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rare a thing is it to find these men as careful to fit their pofte rity to be useful and serviceable to God in their generations, which is the end of their beings? If you can make them rich, and provide good matches for them, you reckon that you have fully discharged the duty of parents: if they will learn to hold the plow, that you are willing to teach them: but, when did you spend an hour to teach them the way of falvation.?

Now to convince fuch careless parents of the heinousness of their fin, let these queries be folemnly confidered.

Qu. 1. Whether this be a fufficient difcharge of that great duty which God hath laid upon Chriftian parents, in reference to their families? That God hath charged them with the fouls of their families, is undeniable, Deut. vi. 6, 7. Eph. vi. 4. If God had not cloathed you with his authority, to command them in the way of the Lord, he would never have charged them fo ftrictly to yield you obedience as he hath done, Eph. vi. 1. Col. iii. 20. Well, a great truft is reposed in you, look to your duty; for, without difpute, you fhall anfwer for it.

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? Hufbandmen, let me put a fenfible cafe to you; do you not fee in your very horses, that whilft they are young, you can bring them to any way; but if once they have got a falfe ftroke, and by long cuftom 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 fhould go, and when he is "old, he will not depart from it."

Qu. 3. Whether if you neglect to inftruct them in the way of the Lord, Satan, and their own natural corruptions, will not inftruct them in the way to hell? Confider this, ye careless parents: if you will not teach your children, the devil will teach them : if you fhew them not how to pray, he will fhew them how to curfe and swear, and take the name of the Lord in vain : if you grudge time and pains about their fouls, the devil doth not. Oh! it is a fad confideration, that fo many children fhould 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-carelesness, in the loose and vain education of their children. By Lycurgus his 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: thefe 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 inftrument to dishonour God, fhall prove, fooner or later a fon or daughter of forrow to thee.

1. God hath found out my fin this day. A reflection for This hath been my practice ever fince I had careless parents. a family committed to my charge; I have

fpent more time and pains about the bodies of my beafts, than the fouls of my children: beaft that I am for fo doing! little have I confidered the preciousness of my own, or their immortal fouls. How careful have I been to provide fodder to preferve my cattle in the winter, whilft I leave my own and their fouls to perish to eternity, and make no provifion for them? Surely my children will one day curfe the time that ever they were born unto fuch a cruel father, or of fuch a merciless mother. Should I bring home the plague into my family, and live to fee all my poor children lie dead by the walls; if I had 'not the heart of a tyger, fuch a fight would melt my heart and yet the death of their fouls, by the fin 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 beaft that perifheth! 2. But, unhappy wretch that I am! God caft a better lot for me; I am the off-fpring of religious and tender parents, who have always deeply concerned themselves in the everlasting State of my foul; many prayers and tears have they poured out to God for me, both in my hearing, as well as in fecret; many holy and wholesome counfels 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 finned against the Lord, have they ftood over me, with a rod in their hands, and tears in their eyes, ufing all means to reclaim me; but, like an ungracious wretch, I have flighted all their counfel, grieved their hearts, and imbittered their lives to them by my finful courfes. Ah, my foul! thou art a degenerate plant; better will it be with the off-fpring of infidels than with thee,

A reflection for the dif obedient child of a grucious parent.

if repentance prevent not: now I live in one fan.ily with them, but fhortly I fhall be feparated from them, as far as hell is from heaven; they now tenderly pity my mifery, but then they fhall approve and applaud the righteous fentence of Chrift upon me: fo little privilege fhall I then have from my relation to them, that they shall be produced as witneffes against me, and all their rejected counfels, reproofs and examples, charged home upon me, as the aggravations of my wickedness; and better it will be, when it fhall come to that, that I had been brought forth by a beaft, than sprung from the loins of fuch parents.

The POEM.

OUR cattle in fat paftures thrive and grow,

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There's nothing wanting that thould make them fo. The pamper'd horfe commends his mafter's care, Who neither pains or coft doth grudge or fpare. But art not thou mean while the vileft fool,

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"That pamper'ft beafts, and ftarves thy precious foul?
"Twere well if thou couldft die as well as live
Like beafts, and had no more account to give.
O that thefe lines your folly might detect!
Who both your own and children's fouls neglect
To care for beafts. O man! prepare to hear
The doleful'ft language that e'er pierc'd thine ear;
When you your children once in 'hell fhall meet,
And with fuch language their damn'd parents greet:
"O curfed father! wretched mother! why
"Was I your off-fpring? Would 'to God that I
"Had fprung from tygers, who more tender be
"Unto their young than you have been to me.
"How did you spend your thoughts, time, care, and coft.
"About my body, whilft my foul was loft?
"Did you not know I had a foul, that muft
"Live, when this body was diffolv'd to duft?
"You could not chufe but understand if I,
"Without an intereft in Chrift did die,
"It needs muft come to this. O how could you
Prove fo remorfelefs, and no pity fhew?

"O cruel parents! I may curfe the day
"That I was born of fuch as did betray
"Their child to endlefs torments. Now muft T
"With, and through you, in flames for ever lie."

Let this make every parent tremble, left

He lofe his child, whilft caring for his beast:

Or left his own poor foul do ftarve and pine,
Whilft he takes thought for horses, theep and kine.

CHA P. II.

Upon the hard Labour and cruel Ufage of Beaftss
When under loads your beasts do groan, think then
How great a mercy 'tis that you are men.

T

OBSERVATIO N.

Hough fome men be exceflively careful and tender over their beafts, as was noted in the former chapter; yetothers are cruel and merciless towards them, not regarding how they ride or burden them. How often have I feen them fainting under their loads, wrought off their legs, and turned out with galled backs, into the fields or high-ways to shift for a little grafs, many times have I heard and pitied them, groaning under unreafouable burdens, and beaten on by merciless drivers, till at last, by duch cruel ufage, they have been deftroyed, and then caft into a ditch for dogs meat.

S

APPLICATION.

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Uch fights as these should make men thankful for the mercy of their creation, and bless their bountiful Creator, that they were not made fuch creatures themselves. Some beafts are made ad efum, only for food, being no otherwife ufeful to man, as fwine, &c. These are only fed for flaughter; 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 ufum, for service, whilft living, but unprofitable when dead, as horfes; these we make to drudge and toil for us from day to day, but kill them not: others are both ad efum, et ufum, for food when dead, and fervice whilst alive, as the ox; these we make to plow our fields, draw our carriages, and afterwards prepare them for the laughter.

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But man was made for nobler ends, created lord of the lower world; not to ferve, but to be ferved by other creatures; a mercy able to melt the hardest heart-into thankfulness. I remember, * Luther preffing men to be thankful, that they are not brought into the lowest condition of creatures, and to bless God that they can fee any creature below themselves, gives us a famous inftance in the following ftory: Two cardinals, faith he riding in a great deal of pomp to the council of Constance, *Luther in 3d Precept,

by the way they heard a man in the fields, weeping and wailing bitterly; they rode to him, and afk'd him what he ailed? Perceiving his eye intently fixed upon an ugly toad, he told them that his heart melted with the confideration of this mercy, that God had not made him fuch a deformed and loathfome creature, though he were formed out of the fame clay with it: Hoc eft quod amare fleo, faid he, this is that which makes me weep bitterly. Whereupon one of

the Cardinals cries out, well, faid the Father, the unlearned will rife and take heaven, when we with all our learning fhall be thruft into hell. That which melted the heart of this poor man, fhould melt every heart when we behold the mifery to which these poor creatures are fubjected. And this will appear a mercy of no flight confideration, 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 fame mould and clay, yet how much better hath God dealt with us, even as to the outward man? The ftructure of our bodies is much more excellent; God made other good creatures by a word of command, but man by counsel; it was not, Be thou, but, Let us make man. We might have been made ftones without sense, or beafts without reafon, but we were made men. The noble ftructure and symmetry of our bodies invites our fouls not only to thankfulness but admiration. David, fpeaking of the curi ous frame of the body, faith, "I am wonderfully made," Pfal. cxxxix. 14. or, as the vulgar reads it, painted as with a needle, like fome rich piece of needle-work curiously embroidered with nerves and veins. Was any part of the common lump of clay thus fashioned? Galen gave Epicurus an hundred years time to imagine a more commodious fituation, configuration, or compofition of any one part of a human body; and (as one faith) if all the angels in heaven had studied to this day, they could not have caft the body of man into a more curious mold.

2. How little ease or reft have they? They live not many years, and those they do are in bondage and mifery, groaning under the effects of fin; but God hath provided better for us even as to our outward condition in the world; we have the more reft, because they have fo little. How many refreshments and comforts hath God provided for us, of which they are uncapable? If we be weary with labour, we can take our reft; but fresh or weary, they must stand to it, or fink under it from day to day.

3. What a narrow capacity hath God given to beafts!

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