N00527:16
Warnings from the dead. Or Solemn admonitions unto all people
Warnings from the dead. Or Solemn admonitions unto all people; but especially unto young persons to beware of such evils as would bring them to the dead. / By Cotton Mather. ; In two discourses, occasioned by a sentence of death, executed on some unhappy malefactors. ; Together with the last confession, made by a young woman, who dyed on June 8. 1693. One of these malefactors.
printed by Bartholomew Green for Samuel Phillips, 1693
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.
The first PROPOSITION which do's Arrest our Thoughts, is this,
It is a Mad Life, that Ungodly men use to Lead.
There is an Horrible Madness which do's possess the Hearts, and thereupon pollute the Lives of all ungodly men. Every Penitent in this Assembly, will in much Bitterness of Soul, confess the Truth of this Proposition, and say, None but Mad men would ever do as we have done!
The Word of God calls every thing by its Right Name; and Ungodly men are called Mad men in those unerring Oracles. As the Preacher tells us, in Ecc. 2. 2. I said of Laughter, it is mad; So do's the Bible assure us concerning the Merry Jolly Sinner, He is Mad, & there is a Madness in all his ways. It assures us concerning all that Renounce and Forsake the Blessed God, in Jere. 30. 38. They are mad upon their Idels. Our First Father by his Fall, gave himself ⟨p. 5⟩a sore blow in his Head; he Cracked and Crazed his own Brain; and the Madness hath ever since run in a Blood; his poor Children derive it from him. Hence tis the Name of a Sinner, in Psal 14. 1. He is a Fool! and Solomon who Preached and Wrote with some Imitation of his Father, do's espouse that Phrase, as the most proper to denote, A Sinner, by. Now it specifies but a Degree of the same Distemper; the Dotage of a Sinner quickly grows up into Frenzy, which makes a perfect Mad man of him.