N00620:179
Angelographia, or A discourse concerning the nature and power of the holy angels, and…
Angelographia, or A discourse concerning the nature and power of the holy angels, and the great benefit which the true fearers of God receive by their ministry: delivered in several sermons: : to which is added, a sermon concerning the sin and misery of the fallen angels: also, a disquisition concerning angelical-apparitions. / By Increase Mather, president of Harvard College, in Cambridge, and preacher of the Gospel at Boston, in New-England. ; [Two lines from Hebrews]Angelographia, or A discourse concerning the nature and power of the holy angels, and the great benefit which the true fearers of God receive by their ministry: delivered in several sermons: : to which is added, a sermon concerning the sin and misery of the fallen angels: also, a disquisition concerning angelical-apparitions. / By Increase Mather, praesident of Harvard Colledge, in Cambridge, and preacher of the Gospel at Boston, in New-England. ; [Two lines from Hebrews]
printed by B. Green & J. Allen for Samuel Phillips, 1696
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.
Inference. 4. This informs us of the Evil which is in Sinning against God. We see what an evil ⟨p. 128⟩sin is, that it is the worst of evils, and that which of all evils men have the greatest cause to dread. For it doth provoke God: Therefore it is of all evils the most formidable. It was well replied by one of the Ancients, when the greatest Person in the Empire sent him a threatening message, Go (said he) carry back this answer, that I am afraid of nothing, but to sin against God. Sin is a most destructive evil to the Creature. No eminency or privilege can save sinning Creatures from the strokes or Divine Justice. It brings remediless ruin on those that shall become guilty of it. Angels are eminent ones: If I speak with the tongues of Men and Angels (saith the Apostle) intimating, that Angels were of all Creatures the most excellent and glorious, and yet when they sinned, we see what became of them, of so many of them, as sinned against God. They are reserved under darkness for the Judgement of the great day. Then most certainly there is no eminency in men, that can secure them from the Vengeance of Heaven, if they sin: no eminency of Power. Angels are greater in power and might than men are, yet when they sinned, they must go into Everlasting Chains. It is not any Eminency of Parts and Wisdom, that can save sinful Creatures from the killing strokes of revenging Justice. It was said of the King of Tyre, Thou art full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty: thou hast been in Eden the Garden of God. Ezek. 28.12. For all this he must down to the pit. Wilt thou yet say before him that ⟨p. 129⟩slayeth thee, I am God. But thou shalt be a […] and not God, in the hand of him that slayeth thee. The Angels that sinned before their Fall, […] full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty, and they had been in Eden in the Heaven of God But they are gone down to Hell. Oh▪ th•n what an evil is sin! One sin hath destroyed millions of Angels in one moment: what an Evil is Sin then, do you think? One sin hath b•ought Death upon the whole World of Mankind in one day, so that all mankind must have perished to Eternity, if the Son of God himself had not stepped in to save them.