N00213:125
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 Ishmaelites, Midianites, Edomites, (and other Nations) who were of the Posterity of Abraham, the Father of the faithful, in a few Generations lost the substantials of Religion, and were wholly deprived of their Church Estate. The Church was settled in Jacobs Family. Corruption and Superstition did creep into his Family, so as that he was fain to set upon a work of solemn Reformation, and that was not two hundred years after the Reformation begun in his grand-Father Abraham's Family. After the Church was become National, the truth and power of Religion did very rarely continue above one or two Generations at the most (sometimes not so long) witness that Scripture †which was worthily opened and applied in this place upon the like solemn occasion two years ago, Judg. 2. 7, 10. And the People served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the Elders that out-lived Joshua, who had seen all the great works of the Lord that he did for Israel: And all that Generation were gathered unto their Fathers, and there arose another Generation after them, which knew not the Lord nor yet the works which he had done for Israel. Those that were the grand-Children of that Generation which was brought out of Egypt, did forsake the God, of their Fathers. Hence is that expression, Hos. 10, 9. O Israel thou hast sinned from the days of Gibeah, what horrible wickedness was in Gibeah, we may read in the nineteenth & twentieth Chapters of the Book of Judges, where we have ⟨image ?⟩[…] Story of the Levites Concubine, which though it be mentioned towards the close of that Book, yet it seems evident that it happened before the Judges, for it seems that Jebus (afterwards Jerusalem) was not then taken, Judg. 19. 11, 12. when as that was taken by the Children of Israel before they were governed by Judges, Chap. 1. ver. 8. So that the wickedness […], and their war with the Benjamites, which followed thereupon, was between the death of Joshua and the Judges. Moreover, Phinehas the Son of Eleazar, the Son of Aaron was Priest in those days, Judg. 20. 28