Such families are nurseries for hell ; and though God, by an ex- traordinary hand of providence, now and then snatches a soul by conversion from among them, as a brand out of the fire ; yet ge- nerally, they die as they live, going " to the generation of their fa- " thers, where they shall never see light,'' Psal. xlix. 19. I know education and regeneration are two things ; but I also know one is frequently made the " instrument of working the other, and that " the * favour of what first seasons our youth (generally) abides " to old age,""* Prov. xxii. 6. We may observe, all the world over, how tenacious men are of that which is < aroot^-acadorov, deli- vered to them by their parents. O what a cut must it be to the heart of that father whose son's life shall tell his conscience what a profane son's lips once told his father to his face ! " If I have done evil, I have learnt it of you -f*." Had they felt more of your pru- dent correction, it might have prevented their destruction. Prov. xxiii. 14. " Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver '' his soul from hell." That this is a common beaten path to' hell, is beyond all question ; but how to bar it up, and stop the multi- tudes that are engaged in it to their own ruin, this is the labour, this is the work. I cannot be large, but I will offer a few weighty considerations.
The first way to hell barred.
1. Let all parents consider, what a fearful thing it is to be the instruments of ruining for ever, those that received their beings instrumentally from them, and to seek whose good they stand obliged, by all the laws of God and nature.
In vain are all your cares and studies for their bodies, whilst their souls perish for want of knowledge. You rejoiced at their birth, but they will have cause to curse the day they were born of you, and say, " Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the " night in which I was conceived." You were solicitous for their
* duo semel est imhuta reeens^ ^-c. f m male J'eciy a te didici.
A TREATISE OF THE SOUL OF MAN. 18-5
bodies, but careless of their souls ; earnest to see them rich, but indifferent whether they were gracious; you neglected to teach ihem the way of salvation, but the devil did not neglect to teach them the way of sin. You will one day wish you had never been parents, when the doleful cries of your damned children shall ring such notes as these in your ears : ' O cursed father ! O cruel,
* merciless mother ! whose examples have drawn me after you, « into all this misery. You had time enough, and motives ' enough to have warned me of this place and misery whilst my < heart was tender, and my affections pliable : Had it not been as
* easy to have put a Bible as a play-book before me ? To have chas- ' tised me when I provoked God by sin, as when T provoked you
* about a trifle ? One word spoken in season might have saved my ' soul ; one reproof wisely given and set on by your example, might
* have preserved me. Had it not been the same pains to have ask- ' ed me, child, what wilt thou do to be saved ? As, what wilt ' thou do to live in this world ? Or, had I but observed any serious ' religion in you, had I but found or heard my father or mother ' upon their knees in prayer, it might have awakened me to a con- ' sideration of my condition. In my youth I was sliame-faced, ' fearful, credulous, and apt to imitate ; had you but had wisdom
* as other parents have, to have taken hold of any of these handles ' in time, you had rescued my soul from hell. Nay, so cruel have
* you been to your own child, that you allowed me no time (if I
* had had a disposition) for any exercise of religion ; yea, you have ' quenched and stifled the sparks of convictions and better incli- ' nations that sometimes v/ere in my heart. O happy had it been ' if I had never been born of you, or seen your faces.' This must be the result and issue of your negligence, except God, by some other hand (which is no thanks to you) rescue them from their im- pending ruin.
2. Let all children, v/hose unhappy lot it is to be born of, and educated by, carnal and irreligious parents, consider, God hath endued them with reason, and a conscience of their own, to enable them to make a better choice than their parents did, and that there is no taking sanctuary from the wrath of God in their parents' examples. We read, in 1 Kings xiv. 13. of a good Abijah, " in whom was found some good tiling towards the Lord " God of Israel, in the house of Jeroboam." Here was a child that would not follow his wicked father to hell, though he had both the authority of a father, and of a king over him. " You must " honour your parents, but still you must prefer your God before " them J." God will never lay it to your account as your sin,
\ Amundus genitor, sed pr<Bponendus Creator,
186 A TREATISE OF THE SOUL OF MA?J.
but place it to the account of jour duty, and comfort, that you refused to follow them in the paths of sin and destruction. No law of God, no tie of nature binds you to obey their commands, or tread in their steps, farther than they command in God's autho- rity and name, and walk in his ways. Your temptations, indeed, are strong, and disadvantages great; but the greater will the mercy of your deliverance be : It will be no plea for you, at the judgment-seat, to say, Lord, ray father or mother did so and so, before me, and I thought I might safely follow them ; or thus, and thus, they commanded me, and I thought I was bound, by thy command, to obey them. Therefore look to your own souls, if thev are so desperate as to cast away their own. If some chil- dren had not minded their own salvation more than their parents minded it, they had never been saved.