N00532:61
The great blessing, of primitive counsellors. Discoursed in a sermon, preached in the audience…The great blessing, of primitive counsellours. Discoursed in a sermon, preached in the audience…
The great blessing, of primitive counsellors. Discoursed in a sermon, preached in the audience of the governor, Council, and representatives, of the province of the Massachusetts Bay, in New-England. May 31st. 1693. Being the day for the election of counsellors, in that province. / By Increase Mather. President of Harvard College in Cambridge, and teacher of a church at Boston, in New-England. ; [One line epigram in Latin]The great blessing, of primitive counsellours. Discoursed in a sermon, preached in the audience of the governour, Council, and representatives, of the province of the Massachusetts Bay, in New-England. May 31st. 1693. Being the day for the election of counsellours, in that province. / By Increase Mather. President of Harvard Colledge in Cambridge, and teacher of a church at Boston, in New-England. ; [One line epigram in Latin]
Boston, : Printed and sold, by Benjamin Harris, over-against the Old-Meeting-House., 1693
Title page typeset from the transcription.
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.
You will say, What shall we do that it may be so.?
Answ. 1. Let us be careful that those sins which provoke the Lord to withhold this Mercy from his People be not found amongst us. It is sin that does provoke God to take away Good Rulers, and to send Bad ones. It is Storied that when a very Unworthy Person was Advanced to an High Station, a Religious Man Expostulating with Heaven about it, Received that Answer, that it was not because such an one was Worthy of that Place, but because that sinful people were worthy to be Punished with having so wicked a Ruler set over them. It was Certainly a True Confession which the Levites made on a Public Fast Day. Neh. 9. 37. The Kings whom thou hast set over us because of our Sins, have dominion over our Bodies, and over our Cattle, at their pleasure. They once had Merciful Rulers, and those too from amongst themselves, but they sinned them away, and were for a time in the hands of Strangers who did exercise an Arbitrary Power over them, so that they could not say that their Cattle, or their Lands, or any thing was their own: all was at the Will and Pleasure of Strangers. New-England has had some experience of this. Your Land Strangers did devour it in your presence. You must give what they pleased to demand that so you might have a pretended Confirmation of your Estates and Properties. ⟨p. 21⟩The Counsellors which then carried all were not Counsellors as at the beginning. God has Mercifully delivered you from them. But if the sins which brought that Judgment on the Land are still amongst us unreformed and unrepented of; what can be expected, but that after a clear Sunshine for a while the Clouds will return again with greater Darkness than ever? What those sins were I need not say, so much having been spoken concerning that, many Years ago. To be sure the great sin of this Generation is their forgetting the Errand on which their Fathers came into this Wilderness which was not to seek great things for themselves, but to seek the Kingdom of God and His Righteousness. Let this people recover their Primitive Holiness, and they need not doubt but God will Bless them with Primitive Counsellors; and that they shall see that promise made to Jacob fulfilled,