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and join themselves with Gog- and Magog- ? We have heard lately divers ways , that our people there have no hope of the conversion of the natives . And the very week after I received your Jast letter , I saw a letter written from New England , discoursing of an impossibility of subsisting there ;
and seems to prefer the confession of God's truth in any condition here in Old England , rather than run over to enjoy their liberty there ; yea ^ and that the gospel is like to be more dear in New England than in Old ; and lastlv , unless they be exceeding
careful , and God wonderfully merciful , they are like to lose that life and zeal for God and his truth in New England which they enjoyed in O 4 d ; as whereof they have already woeful experience , and many there feel it to their smart . "—P . 799 .
Mr . Mede ' s A nswer to Dr . Twisse . " Christ ' s College ^ Maroh 23 , 1634-5 . " Concerning our plantations in the American world , 1 wish them as well as any body ; though I differ from them far , both in other things and in the grounds they go upon .
u And though there be hut little hope of the general conversion of those natives , in any considerable part of that continent , yet I suppose it may be a work pleasing to Almighty God and our blessed Saviour , to affront the devil with the sound of the
gospel and cross of Christ , in those places where he had thought to have reigned securely and out of the din thereof ; and though we make no Christians there , yet to bring some thither to disturb and vex him , where he reigned without check .
" For that I may reveal my conceit further , though perhaps I cannot prove it , yet I think thus : " That those countries were first inhabited since our Saviour and his apostles ' times , and not before ; yea , perhaps , some ages after , there being no signs or footsteps found amongst them , or any monuments of older habitation , as there is with
us . " That the devil , being impatient of the sound of the g'ospel and cross of Christ in every part of this Old World , so that he could in no place be quiet for it , and foreseeing that he was like at length to lose all here , bethought himself to provide him ° « a seed over which he might reign securel y , and in a place ubi nee Pelopidarum fdcta neque nomen audiret .
That accordingly he drew a colony ° ut of some of those barbarous nations « welling upon the northern ocean , ( whither the sound of Christ had not yet come , ) and promising them , by some oracle , to shew them a country far better than their own , ( which he might soon do , ) pleasant , large , where never man yet inhabited , he conducted them over those desart lands
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and islands ( which are many in that sea , ) by the way of the North into America ; which none would ever have gone , had they not first been assured there was a passage that J svay into a more desirable country j namely , as when the world apostatized from the worship of the true God ,
God called Abraham out of Chaldee into the land of Canaan , of him to raise him a seed to preserve a light unto his name ; so the devil , when he saw the world apostatizing from him , laid the foundations of a new kingdom , by deducting this colony from the North into America , where since they have increased to an innumerable multitude . And where did the devil ever
reign more absolutely and without controul since mankind fell first under his clutches ? And here it is to be noted that the story of the Mexican kingdom ( which was not founded above four hundred years before ours came thither ) , relates out of their own memorials and traditions that they came to that place from the North , whence their god Vitzliliputzli led them , going * in an
ark before them : and after divers years ' travel , and many stations ( like enough after some generations ) , they came to the place which the sign he had given them at their first setting forth pointed out , where they were to finish their travels , build themselves a city , and their god a temple , which is the place where Mexico was built . Now if the devil were God * s
ape 111 this , why might he not be so likewise in bringing the first colony of men into that world out of ours ; namel y ^ by oracle , as God did Abraham out of Chaldee , whereto I before resembled it ? u But see the hand of Divine Providence . When the offspring of these runagates frdtn
the sound of Christ ' s Gospel had now replenished that other world , and began to flourish in those two kingdoms of Peru and Mexico , Christ our Lord sends his mastives the Spaniards to hunt them out and worry them : which they did in so hideous a manner as the like thereunto
scarce ever was done since the sons of Noah came out of the ark . What an affront to the devil was this , where he had thought to have reigned securely , and been for ever concealed from the knowledge of the followers of Christ !
" Yet the devil perhaps » s less grieved for the loss of his servants by the destroying of them , than he would be to lose them by the saving of them ; by which latter way I doubt the Spaniards have despoiled him but of a few . What then if Christ oui *
Lord will give him a second affront with better Christians , which may be more grievous to him than the former ? And if Christ shall set him up a light in this manner , dazzle and torment the devil at his own home , I will hope they shall not so far degenerate ( not all of them ) a&
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Correspondence between Mr * Mede and Dr . Twisse . 7 © Q
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1817, page 709, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2471/page/13/
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