No "rose-pink or dirty-drab views of humanity" were theirs;
all was inky-black. And it is impossible to express the gloom and the
depression of spirit which fall on one now, after these centuries of
prosperous and cheerful years, when one considers thoughtfully the deep and
despairing agony of mind endured by these good, brave, steadfast, godly
Puritan ministers. Read, for instance, the sentences from the diary of the
Rev. John Baily, or of Nathaniel Mather, as given by Cotton Mather in his
"Magnalia." Mather says that poor, sad, heart-sick Baily was filled with
"desponding jealousies," "disconsolate uneasinesses," gloomy fears, and
thinks the words from his diary "may be profitable to some discouraged
minds." Profitable! Ah, no; far from it! The overwhelming blackness
of despair, the woful doubts and fears about destruction and utter
annihilation which he felt so deeply and so continually, fall in a heavy,
impenetrable cloud upon us as we read, until we feel that we too are in the
"Suburbs of hell" and are "eternally damned."
But in succeeding years they were not always gloomy and not always staid,
as we know from the stories of the cheerful parties at ordination-times;
and I doubt not the reverend Assembly of Elders at Cambridge enjoyed to the
full degree the twelve gallons of sack and six gallons of white wine sent
to them by the Court as a testimony of deep respect.
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