have taught him early how to live and how to die, what to seek and what to shun. You should have given him the example of a holy and heavenly mind and life. You should have watched over him for his safety, and unweariedly instructed him for his salvation. But you led him the way to despise God's word, to set light by Christ, and holiness, and heaven, to hate instruction and reproof, to spend the Lord'sday in idleness or worldly vanity, to seek first the world and the prosperity of the body, and to glut the flesh with sinful pleasure. What wonder if a serpent breed a serpent, and quickly teach him to hiss and sting, and if swine teach their young to feed on dung and wallow in the mire? This is part of the fruit of your worldliness, fleshliness, ungodliness, and neglect of your own salvation and your child's. Now he is as you are, a slave of sin and an heir of hell. Was it this for which you vowed him to God in baptism? was it to serve the flesh, the world, and the devil, against our God, our Saviour, and our Sanctifier? or did the mistake of the liturgy deceive you, to think that it was not you, but the godfathers, that were bound by charge and vow to bring him up in the faith and fear of God, and teach him all that a Christian should know for his soul's health? Was it not you whom God bound to do all this? The sin and misery of your child now is so far your curse, as you are guilty of it, and will add to your misery for ever.'-Such are the sorrows that wicked parents and wicked children do prepare and heap on one another. Such miseries will come; but woe to those by whom they come! it had been good for that man that he had never been born.

10. And it is no small grief to faithful ministers, to see their labour so much lost: and to see so much evil among their flocks, and such sad prognostics of worse to come. He is no true minister of Christ (as to his own acceptance and salvation,) whose heart is not set on the winning, and sanctifying, and saving of souls. For what else do we study, preach, live, long, or suffer in our work? All faithful teachers can say with Paul, that they "are willing to spend and be spent for them," and "now we live if ye stand fast in the Lord." (2 Cor. xii. 15; 1 Thess. iii. 8.) He told them, "weeping, of those that were enemies to the cross of Christ, whose God was their belly, who gloried in their shame, and

minded earthly things," instead of a conversation in heaven. (Phil. iii, 18, 19.) When God hath blessed us with the comfortable enjoyment of many ancient, holy Christians, who are the beauty and honour of the assemblies, and death calls home one of them after another to Christ, and the rest are ready to depart, alas! must a seed of serpents come after them? Must those take their places to our grief and shame, who are bred up to the world and flesh, in drunkenness, fornication, and enmity to God and to a holy life? O what a woful change is this!

If any be likely to be the stain and plague of the church, it is such as these: If we preach holy truth to them, lust cannot love it. If we tell them of God's word, the fleshly mind doth not savour it, nor can be subject to it. (Rom. viii. 5-7.) If we reprove them sharply, they smart and hate us. If we call them to confession and repentance, their pride and carnality cannot bear it. If we excommunicate them for impenitency, as Christ requireth, or but deny them the sacrament as unmeet, they rage against us as our fiercest enemies. If we neglect discipline, and admit swine to the communion of saints, we harden and deceive them, and flatter them in their sin, pollute the church, and endanger our souls by displeasing the Chief Pastor. What then shall we do with these self-murdering, ungodly men ?

Many of them have so much reverence of a sacrament, or so little regard of it, that they never seek it, but keep away themselves. Perhaps they are afraid lest they eat and drink damnation to themselves, by the profanation of holy things. But do they think that it is safe to be out of the church and communion of saints, because it is dangerous to abuse it? Are infidels safe because false-hearted Christians perish? What! if breaking your vows and covenant be damnable, is it not so to be out of the holy covenant? What! if God be a consuming fire to those that draw near him in unrepented heinous sin, is it therefore wise or safe to avoid him? Neither those that come not to him, nor those that come in their hypocrisy and reigning sin, shall be saved.

And yet, what to do with these self-suspenders, we know not. Are they still members of the churches, or are they not? If they are, we are bound to call them to repentance for forsaking the communion of saints in Christ's commanded ordnance. If they are not, we should make it

known, that Christians and no Christians may not be confounded, and they themselves may understand their case. And neither of these can they endure; but for dwelling in the parish, and hearing the liturgy and sermons, they must still pass for church-members, lest. discipline should exasperate and further lose them. This is that discipline which is thought worthy the honour of episcopal dignity and revenues, and is supposed to make the Church of England the best in the world, by the same men that would rage, were discipline exercised on them; and they must either be admitted to the sacrament in a life of fornication, drunkenness, sensuality and profaneness, without any open confession, repentance and reformation, or else must pass for churchmembers without any exercise of discipline, while they shun the sacramental communion of the church. Such work doth wickedness make among us!

11. Indeed these are the men that are the trouble of families, neighbours, and of good magistrates, the shame of bad ones, and the great danger of the land. All the foreign enemies against whom we talk so much, and whom we fear, are not so hurtful and dangerous to us as these,—these that spring out of your own bowels; these that are bred up with care, and tenderness, and cost in your houses; these that should succeed godly ancestors in wisdom and well-doing, and be their glory. Who plot against us but homebred sinners? Who shew greater hatred to the good, and persecute them more? Who are more malignant enemies of godliness, scorners of a holy life, hinderers of the word of God, and patrons of profaneness, and of ministers and people that are of the same mind? If England be undone, (as the Eastern churches, and many of the Western are undone,) it will be by your own carnal, ungodly posterity.

He that is once a slave to Satan and his fleshly lust, is ready, for preferment or reward, to be a slave to the lust of any other. He that is false to his God and Saviour, after his baptismal vows, is not likely to be true to his country or his king, if he have but the bait of a strong temptation: and he that will sell his soul, his God and heaven, for any forbidden gratifications of his appetite, will not stick to betray church or state, or his dearest friend, for provision to satisfy these lusts. Can you expect that he should love any man better than himself? A wicked, fleshly, worldly man is a soil in

which Satan may sow the seeds of any sort of actual sin, and is fuel dried or tinder for the sparks of hell to kindle in. Will he suffer much for God or his country, who will sell heaven for nothing? An evil tree bringeth forth evil fruit. If he hath the heart of an Achan, a Gehazi, an Ahithophel, no wonder if he hath their actions and their reward. If he be a thief and bear the bag, no wonder if Judas sell his master.

12. And these wretches, if they live, are likely to be a plague to their own posterity: woe to the woman that hath such a husband! And how are the children likely to be bred, that have such a father? Doth not God threaten punishment to the third and fourth generation of them that hate him, and to visit the iniquity of the fathers on the children? Were not the children of the old world drowned, and those of Sodom and Gomorrah burned, and Achan's stoned, and Dathan's and Abiram's swallowed up, and Gehazi's struck with leprosy, &c. for their fathers' sins? And were not the children of the Amalekites all destroyed, and the posterity of the infidel Jews forsaken, the curse coming on them and on their children? And as their children are likely to speed the worse for the sins of such parents, so are such parents likely to be requited by their children. As you shamed and grieved the hearts of your parents, so may your children do by you. And by that time, it is probable, if grace convert you not, though you have no hatred to your own sins, worldly interest may make you dislike those of your children. Their lust and appetite do not tempt and deceive you, as your own did. Perhaps when they shame your family, debauch themselves with drink and other crimes, and consume the estates for which you sold your souls, you may perceive that sin is an evil and destructive thing; especially when they proceed to despise and abuse your persons, to desire your death, and to be weary of you. Sooner or later you shall know much better what sin is..

4

CHAP. VI.

The joyful State and Blessing of good Children, to themselves and others.

FROM what is said in the second and fifth chapters, it is easy to gather how joyful a case to themselves, and what a blessing to parents and others, it is when children betimes are sober, wise, godly and obedient. The difference doth most appear when they arrive at mature age, and when they come to bring forth to themselves and others the fruits of their dispositions. Their end, and the life to come, will shew the greatest difference: but yet, even here, and that betimes, the difference is very great.

1

1. First, As to themselves: How blessed a state is it to be quickly delivered from the danger of damnation, and God's displeasure, that they need not lie down and rise in fear lest they be in hell whenever death removeth them from the body! Can one too soon be out of so dreadful a state? Can one who is in a house on fire, or who has fallen into the sea, make too much haste to be delivered? If a man deep in debt be restless till it be paid, and glad when it is discharged; if a man in danger of sickness, or of a condemning sentence from the judge, be glad when the fear of death is over; how glad should you be to be safe from the great danger of damnation? And till you are sanctified by grace, you are far from safety.

2. And if a man's sickness, pain or distraction be a calamity, the cure of which brings ease and joy; how much more ease and joy may it bring, to be cured of all the grievous maladies of reigning sin? Sanctification will cure your minds of spiritual blindness and madness, that is, of damnable ignorance, unbelief and error. It will cure your affections of idolatrous, distracting and carnal love; of the itch of fleshly desires or lusts, of the fever of revengeful passions, and malignant hatred to goodness and good men, of self-vexing envy and malice against others, of the greedy worm of covetousness, and the drunken desire of ambitious and imperious minds. It will cure your wills of their fleshly servitude and bias, and of that mortal backwardness to God and holy things, and that sluggish dulness and loathness to