look agreeably, That such a rich quarter of the World, equal in some regards to all the rest, should never be out of the Devils hands, from the first Inhabitation unto the last Dissolution of it? No sure; why may not the last be the first? and the Sun of Righteousness come to shine brightest, in Climates which it rose latest upon!
I say, Thirdly, That as it fares with Old England, so it will be most likely to fare with New-England. For which cause, by the way, there may be more of the Divine Favour in the present Circumstances of our dependence on England, than we are well aware of. This is very sure, if matters go ill with our Mother, her poor American Daughter here, must feel it; nor could our former Happy Settlement have hindred our sympathy in that Unhappiness. But if matters go Well in the Three Kingdoms; as long as God shall bless the English Nation, with Rulers that shall encourage Piety, Honesty, Industry, in their Subjects, and that shall cast a Benign Aspect upon the Interests of our Glorious Gospel, Abroad as well as at Home; so long, New-England will at least keep its head above water: and so much the more, for our comfortable Settlement in such a Form as we are now cast into. Unless there should be any singular, destroying, Topical Plagues, whereby an offended God should at last make us Rise; But, Alas, O Lord, what other Hive hast thou provided for us!
I say, Fourthly, That the Elder England will certainly and speedily be Visited with the ancient loving kindness of God. When one sees, how strangely the Curse of our Joshua, has fallen upon the Persons and Houses of them that have attempted the Rebuilding of the Old Romish Jericho, which has there been so far demolished, they cannot but say, That the Reformation there, shall not only be maintained, but also pursued, proceeded, perfected; and that God will shortly there have a New Jerusalem. Or, Let a Man in his thoughts run over but the series of amazing Providences towards the English Nation for the last Thirty Years: Let him reflect, how many Plots for the ruine of the Nation, have been strangely discovered? yea, how very unaccountably those very Persons, yea, I may also say, and those very Methods which were intended for the tools of that ruine, have become the instruments or occasions of Deliverances? A man cannot but say upon these Reflections, as the Wife of Manoah once prudently expressed her self, If the Lord were pleased to have Destroyed us, He would not have shew'd us all these things. Indeed, It is not unlikely, that the Enemies of the English Nation, may yet provoke such a Shake unto it, as may perhaps exceed any that has hitherto been undergone: the Lord prevent the Machinations of his Adversaries! But that shake will usher in the most glorious Times that ever arose upon the English Horizon. As for the French Cloud which hangs over England, tho' it be like to Rain showers of Blood upon a Nation, where the Blood of the Blessed Jesus has been too much treated as an Unholy Thing; yet I believe God will shortly scatter it: and my belief is grounded upon a bottom that will bear it. If that overgrown French Leviathan should accomplish any thing like a Conquest of England, what could there be to hinder him from the Universal Empire of the West? But the Visions of the Western World, in the Views both of Daniel and of John, do assure us, that whatever Monarch, shall while the Papacy continues go to swallow up the Ten Kings which received their Power upon the Fall of the Western Empire, he must miscarry in the Attempt. The French Phaetons Epitaph seems written in that, Sure Word of Prophecy.
(Since the making of this Conjecture, there are arriv'd unto us, the News of a Victory obtain'd by the English over the French, which further confirms our Conjecture; and causes us to sing, Pharaohs Chariots, and his Hosts, has the Lord cast down into the Sea; Thy right-hand has dashed in pieces the Enemy!)
Now, In the Salvation of England, the Plantations cannot but Rejoyce, and New-England also will be Glad.
But so much for our Corollaries, I hasten to the main thing designed for your entertainment. And that is,
An Hortatory and Necessary Address, to a Country Now Extraordinarily Alarum'd by the Wrath of the Devil
TIS THIS,
Let us now make a good and a right use of the prodigious descent which the Devil in Great Wrath is at this day making upon our Land. Upon the Death of a Great Man once, an Orator call'd the Town together, crying out, Concurrite Cives, Dilapsa sunt vestra Mœnia! that is, Come together, Neighbours, your Town-Walls are fallen down! But such is the descent of the Devil at this day upon our selves, that I may truly tell you, The Walls of the whole World are broken down! The usual Walls of defence about mankind have such a Gap made in them, that the very Devils are broke in upon us, to seduce the Souls, torment the Bodies, sully the Credits, and consume the Estates of our Neighbours, with Impressions both as real and as furious, as if the Invisible World were becoming Incarnate, on purpose for the vexing of us. And what use ought now to be made of so tremendous a dispensation? We are engaged in a Fast this day; but shall we try to fetch Meat out of the Eater, and make the Lion to afford some Hony for our Souls?
That the Devil is come down unto us with great Wrath, we find, we feel, we now deplore. In many ways, for many years hath the Devil been assaying to Extirpate the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus here. New-England may complain of the Devil, as in Psal. 129.1, 2. Many a time have they afflicted me, from my Youth, may New-England now say; many a time have they afflicted me from my Youth; yet they have not prevailed against me. But now there is a more than ordinary affliction, with which the Devil is Galling of us: and such an one as is indeed Unparallelable. The things confessed by Witches, and the things endured by Others, laid together, amount unto this account of our Affliction. The Devil, Exhibiting himself ordinarily as a small Black man, has decoy'd a fearful knot of proud, froward, ignorant, envious and malicious creatures, to lift themselves in his horrid Service, by entring their Names in a Book by him tendred unto them. These Witches, whereof above a Score have now Confessed, and shown their Deeds, and some are now tormented by the Devils, for Confessing, have met in Hellish Randezvouzes, wherein the Confessors do say, they have had their diabolical Sacraments, imitating the Baptism and the Supper of our Lord. In these hellish meetings, these Monsters have associated themselves to do no less a thing than, To destroy the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ, in these parts of the World; and in order hereunto, First they each of them have their Spectres, or Devils, commission'd by them, & representing of them, to be the Engines of their Malice. By these wicked Spectres, they seize poor people about the Country, with various & bloudy Torments; and of those evidently Preternatural torments there are some have dy'd. They have bewitched some, even so far as to make Self-destroyers: and others are in many Towns here and there languishing under their Evil hands. The people thus afflicted, are miserably scratched and bitten, so that the Marks are most visible to all the World, but the causes utterly invisible; and the same Invisible Furies do most visibly stick Pins into the bodies of the afflicted, and scale them, and hideously distort, and disjoint all their members, besides a thousand other sorts of Plagues beyond these of any natural diseases which they give unto them. Yea, they sometimes drag the poor people out of their chambers, and carry them over Trees and Hills, for divers miles together. A large part of the persons tortured by these Diabolical Spectres, are horribly tempted by them, sometimes with fair promises, and sometimes with hard threatnings, but always with felt miseries, to sign the Devils Laws in a Spectral Book laid before them; which two or three of these poor Sufferers, being by their tiresome sufferings overcome to do, they have immediately been released from all their miseries and they appear'd in Spectre then to
