N00460:93
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.
Although they may irreprehensibly sorrow at the death of their Friends, yet not as others do: These Thessalonians to whom the Apostle directed his Epistle, lived among a company of Heathen, who had not the Knowledge of God nor Christ, and had many Heathenish and Idolatrous Customs among ⟨p. 41⟩them, and particularly in their mourning over their dead: he here gives the people of God warning against imitating of them, or obliging themselves to all their vain and superstitious customs upon this account; and that we may take up a right notion of the caution here given, let us observe a few things
1. Negatively, take these two observations;
1. That it doth not follow from hence, that because the Heathen mourn for their Dead, therefore Christians are bound not to mourn at all. It is not the thing it self, but the manner of it that is here cautioned against: none but Stoics ever prohibited this, and that upon a false Hypothesis: it hath been already taken notice of, that the Law of nature and of Religion concur in it; and there are some things which mere Gentiles do, that are morally good, and commendable, and performed according to the light of nature, and dictates of right reason.
1. That it doth not follow from hence, that because the Heathen mourn for their Dead, therefore Christians are bound not to mourn at all. It is not the thing it self, but the manner of it that is here cautioned against: none but Stoicks ever prohibited this, and that upon a false Hypothesis: it hath been already taken notice of, that the Law of nature and of Religion concurr in it; and there are some things which meer Gentiles do, that are morally good, and commendable, and performed according to the light of nature, and dictates of right reason.