N00213:145
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.
Cotton (the first and famous Teacher in this Congregation) ⟨p. 77⟩•peaketh, [d]I wish (•aith he) that Antichrist do not creep in at the back door of Toleration. I do believe that Antichrist hath not at this day a more probable way to advance his Kingdom of Darkness, then by a Toleration of all Religions and Persuasions. Hence some of the chief of the Popish Doctors [e]have written against the Magistrates power in matters of Religion. But remember I pray you▪ how God hath punished this sin which I am testifying against. Of old (as some [f]have truly observed) when once the Roman Emperors did indulge and tolerate Arians, God was provoked to let the barbarous Goths loose to break in upon the Empire and destroy it, so as that the Church fled into the wilderness, had like to have been swept away with that flood. And what misery this sin hath more then once brought upon our own Land and Nation, I need not tell you, It is a very memorable passage, which I find related in the life of that great learned Usher; when Popish Idolaters were by the Civil State allowed, Well (said that Worthy of his time) you shall find that God will punish you forty years hence by those very men, whom you have sinfully indulged: and so it came to pass; for just forty years after that was the Irish Rebellion. This very sin which God calleth me to bear witness against this day, hath been subversive to the interest of Religion in some Christian Nations. The Toleration of Socinianism hath proved the ruin of the Churches in Poland and Transylvania. Yet it is far from my design in speaking this, to stir up Magistrates to that which the Scripture calls Persecution: it were better to err by too much ⟨p. 78⟩indulgence ••wards those that have the root of the matter in them, than by too much severity. Nay, as to those that are indeed Heretical, I can for my own part say with Luther, Ad judicium sanguinis toerdus sum,