N00213:122
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.
Wherefore Consider, 1. What Fathers and Predecessors have been, they were such as did seek the Lord. As for the body of the present Generation in New-England, it may be said to them, your Fathers were such as did serve the Lord, yea, it was love to God, and to Jesus Christ, which brought them into this Wilderness. As the Lord speaketh, Jer. 2. 2. I remember the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine Espousals, when thou wentest after me in the Wilderness, in a Land which was not sown. Our Fathers did not in their coming hither propound any great matters to themselves respecting this world; only that they should have liberty to serve God; & to walk with him in all the ways of his worship. As one of our worthies hath aptly expressed, God sifted three Nations, that so he might bring over choice grain into this wilderness Let us then remember what New-England hath been. It hath been a noble Plant Jer. 2. 21. I plan […] a noble Vine, wholly a right Seed. It hath been a […], ⟨p. 56⟩our Eyes have seen the Lord fulfilling that Scripture literally & gloriously, Isai. 41. 19. I will plant in the Wilderness a Cedar. The chief of the Fathers in these New-English Churches, they were Abraham's. He, when God called him removed out of Ur of the Chaldees, to the place which the Lord would show him, & there built an Altar to the Everlasting God, so did our Fathers remove out of their own Land, when God called them, and came hither, to build an Altar here to the Everlasting God, yea, and they have set the Altar upon its right Basis too. Our Fathers have been Davids, that is to say, eminent Reformers. Let me speak freely (without offence to any) there never was a Generation that did so perfectly shake off the dust of Babylon, both as to Ecclesiastical and civil Constitution, as the first Generation of Christians, that came into this Land for the Gospels sake, where was there ever a place so like unto new Jerusalem as New-England hath been? It was once Dr. Twiss his opinion, [i]that when new-Jerusalem should come down from Heaven America would be the Seat of it. Truly that such a Type and emblem of new-Jerusalem, shou•d be erected in so dark a corner of the world, is matter of deep meditation and admiration.