N00460:194
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.
3. Hence, if such an one hath lived like a Christian, and so as becomes Godliness. This can be no ground of weakening our Hope about their everlasting welfare: his latter •nd shall be peace for all this: though we observe nothing but doubts and fears, yet he shall find to his eternal joy, that the very moment in which his soul departs from his body, he is put out of all his fears, ⟨p. 109⟩and when it falls among the Blessed Life-guard of Glorious Angels, who are sent to bring him home to the Kingdom, and lay him in the B• some of his Blessed Redeemer, he shall then know himself happy: we may believe that God hath gracious ends in this thing, to humble him, and to do him good by it.
3. Hence, if such an one hath liued like a Christian, and so as becomes Godliness. This can be no ground of weakning our Hope about their everlasting welfare: his latter •nd shall be peace for all this: though we observe nothing but doubts and fears, yet he shall find to his eternal joy, that the very moment in which his soul departs from his body, he is put out of all his fears, ⟨p. 109⟩and when it falls among the Blessed Life-guard of Glorious Angels, who are sent to bring him home to the Kingdom, and lay him in the B• some of his Blessed Redeemer, he shall then know himself happy: we may believe that God hath gracious ends in this thing, to humble him, and to do him good by it.
4. Though such cannot express that boasting confidence which others can, yet they may discover to our charity as much grace as others do. They may under this very cloud and darkness, express their endeared love to the Lo•d Jesus Christ, their earnest longings to see his face and be with him, their humble sense of their own unworthiness of his mercy, Justifying of him in this very dispensation of his unto them; their entire hatred of sin, and their deep self loathing by reason of it: their insatiable desires after Christ, and everlasting communion with him, the earnest breathings of their souls after more holiness, and whatsoever else is the proper fruit of Saving Grace in the Souls of Gods Children: and the observation of these things will give us a better foundation to build our hopes in respect to them upon, than the great confidence which many do express; because it is from such things as these are, that we fetch our arguments to persuade us that that is right and not deceiving.