ruption and wickedness, and not a rod of reproof used to break them of it. * It is obferved of the Perfians, that they put out their children to fchool, as foon as they can fpeak, and will not fee them in feven years after, left their indulgence fhould do them hurt. 2. You keep your conftant fet times, morning and evening, to feed, water, and drefs your cattle, and will by no means neglect it once: but how many times have you neglected morning and evening duties in your families? Yea, how many be there, whofe very tables, in refpect of any worship God hath there, do very little differ from the very cribs and mangers at which their horfes feed? As foon as you are up in a morning, you are with your beafts before you have been with your God. How little do fuch differ from beafts? And happy were it, if they were no more accountable to God than their beats are. The end of your care, coft, and pains about your cattle is, that they may be ftrong for labour, and the more ferviceable to you: thus you comply with the end of their beings. But how rare a thing is it to find thefe men as careful to fit their pofterity to be useful and ferviceable 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 difcharged 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 careiefs parents of the heinousness of their fin, let thefe 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 hath not clothed 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 repofed in you, look to your duty; for, without difpute, you shall anfwer for it. Quest. 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 horics, 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: you fee it in your very orchards; you may bring a tender twig to grow in what form you pleafe; but when it is grown to a furdy limb, there is no bending it afterwards to any other form than what it naturally took. Thus it is with children, Prov. xxii. 6. *Clark's Mir. p. 506. "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he "will not depart from it." Qu. 3. Whether if you neglect to instruct 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 carelefs 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 fchool 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 careleffness, in the loofe and vain education of their children. By Lycurgus's 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: these 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 difhonour God, fhall prove, fooner or later, a fon or daughter of forrow to thee. A reflection for careless parents. 1. God hath found out my fin this day. This hath been my practice ever fince I had 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: beait that I am for fo doing! Little have I confidered the precioufnefs 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 fay, I had done as much for them, as I have done for a beaft that peritheth! 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 themfelves in the everlasting fate 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 wholefome counfels have they from time to time dropt upon me; many precious examples have they fet in their A reflection for the dif obedient child of a gracious parent. own practice before me; many a time when I have finned against the Lord, have they flood 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-pring of infidels than with thee, if repentance prevent not: now I live in one family with them, but shortly 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 fhall be produced as witneffes against me, and all their rejected counfels, reproofs and examples, charged home upon me, as the aggravations of my wickednels; and better it will be, when it fhall come to that, that I had been brought forth by a beaft, than fprung from the loins of fuch parents. THE POEM. OUR cattle in fat paftures thrive and grow, There's nothing wanting that fhould make them fo. The pamper'd horfe commends his mafter's care, Who neither pains nor coft doth grudge or fpare. But art not thou mean while the vileft fool, 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 these 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 fpend your thoughts, time, care, and cost "About my body, whilft my foul was loft? "Did you not know I had a foul, that must "Live, when this body was diffoiv'd to duft? "You could not chufe but understand if I, "Without an interest in Chrift did die, "It needs must 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 endless torments. Now must I He lofe his child, whilft caring for his beaft: CHAP. II. Upon the hard Labour, and cruel Ufage of Beafts. OBSERVATION. HOUGH fome men be exceffively careful and tender over TH their beasts, as was noted in the former chapter; yet others are cruel and merciless towards them, not regarding how they ride or burden them. How often have I seen them fainting under their loads, wrought off their legs, and turned out with galled backs into the fields or high-ways to fhift for a little grafs; many times have I heard and pitied them, groaning under unreasonable burdens, and beaten on by merciless drivers, till at last, by fuch cruel ufage, they have been destroyed, and then caft into a ditch for dog's meat. APPLICATION. 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 esum, only for food, being no otherwise useful to men, 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 fervice, whilft living, but unprofitable when dead, as horfes; thefe 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 service whilst alive, as the ox ; thefe we make to plow our fields, draw our carriages, and afterwards prepare them for the flaughter. 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 VOL. V. Y Luther in 3 Precept. the loweft condition of creatures, and to blefs 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 Conftance, by the way they heard a man in the fields, weeping and wailing bitterly; they rode to him, and asked 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 qued amarè fleo, faid he, this is that which makes me weep bitterly. Whereupon one of the cardinals cried out, Well, faid the father, the unlearned will rife and take heaven, when we with all our learning fhall be thrust 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 thefe 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 counfel; it was not, Be thou, but, Let us make man. We might have been made stones without fenfe, or beafts without reason, but we were made men. The noble structure and symmetry of our bodies invite our fouls not only to thankfulness but admiration. David, fpeaking of the curious frame of the body, faith, "I am wonder«fully 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 ftudied to this day, they could not have caft the body of man into a more curious mould. 2. How little eafe 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 incapable? 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! What a large capacity to man! Alas, they are only capable of a little fenfitive pleafure; as you fhall fee fometimes, how they will frifk in a green pasture; this is all they are capable of, and this death puts an |