marrying, and your parents will consent to none but one of a false religion, or one that is utterly unfit for you; in such a case they forfeit their authority in that point, which is given them for your edification, and not for your destruction; and then you should advise with other friends that are more wise and faithful: but if you suffer your fond affections to contradict your parents' wills, and pretend a necessity (that you cannot change your affections) as if your folly were uncurable: this is but to enter sinfully into that state of life, which should have been sanctified to God, that he might have blessed it to you. Direct. XI. If your parents be in want, it is your duty to relieve them according to your ability; yea, and wholly to maintain them, if there be need.' For it is not possible by all that you can do, that ever you can be on even terms with them; or ever requite them for what you have received of them. It is base inhumanity, when parents come to poverty, for children to put them off with some short allowance, and to make them live almost like their servants, when you have riches and plenty for yourselves. Your parents should still be maintained by you as your superiors, and not as your inferiors. See that they fare as well as yourselves, yea, though you got not your riches by their means, yet even for your being, you are their debtors for more than that. Direct. XII. Imitate your parents in all that is good, both when they are living, and when they are dead.' If they were lovers of God, and of his Word and service, and of those that fear him, let their example provoke you, and let the love that you have to them, engage you in this imitation. A wicked child of godly parents is one of the most miserable wretches in the world. With what horror do I look on such a person! How near is such a wretch to hell! When father or mother were eminent for godliness, and daily instructed them in the matters of their salvation, and prayed with them, and warned them, and prayed for them, and after all this the children shall prove covetous, or drunkards, or whoremongers, or profane, and enemies to the servants of God, and deride or neglect the way of their religious parents, it would make one tremble to look such wretches in the face. For though yet there is some hope of them, alas, it is so little, that they are next to desperate; when they are hardened under the most excellent means, and the light hath blinded them, and their acquaintance with the ways of God hath but turned their hearts more against them, what means is left to do good to such resisters of the grace of God as these? The likeliest is some heavy, dreadful judgment. O what a woeful day will it be to them, when all the prayers, and tears, and teachings, and good examples of their religious parents shall witness against them! How will they be confounded before the Lord! And how sad a thought is it to the heart of holy, diligent parents, to think that all their prayers and pains must witness against their graceless children, and sink them deeper into hell! And yet alas, how many such woeful spectacles are there before our eyes! and how deeply doth the church of God suffer by the malice and wickedness of the children of those parents that taught them better, and walked before them in a holy, exemplary life! But if parents be ignorant, superstitious, idolatrous, popish, or profane, their children are forward enough to imitate them. They can say, Our forefathers were of this mind; and we hope they are saved, and we will rather imitate them, than such innovating reformers as you. As they said to Jeremy, "As for the word that thou hast spoken to us in the name of the Lord, we will not hearken to thee. But we will-burn incense to the queen of heaven-as we have done, we and our fathers, our kings, and our princes in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem; for then we had plenty of victuals, and were well, and saw no evil: but since we left off to burn incense to the queen of heaven, we have wanted all things, and have been consumed by the sword and by the famined." Thus they walk "after the imagination of their hearts, and after Baalim (the false worship) which their fathers taught them." "And they forget God's name as their fathers did forget it." and their fathers have transgressed to this day." Yea, "They harden their necks, and do worse than their fathers." Thus in error and sin they can imitate their forefathers, when they should rather remember, that it cost Christ his blood 66 to redeem men from their vain conver - "They f Jer. xxiii. 27. sation received by tradition from their fathers." And they should penitently confess, as Dan. ix. 8. “O Lord, to us belongeth confusion of face, to our kings, to our princes, and to our fathers, because we have sinned against thee,” Verse 16. And as Psal. evi. 6. "We have sinned with our fathers, &c." Saith God: "Behold your fathers have forsaken me--and have not kept my law; and ye have done worse than your fathers: therefore I will cast you outi, &c." "Have ye forgotten the wickedness of your fathers, and the wickedness of the kings of Judah, and your own wickedness? They are not humbled even unto this day.” "Be not as your fathers, to whom the former prophets have cried, saying, Turn ye now from your evil ways, but they did not hear1." "Even from the days of your fathers ye are gone away from mine ordinances, and have not kept them. Return unto me, and I will return unto you"." Walk ye not in the statutes of your fathers "." "Follow not your fathers in their sin and error, but follow them where they follow Christ". 66 CHAPTER XII. The special Duties of Children and Youth towards God. THOUGH I put your duty to your parents first, because it is first learned, yet your duty to God immediately is your greatest and most necessary duty learn these following precepts well. Direct. 1. Learn to understand the covenant and vow which in your baptism you made with God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, your Creator, Redeemer, and Regenerator: and when you well understand it, renew that covenant with God in your own persons, and absolutely deliver up yourselves to God, as your Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier, your Owner, your Ruler, and your Father and felicity.' Baptism is not an idle ceremony, but the solemn entering into covenant with God, in which you receive the i Jer. xvi. 11-13. k Jer. xliv. 9, 10. "Ezek. xx. 18. So Ver. 27.30. 36. 1 Zech. i. 4. /greatest mercies, and bind yourselves to the greatest duties. It is but entering into that way which you must walk in all your lives, and avowing that to God which you must be still performing. And though your parents had authority to promise for you, it is you that must perform it; for it was you that they obliged. If you ask by what authority they obliged you in covenant to God, I answer, by the authority which God had given them in nature, and in Scripture; as they oblige you to be subjects of the king, or as they enter your names into any covenant, by lease or other contract which is for your benefit; and they do it for good, that you may have part in the blessings of the covenant: and if you grudge at it, and refuse your own consent when you come to age, you lose the benefits. If you think they did you wrong, you may be out of covenant when you will, if you will renounce the kingdom of heaven. But it is much wiser to be thankful to God, that your parents were the means of so great a blessing to you, and to do that again more expressly by yourselves which they did for you; and openly with thankfulness to own the covenant in which you are engaged, and live in the performance and in the comforts of it all your days. Direct. 11. Remember that you are entering into the way to everlasting life, and not into a place of happiness or continuance. Presently therefore set your hearts on heaven, and make it the design of all your lives, to live in heaven with Christ for ever.' O happy you, if God betimes will throughly teach you, to know what it is that must make you happy; and if at your first setting out, your end be right, and your faces be heavenward! Remember that as soon as you begin to live, you are hasting towards the end of your lives; even as a candle as soon as it beginneth to burn, and the hour-glass as soon as it is turned, is wasting, and hasting to its end: so as soon as you begin to live, your lives are in a consumption, and posting towards your final hour. As a runner, as soon as he beginneth his race, is hasting to the end of it; so are your lives even in your youngest time. It is another kind of life that you must live for ever, than this trifling, pitiful, fleshly life. Prepare therefore speedily for that which God sent you hither to prepare for. O happy you, if you begin betime, and go on with cheerful resolution to the end! It is blessed wisdom to be wise betime, and to know the worth of time in childhood, before any of it be wasted and lost upon the fooleries of the world. Then you may grow wise indeed, and be treasuring up understanding, and growing up in sweet acquaintance with the Lord, when others are going backwards, and daily making work for sad repentance or final desperation. "Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, (of all things here below) I have no pleasure in them." Direct. 111. Remember that you have corrupted natures to be cured, and that Christ is the physician that must cure them, and the Spirit of Christ must dwell within you, and make you holy, and give you a new heart and nature, which shall love God and heaven above all the honour and pleasures of the world: rest not therefore till you find that you are born anew, and that the Holy Ghost hath made you holy, and quickened your hearts with the love of God, and of your dear Redeemera. The old nature loveth the things of this world, and the pleasures of this flesh; but the new nature loveth the Lord that made you, and redeemed and renewed you, and the endless joys of the world to come, and that holy life which is the way thereto. Direct. IV. Take heed of loving the pleasures of the flesh, in overmuch eating, or drinking, or play.' Set not your hearts upon your belly or your sport; let your meat, and sleep, and play be moderate. Meddle not with cards or dice, or any bewitching or riotous sports: play not for money, lest it stir up covetous desires, and tempt you to be over-eager in it, and to lie, and wrangle, and fall out with others. Use neither food or sports which are not for your health; a greedy appetite enticeth children to devour raw fruits, and to rob their neighbours' orchards, and at once to undo both soul and body. And an excessive love of play, doth cause them to run among bad companions, and lose their time, and destroy the love of their books, and their duty, and their parents themselves, and all that is good You must eat, and sleep, and play for health, and not for useless, hurtful pleasure. a 2 Cor. v. 17. Rom. viii. 9. 13. John iii. 3. 5,6. |