Imatges de pàgina
PDF
EPUB

as

SERMON XII.

FIFTH COMMANDMENT. PART IV.

EPHES. vi. 4.

AND YE FATHERS, PROVOKE NOT YOUR CHILDREN TO WRATH, BUT BRING THEM UP IN THE NURTURE AND ADMONITION OF THE LORD.

A

Barbarous custom prevailed once even among the Greek nations, that whenever the parents of a child were unwilling to be troubled with the care of bringing him up, they took, and exposed him, as the phrafe was; laid and left him, as foon as he was born, in fome diftant

Luke x.

36.

folitary place, to die by famine, or be torn in pieces by wild beasts.

own.

Sometimes it happened, that a traveller having loft his road, or a sportsman in pursuit of game, paffed that way, took up the infant, and maintained him with his Which now of these two, to imitate a question of our Lord, think ye, was father to the expofed child? He furely that Shewed mercy on him. The other deserved not the name, nor can claim the rights of a parent: He was rather a murderer. And if the laws of his country protected him from punishment, and the customs of those times from fhame; yet by no law certainly of reafon or religion, can he ever demand duty from this fon: but is to be excepted out of the number of those parents, concerning whom it is commanded, Honour thy father and thy mother.

Power and prerogatives are for the benefit

benefit of the poffeffor only in the fecond place. The good of those who are governed, the fervice of the public, is the principal thing intended. This authority of parents, among the reft, as it is fo confiderable, is charged with a proportionable load of obligations; and must be supported by benefits, or at leaft by kindness, which is a difpofition to confer them.

Indeed to do them juftice, Parents are not commonly deficient in this difpofition. They fhould love their children, no doubt; but they do fo, and there is no occafion in general to remind them of it. I do not remember, that this duty is commanded any where in the whole compafs of the Scriptures. Is it therefore unneceffary? God forbid. If any parent fhould feel in his heart, that he is without fo natural an affection; he ought, (and this is the meaning of all other precepts to love any one,) to acquire and

cul

cultivate it by all the ways he can, and especially by acting as if he possessed it.

But Parents do not fo often want kindness, as discretion and judgment in the direction of it.

Sometimes they let their love for their children become too ftrong. And then, as it is very painful to themselves; so it is not for that reason the more useful, or even acceptable to the perfon who is the object of it. But rather it is apt to do harm, and create disgust; and becomes in both these respects, like any other immoderate affection, the cause of it's own difappointment.

A child certainly has a right to be beloved and it seems prudent, as it is natural and delightful, to let him underftand that he is fo; to the end that his heart too may be touched, that he may be influenced in his behaviour towards you

by

« AnteriorContinua »