N00431:13
The wonderful works of God commemorated. Praises bespoke for the God in heaven in…
The wonderful works of God commemorated. Praises bespoke for the God in heaven in a thanksgiving sermon; delivered on Decemb. 19. 1689. Containing just reflections upon the excellent things done by the great God, more generally in creation and redemption, and in the government of the world; but more particularly in the remarkable revolutions of providence which are every where the matter of present observation. With a postscript giving an account of some very stupendous accidents, which have lately happened in France. / By Cotton Mather. ; To which is added a sermon preached unto the convention of the Massachuset-Colony in New-England, with a short narrative of several prodigies, which New-England hath of late had the alarms of heaven in.
Boston: printed by S. Green & sold by Joseph Browning, 1690
Dedication: To the Right Worshipful Sir Henry Ashurst, Baronet.
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.
To the Right Worshipful Sir Henry Ashurst, Baronet.
SIR,
TIS an obscure Pen, among the Antipodes of that World in which you dwell, which now waits upon you, to let you understand, That •here•s an England in America, as well as One in Europe, which the Name of ASHURST has been no less Dear, than Known, unto. Upon that Expression in the Sacred Scripture, Cast the Unprofitable Servant into […] Darkness, there is an Interpreter who imagines that the Regiones Exteroe of America are the Tenebroe Exteriors, which […] unprofitable are there Condemned un•• Doubtless The Authors of those Ecclesiastical Impositions and Severities, which drove our Predecessors into this American Wilderness, esteemed those old Puritans to be a very Unprofitable sort of Creatures; and we their Children, desire with much Humiliation to Confess and Lament our own Unprofitableness; ⟨image ?⟩not without our wonder, that any Party in our Nation, should propound unto themselves any profit, by Endeavouring our further Misery. We nevertheless flatter our selves with slopes, that as while we sat under the shadows of our Char•ers we at least made the other parts of the English America to be profitable unto the Crown of our King, so the Church of our God in the other Hemisphere, will not Excommunicate us from their Fellowship and Affection, when 'tis considered, that the Exercise of the Protestant Religion in the purest and fullest Reformation, is That very Thing which this considerable Plantation was first built upon. He that shall Travel over New-England, will find a large Country filled with Churches, which I may without vanity call Golden Candlesticks, in this Outer Darkness, and which are Illuminated with Able, Faithful and Laborious Ministers, among whom the person who now Addresses you, is no more worthy to be Reckoned, than the Seventh which appears no among the Pleiades, is to be counted One of the Seven Stars. These Churches, in their Doctrine, do profess, and in their Worship, do practise, most entirely the […] ant Religion, as our Confession of Faith, […] […] Platform of Church Discipline, has […] […]; and though they want the