N00425:213
Addresses to old men, and young men, and little children. In three discourses ...…
Addresses to old men, and young men, and little children. In three discourses ... To which may be added, a short scriptural catechism, accommodated unto their capacities. / By Cotton Mather.
Boston: printed by R. Pierce for Nicholas Buttolph, 1690
THE LITTLE CHILDS LESSON. › DOCTRINE. › Proposition 2: Proposition II.
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.
Proposition II.
Gracious little Children endeavour to Know God, as thus an Heavenly Father to them.
But what is implied in this Knowledge?
First, Gracious little Children would not be without the saving and sincere Knowledge of God. They know the truth of that in Joh. 17 3. This is Life Eternal, to know the only true God; they know the truth of that in Prov. 19. 2. For the Soul to be without knowledge, it is not good. And this awakens them to seek the Knowledge of God, with such cares and cries as the Wise man in the Proverbs advised his Children unto. Gracious little Children complain of themselves, as he did of old, in Prov. 30. 3. I have not the knowledge of the Holy; and so they become willing to learn; they are willing to learn what God is, what His Three Persons. and what His Infinite Perfections are; they are willing to learn what He does in the World, as Creating and Preserving of all things; and as Redeeming his Elect; they are willing to learn what He says in the Word, what Mysteries, what Histories, what Commandments, what Promises, and Threatenings He has therein set before us. They think that without some Knowledge of these things they must grind like mpson with his Eyes put out by Hellish Philistines;