N00318:256
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.
Consider. 2. That Prayer is a notable means to obtain this mercy. Prayer opens the windows of Heaven, Elijah prayed that it might rain, and Heaven gave showers: Prayer brings down the showers of Blessing in a proper literal sense: but especially these spiritual showers which the Text speaketh of, wherein the Lord promiseth to shower down his spirit upon our poor Children. Assuredly if there be Prayers & tears before the Lord on this account, they will come pouring down again in showers of grace at last. I have read of an eminent Minister of Christ, that having prayed fervently with some Christian Friends, they in the next room felt strange illapses of the Spirit upon their hearts, so as that one said, O what a man is this that can knock down the spirit of God into all our hearts! Who knows but that we may pray down the spirit of God into the souls of our Children, Luk. 11.9. Knock and it shall be opened to you, ask, and it shall be given you. What shall then be given? even the holy Spirit to them that ask him, ver. 13. ⟨p. 183⟩O then Let us knock hard at Heaven gates this day; certainly such requests are welcome to Heaven, yea, to God in Heaven, He hath showed how acceptable such requests are to Him by gracious answers: Christ said unto his Disciples, Behold I send the promise of my Father, (meaning the spirit of Promise,) upon you, but tarry ye in the City Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high Luk. 24.49. And what were they to do at Jerusalem in the mean time? no question but (as some have noted) they were much in fasting and Prayer that this Promise of the Father might come upon them. And not long after there was a most gracious and glorious effusion of the Spirit. And of latter times, God has been entreated to send down his spirit abundantly for the Conversion of souls, Not fifty years ago, at a place in Scotland, *a great number of praying christians met together, when a Sermon was to be preached the next day, and they spent the night afore in Prayer that the Lord would own the word then to be spoken for the Conversion of souls, and Behold the Lord went forth with his Word, so that near upon Five Hundred Souls were wrought upon and Converted by that one Sermon. I have been told of a Church ⟨p. 184⟩