N00441:24
Fair weather. Or Considerations to dispel the clouds, & allay the storms, of discontent
Fair weather. Or Considerations to dispel the clouds, & allay the storms, of discontent: in a discourse which with an entertaining variety, both of argument and history, lays open, the nature and evil of that pernicious vice, and offers diverse antidotes against it; / by Cotton Mather. ; Whereto there is prefixed a catalogue of sins against all the commandments, whereof all that would make thorough work of repentance, especially at this day when the God of heaven so loudly calls for it, should make their serious and sensible confessions before the Lord; with an humble and fervent address unto this whole people, there-about.Fair weather. Or Considerations to dispel the clouds, & allay the storms, of discontent: in a discourse which with an entertaining variety, both of argument and history, layes open, the nature and evil of that pernicious vice, and offers diverse antidotes against it; / by Cotton Mather. ; Whereto there is prefixed a catalogue of sins against all the commandments, whereof all that would make thorough work of repentance, especially at this day when the God of heaven so loudly calls for it, should make their serious and sensible confessions before the Lord; with an humble and fervent address unto this whole people, there-about.
Boston: printed by Bartholomew Green for Benjamin Harris, 1692
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Introduction: AN Humble and Faithful TESTIMONY For God, unto the Children of my People.
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.
Alas! What a Sinful Thing is Fallen, Alas! In this Impartial Glass, if you look ⟨p. 9⟩attentively, you may behold the Spots, for which every Penitent Soul, will Judge and Loath it self before the Lord; and O that many Repenting Sinners would in their separated Hours, of the deepest Humiliation and Supplication before God, Examines themselves by this Glass; and Confess, and Renounce all of these Abominable Things, with a Believing Reliance upon the Lord, Jesus Christ, for the bestowal both of Pardon and of Power against them all.
But will my dear COUNTRY now consider, that for the sake of these things the Wrath of God is came upon this Disobedient Land! Among THESE we shall find those Indictments upon which the Judge of all the Earth has proceeded, in visiting us with sure plagues and of long continuance. The Effects of it are too sensible and sorrowful to leave it uncertain, That we have been many years weltering and wasting under the orea•• Judgments of God. And the Takers of our Gods Displeasure have not only been in some respects, upon every one of our precious and pleasant Things, but they have grown upon us at such a terrible rate, as to punish us yet ⟨p. 10⟩in one Assault after another, with a, Seven times more for our Iniquities. The Year before this last, was most Remarkably a Year of Rebukes upon us; 'twas a year, when besides the General Clog upon all our Affairs, we miscarried in a most Important Expedition, like those Active Ephraimies, who before the Time Sallied from Goshe• against the Canaanites in the North, in hopes to be Enriched by the Plunder of those Injurious Adversaries; but came off Losers, because, as the Psalmist says, They kept not the Covenant of God. It was a year, wherein we were not only Distressed and Consumed by the Calamities of War, but the Destroying Angel did with Sickness also make among us a most lamentable Slaughter, Truly, The Slain of the Lord have been many. I suppose no less than as Thousand were in that […] year, carried unto their Long Home, from one Town in this Colony. And at the same time, very many scores of our poor Neighbours, especially of our young people, whose Concerns lay at Sea, have been carried as well to the Prisons in France, as to the Fevers in the Indies, where, ske Sheep they have been