N00594:43
Johannes in eremo. Memoirs, relating to the lives, of the ever-memorable, Mr. John Cotton,…
Johannes in eremo. Memoirs, relating to the lives, of the ever-memorable, Mr. John Cotton, who dyed, 23.d. 10.m. 1652. Mr. John Norton, who dyed, 5.d. 2.m. 1663. Mr. John Wilson, who dyed, 7.d. 6.m. 1667. Mr. John Davenport, who dyed, 15.d. 1.m. 1670. Reverend and renowned ministers of the Gospel, all, in the more immediate service of one church, in Boston; and Mr. Thomas Hooker, who dyed, 7.d. 5.m. 1647. Pastor of the church at Hartford; New-England. / Written, by Cotton Mather. ; [Three lines of Latin quotation]
Boston : Printed for and sold by Michael Perry, at his shop, under the west end of the Town-House., 1695
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.
§. 3. Good Men in the CHURCH of ENGLAND, I hope, will not be Offended at ⟨p. 19⟩it, if the Unreasonable Impositions, and Intolerable Persecutions, of certain Little-Souled Ceremony-Mongers, which drove these Worthy Men out of their Native Country, into the horrid Thickets of America, be in their Lives Complained, and Resented. For, Distinguishing between a ROMANIZING Faction in the CHURCH of ENGLAND, and the TRUE PROTESTANT REFORMING CHURCH of ENGLAND, (Things as different as a JEWEL, from an HEYLIN, or a GRINDAL, from a LAUD!) the First Planters of New England, at their first Coming over, did in a Public and a Printed Address, call the Church of England, Their Dear Mother, desiring their Friends therein, To Recommend them unto the Mercies of God, in their Constant Prayers, as a Church now Springing out of their own Bowels: Nor did they think, that it was their Mother who Turned them out of Doors, but some of their Angry Brethren, abusing the Name of their Mother, who so harshly treated them. As for the ROMANIZING Faction in the CHURCH of ENGLAND, Or, that Party, who Resolving (altogether Contrary to the Desire of the most Eminent Persons, by whom the Common-Prayer was made English) that the Reformation should never proceed one •ot further than the First Essay of it, in the former Century, did make certain Unscriptural Canons, whereby all that could ⟨p. 20⟩not Approve, Subscribe, and Practise, a multitude of▪ (by themselves Confessed Purely Humane) Inventions in the Worship of God, were Accursed, and Ips• Facto Excommunicate; and by the Ill obtained Aid of Bitter Laws to back these Canons, did by Fines and Gaols and Innumerable Violences, contrary to the very Magna Charta of the Nation, Ruin Many Thousands of the Soberest People in the Kingdom; and who continually made as many Shibboleths as they could, for the Discovering and the Extinguishing of all Real Godliness, and never gave over Prosecuting, their Tripartite Plot, of Arminianism, and a Conciliation with the Patriarch of the West, and Arbitrary Government in the State, until at last they threw all into the Lamentable Confusions of a Civil War; The Churches of New England say, Come not into their Secret, O my Soul. We dare not be Guilty of the Schism, which we charge upon that, Party in the Church of ENGLAND: