the heir of his father's curse, as well as of his cursed purchase.

2. Whether by law and justice, or not, the person be obliged, nay, although by all the solemnities of law the unjust purchase be established, and that in conscience the grandchildren be not obliged to restitution in their own particulars, but may continue to enjoy it without a new sin; yet if we see a curse descending upon the family for the old oppression done in the days of our grandfathers, or if we probably suspect that to be the cause; then, if we make restitution, we also most certainly remove the curse, because we take away the matter upon which the curse is grounded. I do not say, we sin, if we do not restore: but that, if we do not, we may still be punished. The reason of this is clear and visible for as without our faults, in many cases, we may enjoy those lands which our forefathers got unjustly; so without our faults we may be punished for them. For as they have transmitted the benefit to us, it is but reasonable we should suffer the appendant calamity. If we receive good, we must also venture the evil that comes along with it. "Res transit cum suo onere:" "All lands and possessions pass with their proper burdens."-And if any of my ancestors was a tenant, and a servant, and held his lands as a villain to his lord; his posterity also must do so, though accidentally they become noble. The case is the same. If my ancestors entered unjustly, there is a curse and a plague that is due to that oppression and injustice; and that is the burden of the land,' and it descends all along with it. And although I, by the consent of laws, am a just possessor, yet I am obliged to the burden that comes with the land: I am indeed another kind of person than my grandfather; he was a usurper, but I am a just possessor; but, because in respect of the land this was but an accidental change, therefore I still am liable to the burden, and the curse that descends with it. But the way to take off the curse is to quit the title; and yet a man may choose. It may be, to lose the land would be the bigger curse: but, if it be not, the way is certain how you may be rid of it. There was a custom among the Greeks, that the children of them, that died of consumptions or dropsies, all the while their fathers' bodies were burning on their funeral piles, did sit with their feet in cold water, hoping

that such a lustration and ceremony would take off the lineal and descending contagion from the children. I know not what cure they found by their superstition: but we may be sure, that if we wash (not our feet, but) our hands of all the unjust purchases which our fathers have transmitted to us, their hydropic thirst of wealth shall not transmit to us a consumption of estate, or any other curse. But this remedy is only in the matter of injury or oppression, not in the case of other sins; because other sins were transient; and, as the guilt did not pass upon the children, so neither did the exterior and permanent effect: and, therefore, in other sins (in case they do derive a curse) it cannot be removed, as in the matter of unjust possession it may be; whose effect (we may so order it) shall no more stick to us, than the guilt of our fathers' personal actions.

The sum is this: as kingdoms use to expiate the faults of others by acts of justice; and as churches use to 'remove the accursed thing' from sticking to the communities of the faithful, and the sins of Christians from being required of the whole congregation, by excommunicating and censuring the delinquent persons; so the heirs and sons of families are to remove from their house the curse descending from their fathers' loins-1. by acts of disavowing the sins of their ancestors; 2. by praying for pardon; 3. by being humbled for them; 4. by renouncing the example; and, 5. quitting the affection to the crimes: 6. by not imitating the actions in kind, or in semblance and similitude: and, lastly, 7. by refusing to rejoice in the ungodly purchases, in which their fathers did amiss, and dealt wickedly.

Secondly; but, after all this, many cases do occur, in which we find that innocent sons are punished. The remedies I have already discoursed of, are for such children, who have, in some manner or other, contracted and derived the sin upon themselves: but if we inquire how those sons,-who have no intercourse or affinity with their fathers' sins, or whose fathers' sins were so transient that no benefit or effect did pass upon their posterity,-how they may prevent, or take off, the curse that lies upon the family for their fathers' faults; this will have some distant considerations.

1. The pious children of evil parents are to stand firm upon the confidence of the divine grace and mercy, and

upon that persuasion to begin to work upon a new stock. For it is as certain, that he may derive a blessing upon his posterity, as that his parents could transmit a curse and if any man by piety shall procure God's favour to his relatives and children, it is certain that he hath done more than to escape the punishment of his father's follies. If sin doth abound,' and evils by sin are derived from his parents; 'much more shall grace super-abound,' and mercy by grace. If he was in danger from the crimes of others, much rather shall he be secured by his own piety. For if God punishes the sins of the fathers to four generations; yet he rewards the piety of fathers to ten, to hundreds, and to thousands. Many of the ancestors of Abraham were persons not noted for religion, but suffered in the public impiety and almost universal idolatry of their ages: and yet all the evils that could thence descend upon the family, were wiped off; and God began to reckon with Abraham upon a new stock of blessings and piety; and he was, under God, the original of so great a blessing, that his family, for fifteen hundred years together, had from him a title to many favours; and whatever evils did chance to them in the descending ages, were but single evils in respect of that treasure of mercies, which the father's piety had obtained to the whole nation. And it is remarkable to observe, how blessings did stick to them for their father's sakes, even whether they would or no. For, first, his grandchild Esau proved a naughty man, and he lost the great blessing which was entailed upon the family; but he got, not a curse, but a less blessing: and yet, because he lost the greater blessing, God excluded him from being reckoned in the elder line: for God, foreseeing the event, so ordered it, that he should first lose his birthright, and then lose the blessing; for it was to be certain, the family must be reckoned for prosperous in the proper line; and yet God blessed Esau into a great nation, and made him the father of many princes. Now the line of blessing being reckoned in Jacob, God blessed his family strangely, and by miracle, for almost five generations. He brought them from Egypt by mighty signs and wonders: and when for sin they all died in their way to Canaan, two only excepted, God so ordered it, that they were all reckoned as single deaths; the nation still descended, like a river, whose waters were drunk up for

the beverage of an army, but still it keeps its name and current, and the waters are supplied by showers, and springs, and providence. After this, iniquity still increased, and then God struck deeper, and spread curses upon whole families; he translated the priesthood from line to line, he removed the kingdom from one family to another and still they sinned worse; and then we read that God smote almost a whole tribe; the tribe of Benjamin was almost extinguished about the matter of the Levite's concubine: but still God remembered his promise, which he made with their forefathers, and that breach was made up. After this we find a great rupture made, and ten tribes fell into idolatry, and ten tribes were carried captives into Assyria, and never came again but still God remembered his covenant with Abraham, and left two tribes. But they were restless in their provocation of the God of Abraham; and they also were carried captive but still God was the God of their fathers, and brought them back, and placed them safe, and they grew again into a kingdom, and should have remained for ever, but that they killed one that was greater than Abraham, even the Messias; and then they were rooted out, and the old covenant cast off, and God delighted no more to be called 'the God of Abraham,' but the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.' As long as God kept that relation, so long for the fathers' sakes they had a title and an inheritance to a blessing for so saith St. Paul, "As touching the election, they are beloved, for the fathers' sakes "."

I insist the longer upon this instance, that I may remonstrate how great, and how sure, and how preserving mercies a pious father of a family may derive upon his succeeding generations and if we do but tread in the footsteps of our father Abraham, we shall inherit as certain blessings. But then, I pray, add these considerations.

2. If a great impiety and a clamorous wickedness hath stained the honour of a family, and discomposed its title to the divine mercies and protection, it is not an ordinary piety that can restore this family. An ordinary even course of life, full of sweetness and innocence, will secure every single person in his own eternal interest: but that piety, which must be a spring of blessings, and communicative to others,

Rom. xi. 28.

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that must plead against the sins of their ancestors, and begin a new bank of mercies for the relatives; that must be a great and excellent, a very religious state of life. A small pension will maintain a single person: but he that hath a numerous family, and many to provide for, needs a greater providence of God, and a bigger provision for their maintenance and a small revenue will not keep up the dignity of a great house; especially if it be charged with a great debt. And this is the very state of the present question. That piety that must be instrumental to take off the curse imminent upon a family, to bless a numerous posterity, to secure a fair condition to many ages, and to pay the debts of their fathers' sins, must be so large, as that, all necessary expenses and duties for his own soul being first discharged, it may be remarkable in great expressions, it may be exemplar to all the family, it may be of universal efficacy, large in the extension of parts, deep in the intention of degrees: and then, as the root of a tree receives nourishment not only sufficient to preserve its own life, but to transmit a plastic juice to the trunk of the tree, and from thence to the utmost branch and smallest germ that knots in the most distant part; so shall the great and exemplar piety of the father of a family not only preserve to the interest of his own soul the life of grace and hopes of glory, but shall be a quickening spirit, active and communicative of a blessing, not only to the trunk of the tree, to the body and rightly-descending line, but even to the collateral branches, to the most distant relatives, and all that shall claim a kindred, shall have a title to a blessing. And this was the way that was prescribed to the family of Eli, upon whom a sad curse was entailed, that there should not be an old man of the family for ever, and that they should be beggars, and lose the office of priesthood: by the counsel of R. Johanan, the son of Zaccheus, all the family betook themselves to a great, a strict, and a severe religion; and God was entreated to revoke his decree, to be reconciled to the family, to restore them to the common condition of men, from whence they stood separate by the displeasure of God against the crime of Eli, and his sons Hophni and Phineas. This course is sure either to take off the judgment, or to change it into a blessing; to take away the rod, or the smart and evil of it; to convert