N00460:41
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.
4. Yet there are many reasons why God sees it convenient that believers should die, and some of them are these following.
1. It is fitting that they should taste something of the fruit of sin. Though this be not in the way of a curse, yet they must have some experiment of it in the way of Providence: The Apostle tells us, Rom. 8.10 The b•dy is dead because of sin. One thing designed in this expression is, that because ⟨p. 16⟩Gods people were once sinners, therefore God will have them to taste of a bodily death. This becomes to them a witness that once they were Transgressors, and serves to keep them humble under all the grace they have received, and the sense of Gods love in Christ, which they enjoy, to think that they still must die. It is true, if there were nothing else of advantage to them by dying but only this, God would not have thus continued it to them: but still, this is a Remembrancer to them as long as they live; and it is one profitable use of it to them, to bring sin to remembrance.
1. It is fitting that they should tast something of the fruit of sin. Though this be not in the way of a curse, yet they must have some experiment of it in the way of Providence: The Apostle tells us, Rom. 8.10 The b•dy is dead because of sin. One thing designed in this expression is, that because ⟨p. 16⟩Gods people were once sinners, therefore God will have them to tast of a bodily death. This becomes to them a witness that once they were Transgressors, and serves to keep them humble under all the grace they have received, and the sense of Gods love in Christ, which they enjoy, to think that they still must die. It is true, if there were nothing else of advantage to them by dying but only this, God would not have thus continued it to them: but still, this is a Remembrancer to them as long as they live; and it is one profitable use of it to them, to bring sin to remembrance.