Secondly, Yon deal vmrighteonsly with God, that train not up yonr children in the knowledge of God, because your children, if you be Christian parents, are God's children ; they stand in a federal relation to him, which the children of others do not ; and shall God's children be niu-turcd with the devil's educa- tion ? Ignorance is that which he blinds the minds of the children of dis- obedience withal. Shall God's children have no better breeding ? The children of a Jew God made account were born to him : ' Thy sons and daughters whom thou hast borne to me,' Ezek. xvi. 20. God had, by the covenant which he made with that people, married them unto himself; and, therefore, as the wife bears her children to her husband, they are his children, so God calls the children of the Jews his, and complains of it as an horrible wickedness in them, that they should not bring them up as his, but offer them up to Moloch : ' They have slain my children,' saith God, ver. 21. And are not the children of a Christian his children, as well as the Jews were? Hath God recalled or altered the first covenant, and cut olf the entail? and darcst thou slay not only thy children, but the Lord's also ? and is not ignorance that bloody knife that doth it? ' My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge,' Hos. iv. 6. Do you not tremble to offer them, not to Moloch, but the devil, whom before you had given up to God, when you brought them to that solemn ordinance of baptism, and there desired, before God and man, that they might become covenant-servants to the Lord? And hast thou bound them to him, and never teach them, either who their Lord and Master is. Or what tlieir duty is as his servants? Out of thy own mouth will God condemn thee.
4. Consider you, who are parents, that by not instructing your chil- dren, you entitle yourselves to all the sins they shall commit to their death. We may sin by a proxy, and make another's fact our own. ' Thou hast,' saith God by Nathan to David, concerning Uriah, ' slain him with the sword of the children of Ammon,' 2 Sam. xii. 9. So thou mayest pierce Christ, and slay him over and over with the bloody sword of thy wicked children, if thou art not the more careful to train them up in the fear of God. There might be something said for that heathen, who, when the scholar abused him, fell upon the master and struck him : indeed it is possible he might be in the most fault. When tlie child breaks the sabbath, it is his sin ; but more the father's if he never taught him what the command of God was. And if the parent be accessary to the sin of the child, it will be hard for him to escape a partnership, yea, a precedency in the punishment. O what a sad greeting will such have of their children at the great day ! Will they not then accuse you to be the murderers of their precious souls, and lay their blood at your door, ciu-sing you to your fiice, that taught them no better ? But grant, that by the interposition of thy timely repentance, thou securest thy soul from the judgment of that day, yet God can scourge thee here for the neglect of thy duty to them. How oft do we see children become heavy crosses to such parents ! It is just that they should not know their duty to thee, who didst not teach them their duty to God ; or if thou shouldst not live so long as to see this, yet sure thou canst not but go in sorrow to thy grave, to leave children behind thee that are on their way to hell. Some think that Lot's lingering so long in Sodom, was his lothness to leave his sons-in-law behind him, to perish in the flames. No doubt, good man, it was very grievous to him, and this might make him stay pleading with them, till the angel pulled him away. And certainly nothing makes holy parents more loth to be gone out of the reach of that fire, before they go, that God will rain upon the heads of sinners. You know not how soon the messenger may come to pluck you hence ; do your best while you are among them to win them home to God.
Use 2. To the ministers of the gospel. Let this stir up your bowels of com- passion towards those many ignorant soids, in your respective congregations, who know not the right hand from the left. This, this is the great destroyer of the country, which ministers should come forth against with all their care and strength. More are swept to hell with this plague of spiritual darkness than any other. Where the light of knowledge and conviction is, there connnonly is a sense and pain that accompanies the sinner when he doth evil, which forceth some now and then to inquire for a physician, and come in the distress of their
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