“And, Oh! that the Drinking Houses in the Town, might once come under a laudable Regulation. The Town has an Enormous Number of them! Will the Haunters of those Houses hear the Counsels of Heaven? For you that are the Town Dwellers, to be oft, or long, in your Visits of the Ordinary, ’twill certainly Expose you to Mischiefs more than ordinary. I have seen certain Taverns where the Pictures of horrible Devourers[9] were hang’d out for the signs; and thought I, ’twere well if such Signs were not sometimes too Significant! Alas, men have their estates Devoured, their names Devoured, their Hours Devoured, and their very soul Devoured, when they are so besotted, that they are not in their Element, except they be in Tippling at Such Houses. When once a man is Bewitched with the Ordinary, what usually becomes of him? He is a gone man. And when he comes to Dy, he’l cry out, as many have done, Ale Houses are Hell Houses! Ale Houses are Hell Houses! Ale Houses are Hell Houses!” ... “There was an Inn at Bethlehem, where the Lord Jesus Christ was to be met withal. Can Boston boast of many such? Alas, Too ordinarily it may be said, There is no Room for Him in the Inn! My Friends, Let me beg it of you: Banish the unfruitful works of Darkness, from your Houses, and then the Sun of Righteousness will shine upon them. Don’t countenance Drunkenness, Revelling and Mispending of precious Time in your Houses. Let none have the snares of Death Laid for them in your Houses.”
The preacher goes on in two or three further divisions with his declamation against evil and sins, and his conjurations for better things, in faith, hopes and works, intimating all the evils that exist in Boston, and warning the people of the danger of them.
The second sermon is a piece of similar declamation, about what the preacher calls Household Religion, “at Boston Lecture, 26d. 7m. 1695.” A short extract will give a sample of this discourse.
“First, I suppose, we are all sensible, That for us to Loose our Houses by any Disaster whatsoever, would be a very terrible Calamity: Oh! it would be a Judgment of God, wherein the Anger of God, would be seen written with fiery characters. If by an accident, or by an enemy, our House be laid in desolation, every Roar of the Raging Flames, every crack of the Tumbling Timbers, every Downfall of the Undermined walls, and every jingle of the Bells then tolling the Funeral of those Houses, would loudly utter the voice in Deut., A Fire is Kindled in the Anger of God.”
This discourse is very severe upon all “Houses where God is not served,” and defines them as gaming-houses, drinking-houses, houses where troops and harlots assemble. “If the Worshipful Justices, and the Constables, and the Tythingmen, would Invigorate their zeal, to Rout the Villanous Haunts of those Houses, the whole Town would be vastly the Safer for it.”
All that can be said of these curious discourses is that they are a strange medley of declamation, fanaticism, and exhortation, not lacking in thought perhaps, or devoid of sense, but rather insinuating than direct and sensible. The author does not print his name, though they purport to be Boston Lectures, one delivered in 1695 and the other in 1698: it is understood, however, that they were by the Rev. Cotton Mather.
X.
REMARKABLE PROCLAMATIONS.