N00460:196
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. Some that have lived soberly in their Child-hood, have afterwards been drawn into lewd courses, and would not hearken to counsel, neither of their Godly Parents, nor faithful Ministers, till God came to lay them upon a sick and Death-bed, and then they have had terrible awakenings and Convictions, and made solemn confessions both to God and man, taken shame to themselves earnestly begged of God for pardon, and possibly also have testified some hopes that they have conceived hereupon of mercy and acceptance with God, and we have occasion to take notice of several such cases as these are; and concerning our Hopes about such, I would offer these two things.
7. Some that have lived soberly in their Child-hood, have afterwards been drawn into leud courses, and would not hearken to counsel, neither of their Godly Parents, nor faithful Ministers, till God came to lay them upon a sick and Death-bed, and then they have had terrible awakenings and Convictions, and made solemn confessions both to God and man, taken shame to themselves earnestly begged of God for pardon, and possibly also have testified some hopes that they have conceived hereupon of mercy and acceptance with God, and we have occasion to take notice of several such cases as these are; and concerning our Hopes about such, I would offer these two things.
1. They cannot be so strong but that they must needs be attended with no small fears too▪ […] this is not without reason: they cannot be so prevailing because we had not the opportunity to see the trial of the sincerity of this repentance of theirs. The terrors of Death, and the apprehensions of eternity just now to be entered into, and the consideration of the dreadful miseries of ungodly men, may well put men into terrible agonies, and bring their sins to remembrance, and make them to vomit up their morsels which before lay indigested upon their Consciences, drive them to making Confessions, to begging of pardon, and warning ⟨p. 111⟩of others, in particular their Companions to beware of the like; and yet this may be but a legal work: we have seen some that under the terrors of Death have done the like, and yet recovering again, they Returned to their vomit, and wallowing in the mire; and that God should make it a common thing to give Repentance unto life upon a Death-bed, to such as despised his Grace all their lives before, is a thing scarcely to be thought of.