N00213:185
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.
Answ. Because youth is the fittest season to remember God in, 1wherefore it is added in the Context, before the evil days come, when thou shalt say I have no pleasure in them. Old age is an evil time: and therefore (saith the wise man) thou must Remember and serve God in thy good days, if thou wouldest have him to remember and accept of thee in thy evil days: if thou neglectest God in the spring of thy years, what reason is there to think that he will regard thee when winter Age is come upon thee? Moreover, it is not easy to Turn unto the Lord in old age: A young plant is more easily plucked up then an old tree; so are young men with less difficulty transplanted, and ••ucked up out of the Soil of nature, then they that are grown old in the ways of sin. Old Diseases are hardly cured: so when men by a long continuance in a course of sin, have contracted almost incurable habits of sin, how hard a work will it be to convert them? were it not that all things with God are possible, it could not be. Wherefore the Scripture saith, can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the Leopard his spots? then may you also d•e good, that are accustomed to do evil. Jer. 13.23. When Satan hath hel• possession a long-time, it is not an easy work to out […], and ⟨p. 101⟩disposes him. We read of one in the Gospel that had a most terrible dispossession, Mark 9.25,26. Jesus rebuked the foul spirit, saying, I charge thee come out of him and enter no more into him: and the spirit cried, and rent him sore, and came out of him, and he was as one dead, insomuch that many said, he is dead. How difficult and how painful was this Dispossession? Why? v.21. It is noted that the Father of that young man being enquired of, how long he had been in that condition, he said, Of a child. Truly, they that spend their childhood in the Service of Satan, if ever they be converted, are wont to have dreadful Conversions at last. Therefore Young men should turn to God betimes, that so they may escape those bitter pangs, which otherwise they must expect to undergo if ever good come of them.