N00425:243
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 3: Proposition III.
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.
'Tis their privilege, that God has the Love of a Father for them. As 'twas said of a dutiful and a towardly Child, in Gen. 44. 20. His father loved him; unspeakably and infinitely more loving is the love of God unto all gracious little Children. A father loves his Children more than all his Riches in the world• and so does God love these Children more than the whole world besides; unto such a ⟨p. 114⟩Child, the great God says with a peculiar Emphasis as in Isa. 43. 4. I have loved thee!
'Tis their priviledge, that God has the Love of a Father for them. As 'twas said of a dutiful and a towardly Child, in Gen. 44. 20. His father loved him; unspeakably and infinitely more loving is the love of God unto all gracious little Children. A father loves his Children more than all his Riches in the world• and so does God love these Children more than the whole world besides; unto such a ⟨p. 114⟩Child, the great God says with a peculiar Emphasis as in Isa. 43. 4. I have loved thee!
'Tis their privilege, that God has likewise the pity of a Father for them. When a Child is in sickness, or distress, the heart of a father even yearns towards it. But the heart of God moves with a more compassionate pity towards gracious little Children in all their Troubles; thus 'tis said in Psal. 103. 12. As a Father pities his Children, […] the Lord pities them that fear him. He feels […] sorrows with a most parental Sympathy; and if at any time he Chastise them with necessary Afflictions, he says upon it, My Bowels are troubled for them, I will surely have mercy upon them.