N00213:108
A call from heaven to the present and succeeding generations or A discourse wherein…A call from heaven to the present and succeeding generations or A discourse wherin…
A call from heaven to the present and succeeding generations or A discourse wherein is showed, I. That the children of godly parents are under special advantages and encouragements to seek the Lord. : II. The exceeding danger of apostasy, especially as to those that are the children and posterity of such as have been eminent for God in their generation. : III. That young men ought to remember God their creator. / By Increase Mather, teacher of a church in Boston in New-England. ; [Nine lines of quotations]A call from heaven to the present and succeeding generations or A discourse wherin is shewed, I. That the children of godly parents are under special advantages and encouragements to seek the Lord. : II. The exceeding danger of apostasie, especially as to those that are the children and posterity of such as have been eminent for God in their generation. : III. That young men ought to remember God their creator. / By Increase Mather, teacher of a church in Boston in New-England. ; [Nine lines of quotations]
Boston: printed by John Foster, 1679
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.
The Prophet Zachariah had foretold that upon their unbelief, in rejecting Jesus Christ the only true Messiah, it should be so I took my staff Beauty, and cut it asunder, that I might break my Covenant which I made with all the People, Zach. 11. 10. And Paul tells us that sad Prediction was fulfilled, therefore Rom. 11. 12. he speaketh of The Fall of the Jews, meaning that they were fallen from their visible Church estate to be in the same condition which the Gentile world was in before the coming of Christ, so that they were fallen from heaven to earth; and in v. 20, 22. he speaketh of their being broken off and cut off, h. e. cut off from the visible Church. The Apostle [d]in that Chapter doth compare covenanting Abraham to a Root, and the visible Church to an Olive tree, of which there are two sorts of branches, 1. Natural, viz. the Jewish Church, 2. Engrafted, i. e. the Church among the Gentiles. Now the natural branches were broken off: and therefore in the New Testament they are declared to be none of the Lords people, Rev: 3. 9. ⟨p. 47⟩They call themselves Jews, but are not so, but are of the Synagogue of Satan. They say they are Jews, h. e. they boast of their being the Lords People, but in truth they are not so (saith Christ) they glory in the name of a Synagogue, but now they are not Gods Synagogue, but Satans. And in these days of the New-Testament the Lord hath disowned, & un-Churched these and those hat once were his People, Rev. 2. 5. I will remove the Candlestick out of his place. That Threatening is not only fulfilled […] Ephesus, but on all the Churches in Asia; there have been in former Ages bright and glorious Candlesticks in that part of the world, but they are long since all broken to pieces. The Romish Antichristian Idolatry, hath prevailed so far amongst Christians for above these thousand years, that they that are overrun there with, Christ doth declare them to be looked upon, as Gentiles, as Heathens, and that they are not to be looked upon as within the Temple, or as indeed appertaining to the visible Church, Rev. 11. 2