TIS an obscure Pen, among the Antipodes of that World in which you dwell, which now waits upon you, to let you understand, That there is an England in America, as well as One in Europe, which the Name of ASHURST has been no less Dear, than Known, unto. Upon that Expression in the Sacred Scripture, Cast the Unprofitable Servant into Outer Darkness, there is an Interpreter who imagines that the Regiones Exterae of America are the Tenebrae Exteriors, which the unprofitable are there Condemned unto. Doubtless The Authors of those Ecclesiastical Impositions and Severities, which drove our Predecessors into this American Wilderness, esteemed those old Puritans to be a very Unprofitable sort of Creatures; and we their Children, desire with much Humiliation to Confess and Lament our own Unprofitableness; ⟨image 3⟩not without our wonder, that any Party in our Nation, should propound unto themselves any profit, by Endeavouring our further Misery. We nevertheless flatter our selves with Hopes, that as while we sat under the shadows of our Charters we at least made the other parts of the English America to be profitable unto the Crown of our King, so the Church of our God in the other Hemil•h•re, will not Excommunicate us from their Fellowship and Affection, when 'tis considered, that the Exercise of the Protestant Religion in the purest and fullest Reformation, is That very Thing which this considerable Plantation was first built upon. He that shall Travel over New-England, will find a large Country filled with Churches, which I may without vanity call Golden Candlesticks, in this Outer Darkness, and which are Illuminated with Able, Faithful and Laborious Ministers, among whom the person who now Addresses you, is no more worthy to be Reckoned, than the Seventh which appears not among the Pleiades, is to be counted One of the Seven Stars. These Churches, in their Doctrine, do profess, and in their Worship, do practise, most entirely the Protestant Religion, as our Confession of Faith, with our Platform of Church Discipline, has made notorious; and though they want the ⟨image 3⟩Liturgies and Holidays and Ceremonies, which were not Conceived before the Man of Sin was Born, they do but approach thereby the nearer to that Primitive Christianity, which will be our Glory, while we continue in it.
TIS an obscure Pen, among the Antipodes of that World in which you dwell, which now waits upon you, to let you understand, That there is an England in America, as well as One in Europe, which the Name of ASHURST has been no less Dear, than Known, unto. Upon that Expression in the Sacred Scripture, Cast the Unprofitable Servant into Outer Darkness, there is an Interpreter who imagines that the Regiones Exterae of America are the Tenebrae Exteriores, which the unprofitable are there Condemned unto. Doubtless The Authors of those Ecclesiastical Impositions and Severities, which drove our Predecessors into this American Wilderness, esteemed those old Puritans to be a very Unprofitable sort of Creatures; and we their Children, desire with much Humiliation to Confess and Lament our own Unprofitableness; ⟨image 3⟩not without our wonder, that any Party in our Nation, should propound unto themselves any profit, by Endeavouring our further Misery. We nevertheless flatter our selves with Hopes, that as while we sat under the shadows of our Charters we at least made the other parts of the English America to be profitable unto the Crown of our King, so the Church of our God in the other Hemil•h•re, will not Excommunicate us from their Fellowship and Affection, when 'tis considered, that the Exercise of the Protestant Religion in the purest and fullest Reformation, is That very Thing which this considerable Plantation was first built upon. He that shall Travel over New-England, will find a large Countrey fill'd with Churches, which I may without vanity call Golden Candlesticks, in this Outer Darkness, and which are Illuminated with Able, Faithful and Laborious Ministers, among whom the person who now Addresses you, is no more worthy to be Reckoned, than the Seventh which appears not among the Pleiad•s, is to be counted One of the Seven Stars. These Churches, in their Doctrine, do profess, and in their Worship, do practise, most intirely the Protestant Religion, as our Confession of Faith, with our Platform of Church Discipline, has made notorious; and though they want the ⟨image 3⟩Liturgies and Holydays and Ceremonies, which were not Conceived before the Man of Sin was Born, they do but approach thereby the nearer to that Primitive Christianity, which will be our Glory, while we continue in it.
