N00460:74
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.
1. Sorrow or Mourning is nothing else but the ••ting of the Affection of Grief. To grieve, to sorrow, and to mourn do all intimate one and the same thing. Grief is the inward principle, and sorrow is the expression or exertion of this principle, by the influence of it upon the spirits, oppressing and dejecting of them, and mourning outwardly, which discovers it by sighing, & weeping, & bitter complaints, that persons make, or whatsoever other outward symbols of it men are wont to signalize it by, as by solitariness, & walking softly, putting on Sack Cloth, lying in the Dust, which kinds of practices we find recorded in Scripture.
2 Grief is an affection which is stirred by the apprehension of a present evil, that oppresseth ⟨p. 34⟩one, and cannot be remedied. Grief derives principally from Hatred, which is an aversation from evil, and will always some way or other discover its dislike of it; which various ways of expressing it self, according to the different Postures of it, give denomination to the several Derivative Affections. Now there are three respects which the evil bears, that give occasion for the stirring of Grief: it is a present evil, for if it be future, it moves fear; It is something that is upon one that makes impression upon this affection And it is an oppressing evil: a mans spirit will sustain a great deal of infirmity, but when it overbears, then it makes it begin to […]: and it is an evil that cannot be remedied: as long as the man hath any hopes that he may bear it down and repel it, Anger takes place, and fortifies against it: but when there is no such expectation, then it sets grief on work: the Spirit is now straitened and burdened by it.
2 Grief is an affection which is stirred by the apprehension of a present evil, that oppresseth ⟨p. 34⟩one, and cannot be remedied. Grief derives principally from Hatred, which is an aversation from evil, and will always some way or other discover its dislike of it; which various ways of expressing it self, according to the different Postures of it, give denomination to the several Derivarive Affections. Now there are three respects which the evil bears, that give occasion for the stirring of Grief: it is a present evil, for if it be future, it moves fear; It is something that is upon one that makes impression upon this affection And it is an oppressing evil: a mans spirit will sustain a great deal of infirmity, but when it overbears, then it makes it begin to : and it is an evil that connot be remeded: as long as the man hath any hopes that he may bear it down and repel it, Anger takes place, and fortifies against it: but when there is no such expectation, then it sets grief on work: the Spirit is now straitned and burdened by it.