Glory to be revealed in them. They are both ready and willing to dy, and speak very comfortably concerning their after estate in another world; and this gives abundance of encouragement and comfort to their friends, and they are often ready to solace themselves in it. But the ground of this Hope is warily to be considered. It is indeed a very desireable thing in it self, to stand by and hear our dying Friend testifying of a good hope, for a blessed eternity. But then that which must derive strength to our Hope from hence must be gathered, not from the meer confidence of such a profession made by them, but by putting other circumstances thereto: And ⟨p. 105⟩there are these two more Especially.
1. If there be a good agreement between their life and their Death. For us to hear one that hath lived in all good Conscience, and hath approved himself faithful unto God in his generation, now at last bearing a full Testimony to the love of God to him, in his life, and rejoicing in Christ his Saviour, and the expectation of his Glory at his death, singing with Good Simeon,