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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.
Sermon › Proposition 3: PROPOSITION III. The Death of the Godly is but a sort of sleep.
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.
1. Sleep is a binding up of the senses, and thereby it takes off the apprehension of pain and trouble. A man that is asleep doth not feel his sorrow. If it be Bodily pain, or if it be any grief oppressing the spirit, by falling asleep he loseth the present sense of it: as long as it keeps him waiting he is molested with it, but now it is to him as if it were not; and Death puts a real end to all the molestations and sorrows of the people of God. In this life they are full of them, and they accompany them to their dissolution▪ but at the Grave they leave them, and they know them no more: All their Tears are now wiped away, sighing and sorrow now cease for ever.
1. Sleep is a binding up of the senses, and thereby it takes off the apprehension of pain and trouble. A man that is asleep doth not feel his sorrow. If it be Bodily pain, or if it be any grief oppressing the spirit, by falling asleep he loseth the present sense of it: as long as it keeps him waiting he is molested with it, but now it is to him as if it were not; and Death puts a real end to all the molestations and sorrows of the people of God. In this life they are ful of them, and they accompany them to their dissolution▪ but at the Grave they leave them, and they know them no more: All their Tears are now wiped away, sighing and sorrow now cease for ever.
2. Sleep gives a suspension to labour Men that work must be awake, when they ⟨p. 26⟩go to sleep they leave off labouring; it puts an end to present business; men lay aside their work, when they lay themselves down to rest: and the death of Gods Children gives a cessation unto their work: the time of life is working time for Gods People, and they have a great deal of business to be employing themselves in, whilst they are here, in glorifying of God, and in working out of their own Salvation; this is enough to employ all their time, if they had a great deal more than they have; but when once they come to die, they have done with this, there is no business to be done in the Grave,