nal actions of impiety, in which their fathers were deeply guilty, and by which they stained great parts of their life, or have done something of very great unworthiness and disreputation. "Si quis paterni vitii nascitur hæres, nascitur et pœnæ;" "The heir of his father's wickedness, is the heir of his father's curse." And a son comes to inherit a wickedness from his father, three ways.

1. By approving, or any ways consenting to his father's sin: as by speaking of it without regret or shame; by pleasing himself in the story; or by having an evil mind, apt to counsel or do the like, if the same circumstances should occur. For a son may contract a sin, not only by derivation and the contagion of example, but by approbation; not only by a corporal, but by a virtual contact; not only by transcribing an evil copy, but by commending it: and a man may have "animum leprosum in cute munda," a leprous and a polluted mind' even for nothing, even for an empty and ineffective lust. An evil mind may contract the curse of an evil action. And though the son of a covetous father prove a prodigal; yet, if he loves his father's vice, for ministering to his vanity, he is disposed not only to a judgment for his own prodigality, but also to the curse of his father's avarice.

2. The son may inherit the father's wickedness by imitation and direct practice; and then the curse is like to come to purpose; a curse by accumulation, a treasure of wrath: and then the children, as they arrive to the height of wickedness by a speedy passage, as being thrust forward by an active example, by countenance, by education, by a seldom restraint, by a remiss discipline; so they ascertain a curse to the family, by being a perverse generation, a family set up in opposition against God, by continuing and increasing the provocation.

3. Sons inherit their fathers' crimes by receiving and enjoying the purchases of their rapine, injustice and oppression, by rising upon the ruin of their father's souls, by sitting warm in the furs which their fathers stole, and walking in the grounds which are watered with the tears of oppressed orphans and widows. Now, in all these cases, the rule holds. If the son inherits the sin, he cannot call it unjust, if he inherits also his father's punishment. But, to rescind the fatal chain, and break in sunder the line of God's anger, a

son is tied in all these cases to disavow his father's crime. But because the cases are several, he must also in several manners do it.

1. Every man is bound not to glory in, or speak honour of, the powerful and unjust actions of his ancestors: but as all the sons of Adam are bound to be ashamed of that original stain, which they derived from the loins of their abused father, they must be humbled in it, they must deplore it as an evil mother, and a troublesome daughter; so must children account it amongst the crosses of their family, and the stains of their honour, that they passed through so impure channels, that in the sense of morality as well as nature they can say to corruption, Thou art my father, and to rottenness, Thou art my mother." I do not say, that sons are bound to publish or declaim against their fathers' crimes, and to speak of their shame in piazzas and before tribunals; that indeed were a sure way to bring their fathers' sins upon their own heads, by their own faults. No: like Shem and Japhet, they must go backward, and cast a veil upon their nakedness and shame, lest they bring the curse of their fathers' angry dishonour upon their own impious and unrelenting heads. Noah's drunkenness fell upon Ham's head, because he did not hide the openness of his father's follies: he made his father ridiculous; but did not endeavour either to amend the sin, or to wrap the dishonour in a pious covering. He that goes to disavow his father's sin by publishing his shame, hides an ill-face with a more ugly vizor, and endeavours by torches and fantastic lights to quench the burning of that house which his father set on fire: these fires are to be smothered, and so extinguished. I deny not, but it may become the piety of a child to tell a sad story, to mourn, and represent a real grief for so great a misery, as is a wicked father or mother: but this is to be done with a tenderness as nice as we would dress an eye withal: it must be only with designs of charity, of counsel, of ease, and with much prudence, and a sad spirit. These things being secured, that which in this case remains, is, that in all intercourses between God and ourselves we disavow the crime.

Children are bound to pray to God to sanctify, to cure, to forgive, their parents: and even, concerning the sins of our forefathers, the church hath taught us in her litanies, to pray

So

that God would be pleased to forgive them, so that neither we, nor they, may sink under the wrath of God for them: "Remember not, Lord, our offences, nor the offences of our forefathers, neither take thou vengeance of our sins:" Ours, in common and conjunction. And David confessed to God, and humbled himself for the sins of his ancestors and decessors: "Our fathers have done amiss, and dealt wickedly, neither kept they thy great goodness in remembrance, but were disobedient at the sea, even at the Red Sea." did good King Josiah; "Great is the wrath of the Lord, which is kindled against us, because our fathers have not hearkened unto the words of this book." But this is to be done between God and ourselves: or, if in public, then to be done by general accusation; that God only may read our particuJar sorrows in the single shame of our families, registered in our hearts, and represented to him with humiliation, shame, and a hearty prayer.

2. Those curses, which descend from the fathers to the children by imitation of the crimes of their progenitors, are to be cut off by special and personal repentance and prayer, as being a state directly opposite to that which procured the curse: and if the sons be pious, or return to an early and severe course of holy living, they are to be remedied as other innocent and pious persons are, who are sufferers under the burdens of their relatives, whom I shall consider by and by. Only observe this; that no public or imaginative disavowings, no ceremonial and pompous rescission of our fathers' crimes, can be sufficient to interrupt the succession of the curse, if the children do secretly practise or approve what they in pretence or ceremony disavow. And this is clearly proved; and it will help to explicate that difficult saying of our blessed Saviour, "Wo unto you, for ye build the sepulchres of the prophets, and your fathers killed them. Truly ye bear witness that ye allow the deeds of your fathers: for they killed them, and ye build their sepulchres ":" that is, the Pharisees were huge hypocrites, and adorned the monuments of the martyr-prophets, and in words disclaimed their fathers' sin, but in deeds and design they approved it; 1. Because they secretly wished all such persons dead; "colebant mortuos, quos nollent superstites :" In charity d2 Kings, xxii. 13.

• Luke, xi. 47, 48.

:

3. To which also the For they only said, "If

to themselves some men wish their enemies in heaven, and would be at charges for a monument for them, that their malice, and their power, and their bones, might rest in the same grave; and yet that wish and that expense is no testimony of their charity, but of their anger. 2. These men were willing that the monuments of those prophets should remain, and be a visible affrightment to all such bold persons and severe reprehenders as they were; and, therefore, they builded their sepulchres to be as beacons and publications of danger to all honest preachers. And this was the account St. Chrysostom gave of the place. circumstances of the place concur. they had lived in their fathers' days, they would not have done as they didf;" but it is certain they approved it, because they pursued the same courses: and, therefore, our blessed Saviour calls them γενεὰν ἀποκτέινουσαν, not only the children of them that did kill the prophets, but a killing generation;' the sin also descends upon you, for ye have the same. killing mind and although you honour them that are dead, and cannot shame you; yet you design the same usages against them that are alive, even against the Lord of the prophets, against Christ himself, whom ye will kill. And as Dion said of Caracalla, Πᾶσι τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς ἀνδράσιν ἀχθόμενος, τιμᾷν τινὰς αὐτῶν ἀποθανόντας ἐπλάττετο, “The man was troublesome to all good men when they were alive, but did them honour when they were dead ;" and when Herod had killed Aristobulus, yet he made him a most magnificent funeral: so, because the Pharisees were of the same humour, therefore our blessed Saviour bids them " to fill up the measure of their fathers' iniquity "," for they still continued the malice, only they painted it over with a pretence of piety, and of disavowing their fathers' sin; which if they had done really, their being children of persecutors, much less the adorning of the prophets' sepulchres,' could not have been just cause of a woe from Christ; this being an act of piety, and the other of nature, inevitable and not chosen by them, and therefore not chargeable upon them. He therefore that will to real purposes disavow his father's crimes, must do it heartily, and humbly, and charitably, and throw off all affections to the like actions. For he that finds fault with his father for killing f Matt. xxiii. 30. Reimar. t. 2. p. 1302. h Matt. xxiii. 32.

Isaiah or Jeremy, and himself shall kill Aristobulus and John the Baptist; he that is angry because the old prophets were murdered, and shall imprison and beggar and destroy the new ones; he that disavows the persecution in the primitive times, and honours the memory of the dead martyrs, and yet every day makes new ones; he that blames the oppression of the country by any of his predecessors, and yet shall continue to oppress his tenants, and all that are within his gripe; that man cannot hope to be eased from the curse of his father's sins: he goes on to imitate them, and, therefore, to fill up their measure, and to reap a full treasure of wrath.

3. But concerning the third, there is yet more difficulty. Those persons that inherit their fathers' sins by possessing the price of their fathers' souls, that is, by enjoying the goods gotten by their fathers' rapine, may certainly quit the inheritance of the curse, if they quit the purchase of the sin, that is, if they pay their fathers' debts; his debts of contract, and his debts of justice; his debts of intercourse, and his debts of oppression. I do not say that every man is bound to restore all the land, which his ancestors have unjustly snatched for when by law the possession is established, though the grandfather entered like a thief, yet the grandchild is 'bonæ fidei' possessor, and may enjoy it justly. And the reasons of this are great and necessary; for the avoiding eternal suits, and perpetual diseases of the rest and conscience; because there is no estate in the world that could be enjoyed: by any man honestly, if posterity were bound to make restitution of all the wrongs done by their progenitors. But although the children of the far-removed lines are not obliged to restitution, yet others are: and some for the same, some for other reasons.

1. Sons are tied to restore what their fathers did usurp, or to make agreement and an acceptable recompense for it, if the case be visible, evident, and notorious, and the oppressed party demands it because in this case the law hath not settled the possession in the new tenant; or if a judge hath, it is by injury; and there is yet no collateral accidental title transferred by long possession, as it is in other cases: and therefore, if the son continues to oppress the same person whom his father first injured, he may well expect to be