N00427:100
The present state of New-England. Considered in a discourse on the necessities and advantages…
The present state of New-England. Considered in a discourse on the necessities and advantages of a public spirit in every man; especially, at such a time as this. Made at the lecture in Boston 20.d. 1.m. 1690. Upon the news of an invasion by bloody Indians and French-men, begun upon us. / By Cotton Mather. ; [Two line epigram in Latin]
Boston: printed by Samuel Green, 1690
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.
IT having been a thing too sensible and obvious to escape the Observation of all who are not wholly strangers in our Israel; that this poor Land has laboured under a long Series of Afflictions and Calamities, whereby we have suffered successively in our precious and pleasant Things, and have seen the anger of the righteous God against us, expressed in Characters, which ought to be as terrible as they must needs be visible unto us; it having also, both by the Testimonies of •hose, that after the most humble and exact Enquiries into the mind of God, have discovered the same unto us, and by •heir own general and repeated Confessi•• […] undeniable; that a corruption ⟨p. 48⟩of Manners attended with inexcusable Degeneracies and Apostasies, found in too many of this People, is the cause of that Controversy, which the God of our Fathers has, for many years maintaining with us: It being likewise at this day, such a Probation time with all New-England as this Country has never before seen from the first foundation of it, and the judgments of that Holy God, who hath beheld how incorrigible we have hitherto been under all His Dispensations, now arriving to such an extremity, That the Axe is laid to the Root of the Trees, and we are in imminent danger of perishing, if a speedy REFORMATION of our Provoking Evils prevent it not:
IT having been a thing too sensible and obvious to escape the Observation of all who are not wholly strangers in our Israel; that this poor Land has laboured under a long Series of Afflictions and Calamities, whereby we have suffered successively in our precious and pleasant Things, and have seen the anger of the righteous God against us, expressed in Characters, which ought to be as terrible as they must needs be visible unto us; it having also, both by the Testimonies of •hose, that after the most humble and exact Enquiries into the mind of God, have discovered the same unto us, and by •heir own general and repeated Confessi•• 〈…〉 undeniable; that a corruption ⟨p. 48⟩