N01732:35
Five sermons on several subjects. I. A birth-day sermon, preached on the day when…
Five sermons on several subjects. I. A birth-day sermon, preached on the day when the author attained to the eightieth year of his age. II. A dying testimony to the sovereign grace of God in the salvation of his elect, containing three sermons. III. Believers encouraged to pray from the consideration of Christs interceding for them, and with them. / By Increase Mather, D.D ; [Six lines of quotations]
Boston: printed by B. Green for Daniel Henchman, 1719
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.
2. Men are born of Sinful Parents▪ Their next and immediate Parents convey a Corrupt Nature to them: We […] in natural respects it is so; there […] diseases that are Hereditary, that go from Father to Son, from one Generation to another, diseases that run in the blood. Truly Original Sin is such a disease, it runs in a blood throughout the whol• race of Man-kind. It is like the Leprosy in the Family of Gehazi, 2 King.5.27▪ The Leprosy of Naaman the Syrian sh••• cleave unto thee, and unto thy seed […] ever. It is so here, Original Sin is Leprosy, and it cleaves to the Children of Men from one Generation to another it cleaves to them for ever; qualities […] the Nature are Propagated. It is true Personal qualities are not always Propagated, but qualities of the Nature ar• Thence it is that the Children of godly Men, are as much subject to Original Sin as the Children of other Men, because Grace is a Personal Property which is not Propagated, but Original Sin is property of Nature, thence does continue to be Propagated. We see this […] Davids confession, Psal.•1.•. I was shape ⟨p. 15⟩in iniquity and in sin did my Mother conceive me. Yet Davids Mother was a gracious holy Woman. In one of the Psalms he takes notice of it; I am the Son of thy Handmaid: As for his Father Jesse, he doubtless was a very holy Man. The Jews in their Writings when they speak of Jesse Davids Father, Call him Jesse the Righteous; they speak Hyperbolically concerning him, That when the Angel of death came to him, he could not find any thing in him for which to take his life from him, but remembered Original Sin, and so killed him. Certain it is, Jesse was a holy Man, for he was one of the holy line; that is, One from whom our Saviour Christ was lineally descended, & they were all of them holy Persons, but tho' Jesse Davids Father was a holy Man, and his Mother a holy Woman, yet he confesses that he was shapen in iniquity, and conceived in Sin. All Creatures the evil qualities of their Nature are Propagated with them. A Wolfe, his Wolvish nature is Propagated to thse that proceed from him: Wolfe tho' he never saw any one destroy a Sheep, he does it naturally. So Serpents