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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A50176	The wonderful works of God commemorated praises bespoke for the God of heaven in a thanksgiving sermon delivered on Decemb. 19, 1689 : containing reflections upon the excellent things done by the great God ... : to which is added A sermon preached unto a convention of the Massachuset-colony in New-England ... / by Cotton Mather.	Mather, Cotton, 1663-1728.; Mather, Cotton, 1663-1728. A sermon preached to the honourable convention of the governour, council, and representatives of the Massachuset-colony in New-England on May 23, 1689.	1690 (1690)	Wing M1171; ESTC W24924	55,477	128

of the illegal and arbitrary Government set over them by Commission Accordingly upon the eighteenth day of April last past arose as one man siezed upon Sr. E. Ananos the late Governour and other of the evil instruments and have secured them for what Justice Order from your Majesties shall direct Thus that Address Vpon the late Revolutions thus described ensued various debates about the further Steps that were needful to be taken for the service of Their Majesties and this afflicted Countrey Which Debates quickly issued in the Return of our Government into the Hands of our Ancient Magistrates who with the Representatives or Deputies of the several Towns in the Colony made another Address unto Their Majesties bearing date Iune 6. 1689. in which Address there were these Words Finding an Absolute Necessity of Civil Government the People generally manifested their Desires and Importunity once and again That the Governour Deputy Governour and Assistants chosen and sworn in May 1686. according to Charter Court as then formed would assume the Government the said Governour Deputy-Governour and Assistents then Resident in the Colony did Consent to accept the present Care and Government of this people according to the Rules of the Charter for the preservation of the Peace and common safety and the putting forth further Acts of Authority upon Emergencies until by Direction from England there should be an orderly Settlement which we hope will Restore us to the full Exercise thereof as formerly notwithstanding we have for some time been most unrighteously and injuriously deprived of it That Royal Charter being the sole Inducement and Encouragement unto our Fathers and predecessors to come over into this Wilderness and to plant the same at their own Cost and Charge In Answer to this Address His Majesty in a most gracious Letter bearing Date the 12 th of August 1689. unto the Government here uses these Expressions Whereas you give Us to understand that you have taken upon you the present care of the Government until you should receive Our Order therein We do hereby Authorize and Empower you to Continue in Our Name your Care in the Administration thereof and Preservation of the Peace until We shall have taken such Resolutions and given such Directions for the more orderly Settlement of the said Government as shall most conduce to Our Service and the Security and Satisfaction of Our Subjects within that Our Colony It was in the time of our greatest Heats and Straits and at a time appointed for a General Assembly of this great Colony that the ensueing Sermon was expected from me Through the Grace of God the Sermon Then was not altogether unacceptable to some who desired the Publication of it But I gave not my full Consent unto their Desire until now they had an Opportunity with their Renewed Importunity to join it with another Discourse which they have obtained from me and tho' the little Differences which were among us when the Sermon was preached are now s● well Composed yet I flatter my self with an opinion that the things here insisted on will not should not be judg'd Unseasonable I confess it is a very Bold thing for one every way so mean as my self to Address the whole Countrey in such a manner as here I do but Si crimen erit crimen Amoris erit and if the general Dispositions of the year will not excuse a Breach of Order in me I have but one thing more to offer by way of Satisfaction for it There was once a people in the world with whom it was a Custome That when men would Conciliate the Favour of the Ruler they were to present his own Son before him as a Sight which would speak more than any Advocate Instead thereof that I may not want the Favour of my Countrey how blameable soever they may count my freedome with them I shall only present them with my own Father whose cheerful Encounter with an hazardous Voyage unto a strange Land and with innumerable Difficulties and Temptations there for no other Cause than that he might Speak FOR them has at least merited a Pardon for Mee with whom he has for near two years now left both his Church and Family if I have transgressed by taking a Liberty of Speaking TO them at the same time the things which may promote our Enjoyment of the Divine Presence with us Now may Salvation be nigh unto us and Glory dwell in our Land Cotton Mather The Way to PROSPERITY It is the Word of the Eternal GOD in II. Chron. XV. 2. Hear ye me Asa and all Judah and Benjamin the Lord is with you while you are with Him IT is a Remarkable Occasion which has brought these Words to be the Subject of our present Meditations but it was much more a Remarkable Occasion which these Words were first uttered upon We find them in the Sacred Book of Chronicles which Chronicles are not the Civil Records in other parts of the Bible refer'd unto but an Inspired History of things that concerned the Line of Christ and the Church of God for five hundred more than Three Thousand years It seems as an Epitome of the Whole for so t is in Ierom's Language to be written as late as the Last of all the Books in the Old Testament and the Hebrew Bibles give it a place accordingly The Greeks choose to entitle it The Book of things else where passed by because as Lyra notes according to the Rule of our Saviour It gathers Fragments that nothing may be lost and if there were nothing else but the Story which affords our Text unto us to justifie that Appellation it were enough 't is a Story passed by in the Book of Kings but worthy to be had in everlasting Remembrance The ready Pen of Ezra for him we conjecture to be the Scribe of the Holy Spirit here notwithstanding those few Clauses which may be judged to be added by another hand after his Decease I say the Pen of Ezra is here informing us That the people of God had newly been invaded by a vast Army of Cushites but we are yet at a loss who these Cushites were Far more Scholars in the World than there were Souldiers in that Army have hitherto been content with our Translation which renders them Ethiopians here But that learned French-man Bochaert by whose happy industry more than any man's the Treasures in the Bowels of the Scriptures have been delv'd into has with irrefragable Demonstration prov'd That no● Ethiopians but Arabians are the Cushites men●tioned in the Oracles of God These Ara●bians tho they have not been called Sarace● as has been thought from their word Sa●rak that signifies to Steal yet for their F●●racious Inclinations they well deserved suc● an Etymology they were a wild sort 〈◊〉 men that liv'd much upon the Rapin an● Ruin of their Neighbours and particularly a Million of them now designed Ierusalem fo● a prey The blessed God gave His peo●ple a notable victory over

The Wonderful Works of God Commemorated PRAISES Bespoke for the God of Heaven In a Thanksgiving SERMON Delivered on Decemb. 19. 1689. Containing Just REFLECTIONS upon the Excellent Things done by the Great God more Generally in CREATION and REDEMPTION and in the GOVERNMENT of the World But more Particularly in the Remarkable Revolutions of Providence which are every where the matters of present Observation With a POSTSCRIPT giving an Account of some very stupendous Accidents which have lately happened in France BY COTTON MATHER To which is Added a SERMON Preached unto the CONVENTION of the Massachuset-Colony in NEW-ENGLAND With a short Narrative of several Prodigies which New-England hath of late had the Alarms of Heaven in Printed at Boston by S. Green Sold by Ioseph Browning at the corner of the Prison Lane and Benj. Harris at the London Coffee-House 1690 Copy AT THE CONVENTION of the Governour and Council and Representatives of the Colony of the Massachusets Bay IT having pleased the God of Heaven to mitigate His many frowns upon us in the Summer past with a mixture of some very signal Favours and in the midst of wrath so far to remember Mercy That our Indian Enemies have had a check put upon their Designs of Blood and Spoil That others have not s●en their Desires accomplished upon us And that we have such hopes of our God's adding yet more perfection to our Deliverances Inasmuch also as the great God hath of late raised up such a Defence to the Protestant Religion and Interest abroad in the World especially in the happy Accession of Their Majesties our Sovereigns KING William and QUEEN Mary to the Throne It is therefore Ordered that Thursday the nineteenth instant be kept as a Day of THANKSGIVING throughout this Colony And all Servile Labour Labour on said Day is hereby inhibited And the several Ministers and Assemblies are Exhorted to Observe the same by Celebrating the just Praises of the Almighty God Of whose tender Mercies it is that we are not Consumed By Order of the Convention Isaac Addington Secr. Boston Decemb. 3d. 1689 To the Right Worshipful Sir Henry Ashurst Baronet SIR T IS an obscure Pen among the Antipodes of that World in which you dwell which now waits upon you to let you understand That there is an England in America as well as One in Europe which the Name of ASHURST has been no less Dear than Known unto Upon that Expression in the Sacred Scripture Cast the Unprofitable Servant into Outer Darkness there is an Interpreter who imagines that the Regiones Exterae of America are the Tenebrae Exteriores which the unprofitable are there Condemned unto Doubtless The Authors of those Ecclesiastical Impositions and Severities which drove our Predecessors into this American Wilderness esteemed those old Puritans to be a very Unprofitable sort of Creatures and we their Children desire with much Humiliation to Confess and Lament our own Unprofitableness not without our wonder that any Party in our Nation should propound unto themselves any profit by Endeavouring our further Misery We nevertheless flatter our selves with Hopes that as while we sat under the shadows of our Charters we at least made the other parts of the English America to be profitable unto the Crown of our King so the Church of our God in the other Hemil●h●re will not Excommunicate us from their Fellowship and Affection when 't is considered that the Exercise of the Protestant Religion in the purest and fullest Reformation is That very Thing which this considerable Plantation was first built upon He that shall Travel over New-England will find a large Countrey fill'd with Churches which I may without vanity call Golden Candlesticks in this Outer Darkness and which are Illuminated with Able Faithful and Laborious Ministers among whom the person who now Addresses you is no more worthy to be Reckoned than the Seventh which appears not among the Pleiad●s is to be counted One of the Seven Stars These Churches in their Doctrine do profess and in their Worship do practise most intirely the Protestant Religion as our Confession of Faith with our Platform of Church Discipline has made notorious and though they want the Liturgies and Holydays and Ceremonies which were not Conceived before the Man of Sin was Born they do but approach thereby the nearer to that Primitive Christianity which will be our Glory while we continue in it It is in these Churches that we have long seen the Goings of God our King for the Regeneration and Edification of multitudes who after an Arrival to a pitch of Holiness equal to what any part of this Lower World affords have gone to the Spirits of Iust Men made perfect and though a Decay of Piety has accompanied an Inercase of People in the midst of us yet even among Vs of the Third Generation the God of our Fathers hath such a Number of Serious Gracious Fruitful Christians as encourages our Hopes that He still has Reserves of Mercy for us 'T is in these Churches however Degenerate that One may see Discipline managed Heresy subdued Prophaness conquered Communion maintained with a very beautiful subserviency to the Great Ends of the Gospel And if after all the Printed Books not only of our Cotton Shepard Hocker Bulkley Mather Davenport Cobbet Norton Newman Whiting Mitchel and the rest now Asleep of the former Generation but also of our Higgin●on Fitch Morton Wigglesworth Allen Moodey Torrey Wil●ard Baily Stoddard not to mention my own Fathers both English and Latine Composures thro' the Favour of God yet Alive among us we must be judg'd unprofitable to the Church of God abroad yet the prodigious and Atlaean industry of the Reverend Eli●t and of those whom that Venerable Saint yet Lives to see succeeding him in cares for Evangelizing the poor Pagans here must be own'd profitable to those whose Outer Darkness we are sent into But the Right of these Churches to a good Reputation with all them that have any value for the Protestant Religion is not more palpable than the Wrong which has been sometimes Ignorantly and sometimes Maliciously done unto us by them that have baited us for the sake of the Bear-Skins which themselves have put upon us Never was any thing more wicked than the Calumny with Loads whereof our Enemies compelled our Fathers in the Infancy of this Plantation to do as divers of those whom they call The Fathers did of old even To write Apologies nor can any thing be more Slanderous and Romantic than the Accusations that some Ill Men have more Lately traduced wit●al One may see the very Spirit of Persecution revived in them Nevertheless after all the Banter of our Adversaries as I would never desire an Easter Task than to prove That their Majesties have not in all their Dominions more Loyal Subjects than the People of New-England so 't is evident enough That where any Real Miscarriage has procured One our zeal for the Protestant Religion in the power of

it has procured more than Ten of the Complaints that have been made against us And therefore we not only challenge an Interest among the Reformed Churches in whose Comforts we cannot but Rejoice as we have most inquisitively and affectionately mourned in their Sorrows but we also expect the Friendship of all those particular persons who are well affected unto the stones of Zion and take pity on the Dust thereof As 't is a thing too observable to be denyed or concealed That tho' we are a very unworthy people yet the Haters of New-England stil find themselves pushing hard against the Great Stone so I believe none of those Noble Persons who have been sincerely concerned for our Wellfare will ever see cause to Repent of it but Goodness and Mercy shall follow them all their Days Blessed be the God of our Fathers that albeit we are as an Outcast yet it may not be said No man has cared for us There were Three Knights among our first Patentees it calls for our Extreamest Gratitude if there have been more of That or Another Quality willing to be our Patrons And Sir whereas you have been pleased your self to let the World know how much you are desirous to see New-England flourish you will pardon it if One born and bred in that Countrey and a Son of the Colledge there take the Liberty to acquaint you That we are not insensible That you are my Fathers Friend is a thing that Lays me under Obligations but your being New-Englands Friend is a thing which we would All Resent and though the Dedication of these two Little Sermons to your Name does not Take of the best Fruits of the Land as a Present for you yet I humbly ask your Acceptance of them as a part of our Acknowledgments Among the other Curiosities of New-England One is that of a mighty Rock on a perpendicular side whereof by a River which at High Tide covers part of it there are very deeply Engraved no man alive knows How or When about half a score Lines near Ten Foot Long and a foot and half broad filled with strange Characters which would suggest as odd Thoughts about them that were here before us as there are odd Shapes in that Elaborate Monument whereof you shall see the first Line Transcribed here Sir I take leave to add That the English people here will study to have the Kindnesses of their Benefactors not less Durably hut more Intelligibly Recorded with them than what the Indian People have Engraved upon Rocks And therefore it is That you shall now publickly find your Person and Family mentioned in our prayers to the God of Heaven for your Enjoyment of all the Prosperity engaged unto them that Love Ierusalem The Voices that ascend from the Thrones of the Lord Jesus here are asking for you Grace and Glory and every good thing and among them there are my own Wishes That the Son and the Church of God may find you their KNIGHT which is to say in English an hearty Servant and that in the day when such a Word will be esteem'd above ten thousand Worlds you may hear a Well Done from the mouth of our Glorious Judge 'T is with these that I subscribe my self SIR Your most Humble and most Obedient Servant Cotton Mather PRAISES Bespoke for the GOD of Heaven In a Thanksgiving SERMON It is Written in Isai. XII 5 Sing unto the Lord for He hath done Excellent Things This is Known in all the Earth OUr Blessed Saviour being to Preach upon a Text fetcht out of that very Book from whence we have now taken ours began His Holy Sermon with sayings This Day is this Scripture fulfilled in your Ears 〈◊〉 is by an unhappy Encounter of Gods Mercies and your Desires that upon the Reading of the Text now before us I may in like manner close the Book and say This day is this Text fulfilled amongst us Truly t is known abroad that our God has done excellent things and for this cause we are with no less Grounded than Solemn THNKSGIVINGS endeavouring to Sing unto the Lord. Behold a Word of the day in its day here provided for you May our further considering and understanding of the Text but promote our fuller Conformi●y thereunto and more exactly imprint the shapes of this Heavenly Mould upon us As the Noble Prophet Isaiah is in the Books of the new-New-Testament quoted perhaps no less than threescore times thus the Dayes of the New-Testament are those which his Prophecies have their frequent and special References to Among other Employments of this Angelical and Evangelical Pen one was the preparing of Sacred Songs for the use of the Church in the circumstances which there had been predictions of and so besides the Psalms which common conjectures have ascribed unto this Prophet the composing of the forty-sixth particularly which in imitat●on of the great Luther we may at this day make the Anodyne of our cares we have two inspired Songs in this Chapter laid before us in the first of the Songs the Confessors of God endeavour themselves to celebrate the praises of that Eternal one in the next they endeavour to excite and engage others unto a consort with them in this glorious Exercise And here we have the Text which we are now to descant upon In that Day ye shall say But What day is That day we must be beholden unto the foregoing Chapter for an Answer thereunto We there find that there will a Day come when the Lord will set His Hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his People which will be when the Tribes of lost Israel are converted unto the Faith of the Lord Jesus when according to the Language of the New-Testament All Israel shall be saved There will a Day come when the Root of Iesse shall stand for an Ensign for the People which will be at the second coming of our Lord when according to the phrase taken by our Saviour from this very place the sign of the Son of man shall appear There will a Day come when the Lord shall with the Breath of His Lips slay the wicked which will be when Antichrist shall perish by the fiery approach of the Lord Jesus to take vengeance on His wickedest Enemy when according to the phrase taken by the Apostle also from this very place The Lord shall consume that wicked one with the breath of his mouth and shall destroy him with the brightnesr of his coming T is that day which the Song now before us is peculiarly calculated for But certainly we that are only getting into the Dawnings of that day are not excluded from all medling with it no it is written for our Admonition In the Words to be now Handled we have two Things First The Doings of God are here mentioned It is said He hath done Excellent Things or as the Original imports Great Things and High Things or as it may likewise be rendred Magnificent and Illustr●ous Things