N00460:76
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. The Death of Friends and Relations gi•es a proper occasion for the excitation of Grief in us. It hath all of that in it which is proper to the object of such an Affection. It is an Evil; it is one of those things which are greatly averse to our natural inclinations; it deprives us of those good things in which a great deal of our love was laid up: it is a bereavement, so Jacob accounted it, Gen. 43 ⟨p. 35⟩14. It is a present evil: it is that which makes an actual separation between us, and our chiefest comforts, and it is an oppressing evil; the most of our delight which we place in any Created Objects, is wont to be carried forth unto these; it therefore rends our very Cauls, and strains our heart-strings. Yea, and it is an •rremediable evil; they are now gone from us, and they must never come to us again; Death makes a total and utter separation; there is no returning again to have any converse among the Living, when we are once gone from hence; all hopes of any farther communion in this world is now wholly cut off, Job 14.7. with 10. there is hope of a Tree, &c. but man dies and wastes away; yea man gives up the Ghost, and where is he?
3. The Death of Friends and Relations gi•es a proper occasion for the excitation of Gr•ef in us. It hath all of that in it which is proper to the object of such an Affection. It is an Evil; it is one of those things which are greatly averse to our natural inclinations; it deprives us of those good things in which a great deal of our love was laid up: it is a ••reavement, so Jacob accounted it, Gen. 43 ⟨p. 35⟩14. It is a presnt evil: it is that which makes an actual separation between us, and our chiefest comforts, and it is an oppressing evil; the most of our delight which we place in any Creatd Objects, is wont to be carried forth unto these; it therefore rends our very Cauls, and streins our heart-strings. Yea, and it is an rremediable evil; they are now gone from us, and they must never come to us again; Death makes a total and utter separation; there is no returning again to have any converse among the Living, when we are once gone from hence; all hopes of any farther communion in this world is now wholly cut off,