N00446:119
The triumphs of the reformed religion, in America. The life of the renowned John…
The triumphs of the reformed religion, in America. The life of the renowned John Eliot; a person justly famous in the church of God, not only as an eminent Christian, and an excellent Minister, among the English, but also, as a memorable evangelist among the Indians, of New-England; with some account concerning the late and strange success of the Gospel, in those parts of the world, which for many ages have lain buried in pagan ignorance. / Written by Cotton Mather. ; [Two lines from Luke]
Boston: printed by Benjamin Harris for Joseph Brunning i.e, 1691
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 afflicted him to see these, and more such as these, things continued in the Church of England, by the Artifice of certain persons who were loth to have the Reformation carried on unto those further Degrees which the most eminent of the first Reformers had in their Holy Designs; and it filled him with a just Horror, and sorrow! to see above twenty Hundred, faithful Ministers in one Black Day turned out of their employments, and several Thousands of Christians and Families in a little while Ruined, because they could not swallow down such unaccountable superstitions.
It afflicted him to see these, and more such as these, things continued in the Church of England, by the Artifice of certain persons who were loth to have the Refomation carried on unto those further Degrees which the most eminent of the first Reformers had in their Holy Designs; and it filled him with a just Horrour, and sorrow! to see above twenty Hundred, faithful Ministers in one Black Day turned out of their employments, and several Thousands of Christians and Families in a little while Ruined, because they could not swallow down such unaccountable superstitions.
We see what was not his opinion! but let us hear, ⟨p. 65⟩what it was. It was his as well as his master, the great Ramus's principle, that in the Reformation by Churches to be now endeavoured things ought to be Reduced unto the Order wherein we find them at their Primitive, Original, Apostolical Institution And in pursuance of this principle, he Justly Espoused that way of Church-Government which we call, the Congregational; he was fully persuaded, that the Church-state which our Lord Christ hath instituted in the New Testament, is, In a Congregation or Society of Professed Believers, Agreeing and Assembling together, among themselves, with Officers, of Divine Appointment, for the Celebration of Evangelical Ordinances, and their own mutual Edification; For he saw it must be a cruel hardship used upon the Scriptures, to make them so much as Lisp the least intimation of any other Church-state prescribed unto us; and he could assert, That no Approved Writers, for the space of two hundred years after Christ, make any mention of any other Organical, Visible, Professing Church, but that only which is Congregational. He looked upon the Congregational way as a Largess of Divine Bounty bestowed by the Lord Jesus, on his people, that followed him into this Wilderness, with a peculiar zeal for Communion with him, in his pure Worship here. He perceived in it, a sweet sort of Temperament, between Rigid Preerianism, and Levelling Brownism; So that on the one side, the Liberties of the people are not oppressed and