parents, only for the personal benefit of their provision, and other helps; but especially that hereby they may be teachable and obedient to those instructions of their parents by which they may become blessings to their generations, and may conjunctly make up wise and holy societies, families, churches and commonwealths. For these ends it is, that God hath bound you, as to reverence your masters, tutors and pastors, so especially both to reverence and love your parents, that you may be the more capable of their necessary instruction and advice.

8. Yea, the great strictness of God, in condemning polygamy, adultery and fornication, seemeth to be especially for the securing of the good education of children, for their souls and for the public good. For it is notorious, that confusion in marriages and generation would many ways tend to the depraving of human education, while mothers had not the necessary encouragement to perform their part. The younger would be awhile esteemed, and afterwards be cast off and made most miserable, and families would be like wandering beggars, or like exposed orphans; disorder and confusion would deprive children of much of their necessary helps, and barbarousness and brutishness would corrupt mankind.

By all this it is most evident, that the great means of the welfare of the world must be the faithful and holy endeavours of parents, and the willing teachableness and obedience of children, that they may escape the snares of folly and fleshly lusts, and may betimes get that wisdom and love of goodness which make them fit to be blessings to the places where they live.

CHAP. IV.

How the case standeth with our Youth in matter of fact.

1. THROUGH the great mercy of God, many families are sacred nurseries for the church and the kingdom; and many parents have great comfort in the grace of God appearing in their children. From their early childhood many are of humble, obedient dispositions, and have a love to knowledge, and a love to the Word of God and to those that are good

and virtuous persons. They have inward convictions of the evil of sin, and a fear of sinning, and a great dislike of wicked persons, and a great love and reverend obedience to their parents; and when they grow up, they diligently learn in private and in public: they increase in their love to the Scriptures and good books, and to godly teachers and godly company; and God saveth them from temptations, worldly deceits, and fleshly lusts; and they live to God, are blessings to the land, the joy of their friends, and exemplary and useful to those with whom they converse.

2. But all, even religious parents, have not the like blessing in their children. (1.) Some of them, though religious otherwise, are lamentably careless of the duty which at baptism they promised to perform in the education of their children, and do but superficially and formally instruct them, are too faulty as to the example which they should give them, and seem to think that God must bless them because they are theirs, and because they are baptized, while they neglect their promised endeavours. (2.) And some children when they grow up, and are bound to resist temptations, and to use God's appointed means for their own good, do wilfully resist God's grace, and run into temptations and neglect, wretchedly betray themselves, and forfeit the mercies which they needed.

3. In all my observation, God hath most blessed the children of those parents who have educated them as followeth (1.) Those that have been particularly sensible what they promised for them in the baptismal vow, and made conscience of performing it. (2.) Those that have had more care of their souls than of their outward wealth. (3.) Those that have been most careful to teach them the depravity of corrupted nature by original sin, and to humble them and teach them the need of a Saviour, and of his renewing as well as his pardoning grace, and to tell them about the work of the Spirit of sanctification, and teach them above all to look to the inward state of their souls. (4.) Those that have most seriously reminded them of death, judgment, and the life to come. (5.) Those that have always spoken of God with the greatest reverence, affection and delight. (6.) Those that have most wisely laboured to make all the knowledge and practice of religion pleasant unto them, by the suitableness of doctrines and duties to their capacity. (7.) Those that

have most disgraced sin to them, especially base and fleshly pleasures. (8.) Those that have kept them from the baits of sensuality, not gratifying their appetites in meats and drink, to bring them to an unruly habit; but used them to a habit of temperance, and neglect of appetite. (9.) Those that have most disgraced worldliness and pride to them, used them to low things in apparel and possession, told them how the proud are hateful to God, set before them the example of a crucified Christ, and opened to them the doctrine of mortification, and self-denial, and the great necessity of true humility. (10.) Those have been most watchful to know their children's particular inclinations and temptations, and to apply answerable remedies, and not carelessly leave them to themselves. (11.) Those that have been most careful to keep them from ill company, especially, of wicked youths, of their own growth and neighbourhood,-and of tempting women. (12.) Those that have most wisely used them to the meetest public teachers, and have helped them to remember and understand what they hear, especially the fundamental truths in the catechism. (13.) Those that have most wisely engaged them into the familiarity and frequent converse of some suitable, godly, exemplary companions. (14.) Those that have most conscionably spent the Lord'sdays in public and in their families. (15.) Those that have done all this, as with reverend gravity, so especially with tender endearing love to their children; convincing them that it is all done for their own good; and that do not by imprudent weaknesses, ignorance, passions, or scandal, frustrate their own endeavours. (16.) Those that use not their children as mere patients, only to hear what their parents say; but to engage them to constant endeavours of their own, for their own good; especially in the reading of Scripture, and the most suitable books, and meditating on them, and daily personal prayer to God. (17.) Lastly, those that pray most heartily and believingly for God's grace and his blessing on their endeavours.-Such men's children are usually blessed.

4. But it is no wonder, where such means are neglected, (much more when parents are ungodly, fleshly, worldly persons, and perhaps enemies to a holy life,) if the children of such are ignorant, deluded, ungodly, and drowned in fleshly Insts. And alas! it is the multitude of such, and their sad conditions, which is the occasion of my writing this Epistle.

5. (1.) We see to our grief, that many children are of a stupid and unteachable disposition, and almost incapable of instruction, who yet can as quickly learn to talk of common matters as other persons, and can as easily learn a trade, or how to do any ordinary business. And though some inconsiderate persons overlook the causality of the more immediate parents' sins, in such judgments on their children, as if it were only Adam's sin that hurt them, I have elsewhere proved, that this is their great and dangerous mistake. As David's child died for the father's sin, the children of gluttons, drunkards, fornicators, oft contract such bodily distempers as greatly tend to stupify or further vitiate the mind. And their souls may have sad additions to the common human depravity.

(2.) Accordingly many children have more violent passions, and carnal desires, than others, which run them into wicked ways impetuously, as if they were almost brutes that had no reason or power to resist. And all words and corrections are to them of little force, but they are as blocks, that, when you have said and done what you can, go away as if they had not heard you.

(3.) And some have cross and crooked natures, addicted to that which is naught, and the more, by how much the more you contradict them: Froward and obstinate, as if it, were a desirable victory to them to overcome their parents, and escape all that would make them wise and good : dogged, sour, proud, self-willed, and utterly disobedient.

(4.) And too many have so great an enmity and averseness to all that is holy, spiritual and heavenly, that they are weary to hear you talk of it; and you persuade them to learn, to read, to pray, to meditate or consider, as you persuade a sick man to the meat which he doth loathe, or a man to dwell with those that he hateth. They have no appetite to such things, no pleasure in them; when you have said all of God, and Christ, and glory, they believe it not, or they savour it not: they are things above their reach and love, yea, things against their carnal minds. You tire them worse than if you talked in a strange language to them,such enmity is in the heart of corrupted man to God and Heaven, till the Grace of the Great Reconciler overcome it by a new Life, and Light, and Love.

(5.) And when custom is added to all these vicious dis

positions, alas, what slaves and drudges of Satan doth it make them! For instance,

(1.) Some are so corrupted with the love of sport, that gaming or stage-plays, or one such foolery or another, becometh so pleasant to them, that they can understand or believe nothing that is said against it by God or man; their diseased fantasy hath so conquered reason, that they cannot restrain themselves; but in their callings and in religious exercises they are weary, and long to be at their sports, and must be gone; neither God, nor Holiness, nor the joys of heaven are half so sweet to their thoughts as these are. For they have that mark of misery,-(2 Tim. iii. 4.) "They are lovers of pleasure, more than lovers of God."

The same I say of sinful mirth, and the company which doth cherish it. Little do they believe Solomon: (Eccles. vii. 2-4.) "It is better to go to the House of Mourning, than to go to the House of Feasting: for that is the end of all men, and the living will lay it to his heart. Sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better. The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth. It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise, than for a man to hear the song of fools: for as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of fools."

It is true, that mirth is very desirable to nature: and God is not against it, but much more for it than sinners will believe. But it is a rational mirth which beseemeth a rational creature, and such as he can justify, and as will make him better, and tends to felicity and everlasting mirth; and not the causeless mirth of madmen, who set their house on fire and then laugh and sing over it; nor like the mirth of a drunken man, whose shame exposeth him to pity or derision; nor any such mirth as leadeth a man from God to sin, and keepeth him from the way of manlike and everlasting joy, and prepareth for the greatest sorrows.

(2.) There are some so enslaved to their appetites, that their reason hath no power to rule them; but, like brutes, they must needs have what the belly and throat desire. And if they be the children of the rich, (who have always full and pleasant food,) constant fleshpleasing or true gluttony is taken for no sin: and, like swine, they do but live to eat, whereas they should but eat to live, and cheerfully serve God.