N00318:142
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.
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 indulgence towards those that have the root of the matter in them, than by too much Severity. Nay, as to those that are indeed ⟨p. 108⟩Heretical, I can for my own part say with Luther, ad judicium sanguinis tardus sum, I have no affection to sanguinary punishments in such Cases. And certainly there are other †ways to suppress Heretics besides Heretic•de, witness what was done by great Constantine for the suppression of Arianism. Nevertheless, approved Writers who, are large enough in the point of Toleration, declare, that they, the principles of whose Religion are disturbant to the Civil State and Constitution of any place, may not be indulged, (and that therefore Popish Priests and Jesuits are not to be permitted) Sure then they whose Religion, and whose Profession doth warm in its bowels a fatal Engine, against the Kingdom and Churches of the Lord Jesus, ought not to be tolerated. Nor is it tolerable for any sort of men amongst us, to set up a mount Gerizzim that if these or those are justly cast out of the Churches of Christ, they shall be suffered to set up an Altar against the Lord's Altar, and (it may be) to take those hands that are in the Name of the Lord Jesus delivered up to Satan, I say, to take those hands to administer *the dreadful mysteries of the Kingdom, it is an abomination enough to make desolate. Certainty (much honoured in the Lord) ⟨p. 109⟩if your blessed Fathers and Predecessors were alive and in place, it would not be so; If †Winthrop, Dudley, Endicot were upon the Bench such profaneness as this would soon be suppressed. And if it be so that the spirit of Rulers in New-England is changed, if you do become cold and indifferent in the things of God, departing from your former love, and zeal for the Name, Truth, and blessed Ordinances, of the Lord Jesus, I will be bold to speak to you, as once Mr. Brightman said to a greater man than any of you all, if it be so, you may believe it, God will change either you, or your Government ere long. I speak it to you with great solemnity of Spirit, and in the Name of Him that is Higher than the highest.