N00213:128
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.
Furthermore, since the Church hath been by divine Institution Congregational, in these days of the New-Testament, men have been no less subject to Apostasy then in former Ages. The Churches in Galatia were strangely and suddenly overrun with corrupt Doctrine. Hence the Apostle saith, Gal. 1. 6. I marvel that you are so soon removed unto another Gospel. He might well marvel, if the observation of [l]great Chronologers be true, that within a year ⟨p. 60⟩after Paul was removed from Galatia to Ephesus, false Teachers succeeded him, and overthrew his Foundation, be endeavouring to advance a mixed Religion consisting of Juda•sine and Christianity. And I remember Jerome, [m]testifieth that in his time all Galatia was overrun with damnable Heresies. And as for the Church in Ephesus they quickly declined, Rev, 2, 5. Remember from whence thou art fallen repent, and do the first works. It was (as Historians observe) about twenty years after the Ascension of Christ that Paul gathered a Church amongst the Ephesians. And sixty years after the Ascension, the Book of the Revelation was written; So that there had been a Church in that place about forty-years; In which time the first members of the Church must needs (in probability) as to the body of them be dead, and another Generation of Church members were risen up which were not like the first. The Church in Thyatira, though not so Apostate when the Revelation was written as some other Churches, yet Ecclesiastical Story mentions how that in a few years after that, there was no Church in that place; which was one Reason why some ancient Heretics [n]denied the divine Authority of the Apocalypse. Because therein mention is made of a Church in Thyatira, when as (said they) no Church is to be seen there. To which the Answer is that there had been a Church there only the Cataphrygian Heresy did prevail so, as in a little time to swallow up the whole Church. In a word, in all those places, which we read of in the Scripture as having Churches in them, they that are the Successors at this day, are not like unto them that once were in those very places. In many places they have only the name not the Truth of Christianity, and in some not so much as the name. Albeit, when time was, famous Churches might