ence you from hypocrites; which must settle you in peace, and make you an honour to your profession, and a blessing to those that dwell about you! Happy is the land, the church, the family, which doth consist of such as these! These are not they that either persecute or divide the church; or that make their religion servant to their policy, to their ambitious designs, or fleshly lusts; nor that make it the bellows of sedition, or rebellion, or of an envious, hurtful zeal ; or a snare for the innocent; or a pistol to shoot at the upright in heart; these are not they that have been the shame of their profession, the hardening of ungodly men and infidels, and that have caused the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme. If any man will make a religion of or for his lusts, of papal tyranny, or pharisaical formality, or of his private opinions, or of proud censoriousness, and contempt of others, and of faction, and unwarrantable separatious and divisions, and of standing at a more observable distance from common professors of Christianity than God would have them; or of pulling up the hedge of discipline, and laying Christ's vineyard common to the wilderness. The storm is coming, when this religion, founded on the sand, will fall, and great will be the fall thereof. When the religion, which consisteth in faith and love to God and man, in mortifying the flesh, and crucifying the world, in self-denial, humility, and patience, in sincere obedience and faithfulness in all relations, in watchful self-government, in doing good, and in a divine and heavenly life, though it will be hated by the ungodly world, shall never be a dishonour to your Lord, nor deceive or disappoint your souls.

THE SEVENTH DAY'S CONFERENCE.

Of a Holy Family; and how to govern it, and perform the duty of all Family Relations, and others.

Speakers.-Paul, a teacher; and Saul, a learner.

PAUL. Welcome, Neighbour; how do you like the new life which you have begun? You have taken home instructions already which will find you work: but what do you find in the practising of them?

SAUL. I find that I have foolishly long neglected a necessary, noble, joyful life; and thereby lost my time, and made myself both unskilful and undisposed to the practice of it: I find that the things which you have prescribed me are high and excellent, and doubtless must be very sweet to them that have a suitable skill and disposition; and some pleasure I find in my weak beginnings: but the greatness of the work, and the great untowardness and strangeness of my mind, doth much abate the sweetness of it, by many doubts, and fears, and difficulties: and when I fail, I find it hard both to repent aright, and, by faith, to fly to Christ for pardon. And if you had not forewarned me of this temptation, I should have thought by these troubles, that my case is worse in point of ease (though not of safety) than it was before. But I foresee that better things may yet be hoped for and I hope I am in the way.

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P. Where is your great difficulty that requireth counsel ?

S. I find a great deal of work to do in my family, to govern them in the fear of God, to do my duty to them all; especially to educate my children, and daily to worship God among them. And I am so unable for it, that I am ready to omit all. I pray you help me with your advice.

P. My first advice to you is, that you resolve, by God's help, to perform your duty as well as you can: and that you P devote your family to God, and take him for the Lord and Master of it, and use it as a society sanctified to him. these reasons fix your resolution.

And I pray you let

1. If God be not master of your family, the devil will; and if God be not first served in it, the flesh and the world will. And I hope I need not tell you how bad a master, work, and wages, they will then have.

2. If you devote your family to God, God will be the Protector of it. He will take care of it for safety and provision as his own. Do you not need such a Protector; and can you have a better, or better take care for the welfare and safety of you and your's? And if your family be not God's, they are his enemies, and under his curse as rebels. Instead of his blessings of health, peace, provision, and success, you may look for sickness, dangers, crosses, distresses, unquietness, and death; or, which is worse, that your prosperity shall be a curse and snare to you and your's.

See the Dispute for Family Worship, in my Christian Directory, part 21.

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3. A holy family is a place of comfort, a church of God. What a joy will it be to you to live together daily in this hope, that you shall meet and live together in heaven; to think that wife, children, and servants, shall shortly be fellow citizens with you of the heavenly Jerusalem! How pleasant is it to join with one heart and mind in the service of God, and in his cheerful praises! How lovely will you be to one another, when each one beareth the image of God! What abundance of jars and miseries will be prevented, which sin would daily bring among you; and when any of you die, how comfortably may the rest be about their bed, and attend their corpse unto the grave, when they have good hopes that the soul is received to glory by Christ. But if your family be ungodly, it will be like a nest of wasps, or like a jail, full of discord and vexation: and it will be grievous to you to look your wife or children in the face, and think that they are like to lie in hell; and their sickness and death will be tenfold the more heavy to you to think of their woful and unseen end.

4. Your family hath such constant need of God, as commandeth you constantly to serve him. As every man hath his personal necessities, so families have family necessities, which God must supply, or they are miserable. Therefore family duty must be your work.

5. Holy families are the seminaries of Christ's church on earth, and it is very much that lieth upon them to keep up the interest of religion in the world. Hence come holy magistrates, when great men's children have a holy education. And, oh, what a blessing is one such to the countries where they are! Hence spring holy pastors and teachers to the churches, who, as Timothy, receive holy instructions from their parents, and grace from the Spirit of Christ in their tender age. Many a congregation that is happily fed with the bread of life, may thank God for the endeavours of a poor man or woman, that trained up a child in the fear of God, to become their holy, faithful teacher. Though learning be found in schools, godliness is oftener received from the education of careful parents. When children and servants come to the church with understanding, godly, prepared minds, the labours of the pastor will do them good; they will receive what they hear with faith, love,

Tim. iii. 12; Deut. vi. 7, and xxx. 2; Psalm cxlvii. 13; Acts ii. 39; Eph. vi. 4-6; Prov. xxii. 6, 15; xxix. 15, and xxiii. 13,

2 Tim. iii. 15,

and obedience. It will be a joy to the minister to have such a flock and it will be joyful to the people that are such, to meet together in the sacred assemblies, to worship God with cheerful hearts and such worshippers will be acceptable to God. But when families come together in gross ignorance, and with unsanctified hearts, there they sit like images, understanding little of what is said, and go home little the better for all the labours of the minister and the motions of their tongue and bodies is most of the worship which they give to God; but their hearts are not offered in faith and love as a sacrifice to him, nor do they feel the power and sweetness of the word, and worship him in spirit and truth.

6. And in times when the churches are corrupted, and good ministers are wanting, and bad ones either deceive the people, or are insufficient for their work, there is no better supply to keep up religion than godly families. If parents and masters will teach their children and servants faithfully, and worship God with them holily and constantly, and govern them carefully and orderly, it will much make up the want of public teaching, worship, and discipline. Oh, that God would stir up the hearts of people thus to make their families as little churches, that it might not be in the power of rulers or pastors that are bad to extinguish religion, or banish godliness from any land! For,

7. Family teaching, worship, and discipline, hath many advantages which churches have not. 1. You have but a few to teach and rule, and the pastor hath many. 2. They are always with you, and you may speak to them as seasonably and as often as you will, either together, or one by one, and so cannot he. 3. They are tied to you by relation, affection, and covenant, and by their own necessities and interest, otherwise than they are to him. Wife and children are more confident of your love to them than of the minister's; and love doth open the ear to counsel. Children dare not reject your words, because you can correct them, or make their worldly state less comfortable. But the minister doth all by bare exhortation; and if he cast them out of the church for their impenitence, they lose nothing by it in the world: and unless it be in a very hot persecution, families or not so restrained from holy doctrine, worship, and discipline, as churches and ministers often are. Who silenceth you or forbiddeth you to catechise and teach your family? Who forbiddeth you to pray or praise God with them, as well and as

often as you can? It is self-condemning hypocrisy in many rulers of families, who now cry out against them as cruel persecutors, who forbid us ministers to preach the Gospel, while they neglect to teach their own children and servants, when no man forbiddeth them; so hard is it to see our own sins and duty, in comparison of other men's.

8. You have greater and nearer obligations to your family than pastors have to all the people. Your wife is as your own flesh; your children are, as it were, parts of yourself. Nature bindeth you to the dearest affection, and therefore to the greatest duty to them. Who should more care for your children's souls than their own parents? If you will not provide for them, but famish them, who will feed them? Therefore, as ever you have the bowels of parents; as ever you care what becometh of your children's souls for ever, devote them to God, teach them his word, educate them in holiness, restrain them from sin, and prepare them for salvation.

S. I must confess that natural affection telleth me that there is great reason for what you say: and my own experience convinceth me; for if my parents had better instructed and governed me in my childhood, I had not been like to have lived so ignorantly and ungodly as I have done: but, alas! few parents do their duty. Many take more pains about their horses and cattle than they do about their children's souls.

P. O that I could speak what is deeply upon my heart to all the parents of the land; I would be bold to tell them that multitudes are more cruel than bears and lions to their own children. God hath committed their souls as much to their trust and care as he hath done their bodies. It is they that are at first to devote them to God, in the covenant of baptism: it is they that are to teach them, and to exhort them to keep the covenant which they made, to catechise them, and to mind them of the state of their souls, their need of Christ, the mercy of redemption, the excellency of holiness, and of everlasting life. It is they that are to watch over them with wisdom, love, and diligence, to save them from temptation, Satan, and sin, and to lead them by the example of a holy life.

But, alas! instead of this, they bring their children hypocritically to make that covenant in baptism with God, which they never heartily consented to themselves. They turn all into a mere ceremony, and know no more of it, than to have godfathers

• Dent. vi. 6-8, and xi. 19, 20.