N00318:141
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 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 N. England.A call from heaven, to the present and succeeding generations or A discourse wherein 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 N. England.
Boston: printed by R.P. i.e for I. Brunning i.e, 1685
Title page typeset from the transcription.
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.
Moreover, sinful Toleration is an evil of exceeding dangerous consequence: Men of Corrupt minds though they may plead for Toleration, and Cry up Liberty of Conscience &c. yet if once they should become numerous and get power into their hands, none would persecute more than they: So the Donatists [b]of old, and the German Anabaptists [c]in the last Age. And the Ar-Arminian ⟨p. 106⟩Remonstrants †in the Netherlands made Hideous Clamours for Liberty of Conscience, and that the States of Holland were more cruel than the bloody Spanish Inquisitors, yet when they became potent, they did persecute the Orthodox Professors of the Truth. And indeed the Toleration of all Religions and Persuasions, is the way to have no true Religion at all left. That was Julian the Apostate's device, in order to an extirpation of Christianity. And it is a Solemn Word which Mr. Cotton (the first and famous Teacher in this Congregation) speaketh (d)I wish (says 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, than 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 matter of Religion. But remember I pray you how God hath punished this sin ⟨p. 107⟩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, and had like to have been swept away with that flood. And what misery this sin hath more than once brought upon our 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 calls me to bear witness against this day hath been subversive to the interest of Religion in some Christian Nations. The Toleration of Socinianism has proved the ruin of the Churches in Poland & Transylvania.