The parts I speak of are the most renowned countries and kingdoms; once the seats of most glorious and triumphant empires; the theaters of valor and heroical actions; the soils enriched with all earthly felicities; the places where Nature hath produced her wonderful works; where arts and sciences have been invented and perfected; where wisdom, virtue, policy, and civility, have been planted, have flourished; and, lastly, where God himself did place his own commonwealth, gave laws and oracles, inspired his prophets, sent angels to converse with men; above all, where the Son of God descended to become man; where he honored the earth with his beautiful steps, wrought the works of our redemption, triumphed over death, and ascended into glory; which countries, once so glorious and famous for their happy estate, are now, through vice and ingratitude, become the most deplored spectacles of extreme misery; the wild beasts of mankind having broken in upon them, and rooted out all civility, and the pride of a stern and barbarous tyrant possessing the thrones of ancient and just dominion. Who, aiming only at the height of greatness and sensuality, hath in tract of time reduced so great and goodly a part of the world to that lamentable distress and servitude, under which (to the astonishment of the understanding beholders) it now faints and groaneth. Those rich lands at this present remain waste and overgrown with bushes, receptacles of wild beasts, of thieves, and murderers; large territories dispeopled or thinly inhabited; goodly cities made desolate; sumptuous buildings become ruins; glorious temples either subverted or prostituted to impiety; true religion discountenanced and oppressed; all nobility extinguished; no light of learning permitted, nor virtue cherished; violence and rapine insulting over all, and leaving no security except to an abject mind, and unlooked-on poverty; which calamities of theirs, so great and deserved, are to the rest of the world as threatening instructions. For assistance wherein, I have not only related what I saw of their present condition, but, so far as convenience might permit, presented a brief view of the former estates and first antiquities of those peoples and countries; thence to draw a right image of the frailty of man, the mutability of whatever is worldly, and assurance that, as there is nothing unchangeable saving God, so nothing stable but by his grace and protection. THE DESIGN OF THE NEW ENGLAND PLANTATIONS. By the REV. COTTON MATHER.