N00460:79
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 4 › Application 1: USE I.Sermon › Proposition 4 › Application 1: VSE I.
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.
USE I.
VSE I.
Learn hence the difference between Christianity ⟨p. 38⟩and Stoicism. That would hamstring nature, and cut off the Affections from their natural activity, as if they had been given to and put into men for nothing else but to be suppressed; & to make no use of; as if he could enjoy no benefit by them but only by doing of violence to them: whereas the Word of God and the rules of Religion teach us, not to destroy, but to improve every faculty that is in us, and in particular our Affections, to the glory of God who gave them to us; and hereby it comes to pass that all in us may be actively engaged in his service; and truly, whatsoever men may think, if God should lose the honour of the employment of our Affection for him, we should rob him of a great deal of his due, yea cut off the very feet of our Souls, and how then should we be able to run the race of his Commandments.
USE II.
VSE II.
Learn hence that the greatest griefs and greatest comforts may meet in the same subject, and from the same occasion. There is no such consolation in the Death of any, as of such as die in Christ, and yet no grief in the loss of any is comparable to it. The greater is their gain, the more is our cause of Joy, but because herein we suffer the