Qu. 2. Whether it be likely, if the time of youth, which is the moulding age, be neglected, they will be wrought upon to any good afterwards? Husbandmen, let me put a sensible case to you: Do you not see, in your very horses, that whilst they are young, you can bring them to any way; but if once they have got a false stroke, and by long custom it be grown natural to them, then there is no breaking them of it: yea, you see it in your very orchards; you may bring a tender twig to grow in what form you please, but when it is grown to a sturdy limb, there is no bending it afterwards to any other form than what it naturally took. Thus it is with children. Prov. xxii. 6. "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." Qu. 3. Whether, if you neglect to instruct them in the way of the Lord, Satan, and their own natural corrup tions will not instruct them in the way to hell? Consider this, ye careless parents; if you will not teach your children, the devil will teach them; if you shew them not how to pray, he will shew them how to curse and swear, and take the name of the Lord in vain : If you grudge time and pains about their souls, the devil doth Oh! it is a sad consideration, that so many child not. ren should be put to school to the devil. Qu. 4. What comfort are you like to have from them when they are old, if you bring them not up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, when they are young? Many parents have lived to reap, in their old age, the fruit of their own folly and carelessness, in the loose and vain education of their children. By Lycurgus' law, no parent was to be relieved by his children in age, if he gave them not good education in their youth; and it is a law at this day among the Switzers, that if any child be condemned to die for a capital offence, the parents of that child are to be his executioners; these laws were made to provoke parents to look better to their charge. Believe this as an undoubted truth, that that child which becomes, through thy default, an instrument to dishonor God, shall prove, sooner or later, a son or daughter of sorrow to thee. REFLECTIONS. L 1. God hath found out my sin this day. This hath been my practice ever since I had a faA reflection for mily committed to my charge; I have careless parents. spent more time and pains about the bodies of my beasts, than the souls of my children :-Beast that I am for so doing! little ve I considered the preciousness of my own or their immortal souls. How careful have I been to provide fodder to preserve my cattle in the winter, whilst I leave my own and their souls to perish through eternity, and make no provision for them? Surely my children will one day curse the time that ever they were born unto such a cruel father, or of such a merciless mother. Should I bring home the plague into my family, and live to see all my poor children lie dead by the walls; if I had not the heart of a tyger, such a sight would melt my heart; and yet the death of their souls, by the sin which I propagated to them, affects me not. Ah! that I could say, I had done as much for them, as I have done for a beast that perisheth! 2. But, unhappy wretch that I am! God cast a better lot for me; I am the offspring of reli gious and tender parents, who have A reflection for the always deeply concerned themselves disobedient child of in the everlasting state of my soul; a gracious parent. many prayers and tears have they poured out to God for me, both in my hearing, as well as in secret; many holy and wholesome counsels have they, from time to time, dropt upon me; many precious examples have they set in their own practice before me; many a time, when I have sinned against the Lord, have they stood over me, with a rod in their hands, and tears in their eyes, using all means to reclaim me; but, like an ungracions wretch, I have slighted all their counsel, grieved their hearts, and imbittered their lives by my sinful courses. Ah, my soul! thou art a degenerate plant; better will it be with the offspring of infidels than with thee, if repentance prevent not: Now I live in one family with them, but shortly I shall be separated from them, as far as hell is from heaven; they now tenderly pity my misery, but then they shall approve and applaud the righteous sentence of Christ upon me; so little privilege shall I then have from my relation to them, that they shall be produced as witnesses against me, and all their rejected counsels, reproofs and examples charged home upon me, as the aggravations of my wickedness; and better it will be, when it shall come to that, that I had been brought forth by a beast, than sprung from the loins of such pa rents. CHAPTER II. UPON THE HARD LABOR AND CRUEL USAGE OF BEASTS. When under loads your beasts do groan, think then OBSERVATION. THOUGH SOMе men be excessively careful and tender over their beasts, as was noted in the former chapter; yet others are cruel and merciless towards them, not regarding how they ride or burden them. How often have I seen them fainting under their loads, wrought off their legs, and turned out with galled backs, into the fields or highways to shift for a little grass; many times have I heard and pitied them, groaning under unreasonable burdens, and beaten on by merciless drivers, till at last, by such cruel usage, they have been destroyed, and then cast into a ditch for dogs' meat. APPLICATION. Such sights as these should make men thankful for the mercy of their creation, and bless their bountiful Creator, that they were not made such creatures themselves. Some beasts are made ad esum, only for food, being no otherwise useful to man, as swine, &c. These are only fed for slaughter; we kill and eat them, and regard not their cries and strugglings when the knife is thrust to their very hearts! others are only ad usum, for service, whilst living, but unprofitable when dead, as horses; these we make to drudge and toil for us from day to day, but kill them not; others are both ad esum et usum, for food when dead, and service whilst alive, as the ox; these we make to plough our fields, draw our carriages, and afterwards prepare them for the slaughter. But man was made for nobler ends, created lord of the lower world; not to serve, but to be served by other creatures; a mercy able to melt the hardest heart into thankfulness. I remember * Luther pressing men to be thankful that they are not brought into the lowest condition of creatures, and to bless God that they can see any creature below themselves, gives us a famous instance in the following story: Two cardinals, saith he, riding in a great deal of pomp to the council of Constance, by the way heard a man in the fields, weeping and wailing bitterly; they rode to him, and asked him what he ailed? Perceiving his eye intently fixed upon an ugly toad, he told them that his heart melted with the consideration of this mercy, that God had not made him such a deformed and loathsome creature, though he were formed out of the same clay with it: Hoc est quod amare fleo, said be, this is that which makes me weep bitterly. Whereupon one of the cardinals cries out, well, said the Father, the unlearned will rise and take heaven, when we with all our learning shall be thrust into hell. That which melteth the heart of this poor man, should melt every heart when we behold the misery to which these poor creatures are subjected. And this will appear a mercy of no slight consideration, if we but draw a comparison betwixt ourselves and these irrational creatures, in these three particulars. 1. Though they and we were made of the same mould and clay, yet how much better hath God dealt with us, even as to the outward man? The structure of our bo * Luther in 3d Precept. |