N00460:190
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.
2. If it be accompanied with a Suitable Frame of Spirit, When this professed confidence is waited upon with great self abasement, and self abhorrency, with adoration of, and admiration at the riches of free Grace which hath appeared in the giving of Him this Hope; acknowledging his utter unworthiness of it, and ascribing i• all to the undeserved mercy of God in Jesus Christ, extended to him who was as bad as others, and had done nothing to merit this, but the quite contrary: here is good matter of thinking well of, and rejoicing with such an one; Whereas when men draw their comforts, and satisfying conclusions from themselves: they thank God they have loved him always, they have kept his Commandments from thei• youth, they never sinned as these and those have done, and the result of all centres in what they have been and done, and they seem to rest upon their own Righteousness, or only upon the general notion of Gods mercy, and his good will to mankind, and they therefore conclude that he will have mercy upon them, these confidences are poor and shallow, ⟨p. 107⟩and may be expressed by an unjustified Phar••••, Luk. 18.11. with 14.
2. If it be accompanied with a Suitable Frame of Spirit, When this professed confidence is waited upon with great self abasement, and self abhorrency, with adoration of, and admi•ation at the riches of free Grace which hath appeared in the giving of Him this Hope; acknowledging his utter unworthiness of it, and ascribing i• all to the undeserved mercy of God in Jesus Christ, extended to him who was as bad as others, and had done nothing to merit this, but the quite contrary: here is good matter of thinking well of, and rejoycing with such an one; Whereas when men draw their comforts, and satisfying conclusions from themselves: they thank God they have loved him always, they have kept his Commandments from thei• youth, they never sinned as these and those have done, and the result of all centers in what they have been and done, and they seem to rest upon their own Righteousness, or only upon the general notion of Gods mercy, and his good will to mankind, and they therefore conclude that he will have mercy upon them, these confidences are poor and shallow,