have most of God in them, and the best of his endowments. Love a crooked, deformed child, that is godly, better than the most comely, or beautiful, or witty, that is ungodly. When parents have a humorous, unreasonable love, to one child above the rest, without desert, or to a worse before a better, this is but a carnal, selfish love.

3. Love none excessively, but with a moderate love, such as shall allow God and holiness the preeminence: so that when you have the most love for your relations, you may have more for God, at least in the estimation, resolution, adhesion of your souls to him, if not in the passionate part of love.

4. See that you subject them to the government of Christ; labour to win all other relations to him, and devote your children to him betimes, that they may be his as soon as yours. While they have no wills of their own to use, they are to choose with your wills; that is, you are to make choice for them and therefore if you unfeignedly dedicate them to God, you have small reason to doubt of his acceptance. This all parents do virtually that are godly; for he that is himself devoted to God by sanctification, doth with himself devote all that he hath, and virtually all that ever he shall have and if he understand himself, he will do it actually, And hence it is that the seed of believers (yea, of one believer,) are said to be holy; not only or chiefly because they are yours, born of your bodies, nor merely from a promise of God, that hath no pre-supposed reason from the subject; but because they are the children of one that hath devoted himself, and all that he hath, to God: and if he understand himself, doth actually offer, dovote, and dedicate his child to God in the solemn baptism, ordinance, and covenant. And God will sure accept all, that upon his own invitation are consecrated and offered to him.

5. See that you submit them heartily to the dispose of God so that whatever he doth with them, for sickness or health, for poverty or riches, for honour or dishonour, for life or death, you can patiently bear it, and say as Eli, “It is the Lord, let him do as seemeth him good;" 1 Sam. iii. 18. Murmur not if God afflict and take them away, even at once, as he did the sons of Job; or if he should afflict you in them, as he did David in Amnon and Absalom. Remember that as the resignation of life itself, is the point by

which Christ, under the Gospel, doth try men's faith, so it was the resignation of an only son, which was next to life, by which he would try Abraham, the father of the faithful, before the incarnation of Christ. If therefore you will be children of Abraham, you must walk in the steps of faithful Abraham, and remember that your children are not your own; and be content that God do with his own as he pleases.

6. Make God their portion as much as in you lieth, and seek more for a spiritual than a temporal felicity for them, and acquaint them with their Creator in the days of their youth as believing, that those of them that are the holiest are the happiest.

7. Devote your children to such callings and employments in which they are likeliest to be most serviceable to God. Consider their dispositions and parts, and then never ask what kind of life is the most honourable or gainful for them, but in what way and course of life they may most serve God, and be most useful to his church; and to that let them be devoted.

8. Favour them not in sin; and suffer them not to dishonour God that they are devoted to: remember Eli's example. Gentle reproofs, instead of necessary severe correction, is called by God, "a despising him, and preferring his sons before him" (1 Sam. ii. 29, 30), even because his "sons made themselves vile, and he restrained them not;" 1 Sam. iii. 13. Take heed, as you love yourselves or them, of taking their parts against God, or against correction, and excusing the sin by which they do dishonour him.

9. Give them not, for their carnal advancement in the world, that part of your estate which is due to God. You owe it all to him; and in the disposing of it, he hath limited you to begin at home, and provide so for your children that they may have their daily bread, and so much more as they are in likelihood the fittest stewards to improve for God. But if you see the public state of the church or commonweal to stand in need of your assistance, and you shall then give almost all to your children, to make them rich and great in the world, and put off the works of greater moment with some poor, inconsiderable alms or legacy, this is to prefer self before the Lord; even as it is imagined to survive in your progeny, even when natural self can no longer

enjoy it. It is a wonder, how so many men, seeming holy and devoted to God, can quiet their consciences in such a palpable sin as this. If one of them have two hundred, or three hundred pounds a year, it is a wonder if he leave a hundred a year of it to any pious or charitable use; but if he leave forty or fifty pounds to the poor, or build some small almshouse, he thinks he hath done well: all the rest must go to leave his son in equal dignity and riches in the world as himself. But of this I spoke before.

10. Lastly, be sure that you be very suspicious of self, when the case of your children or any dear relation is before you for self is near you, and will stick close, and will not easily be thrust out of your councils, nor shaken off. And therefore in your own case, and your children's case, or the case of your near friends, you will have much ado to overcome the cunning and strong temptations to partiality, if you were the holiest saint on earth (though overcome them you will in the main, if you have true grace): but if you are dead professors, it is twenty to one but they will overcome you, and you will show the world that you are selfish hypocrites, and more for your children and friends than God.

Let me here give a few instances in this warning.

1. How often have we seen it here and elsewhere, that people that make some show of religion, and are forward to have vice punished, and discipline exercised, yet when it falls on any children, or near relations of their own, they are as much against it as they are for it in others; yea, rise up with passion and bitter reproaches of officers, ministers, or others that are the causes of it. As one hypocrite is tried when he denieth to suffer for Christ himself, so others show themselves hypocrites sooner by preferring their children; yea, their sinful children; yea, the present ease, or profit, or credit of their children, before their duty and the honour of God. And they will rather have God provoked, sin unpunished, and their children's own salvation hazarded, than they will have them justly and regularly chastised; yea, some of them rise up as malignant enemies againt them that do it.

2. Again, when God hath convinced you of duty, if a carnal friend, a husband, or a parent, do but contradict it,

and persuade you from a known duty or a holy life, how commonly do men obey, because forsooth they are their friends that do persuade them?

3. Moreover, when the case falls out that a man cannot follow God and his duty, and be true to his soul, but he is like to lose his friends; how commonly is God denied, that friends may not be denied, and conscience wounded, and duty balked, that the favour of friends may not be lost. O, saith one, they are the friends that I live by, my livelihood is in their hands, I am undone if they cast me off! Well, take them, and make thy best of them, and keep them as long as thou canst; if thou canst live better without God than them, or canst spare God's favour better than theirs, and they are better friends to thee than Christ is, and would be, take thy course, and judge at last whether the friend that thou didst choose, or that thou didst neglect and abuse, was the better, and would have stood thee in more stead in thy deepest extremities. Christ hath resolved you once for all, that he that loveth father or mother more than him, is not worthy of him, and cannot be his disciple: nay, if he hate not father, and mother, and all; that is, if he will not cast them all away, and forsake them as men do hated things, rather than forsake Christ and the glory which he hath promised; Luke xiv. 26. 33. And therefore, seeing Christ hath thought meet to instance, in the forsaking of carnal friends for his sake, as a duty of all that will be his disciples, you may see that this is a very considerable part of your self-denial; and, doubtless, it is a point that Christians are usually put to the trial in, or else Christ would not have instanced in it. Few turn to Christ, but their carnal friends will turn from them. No greater enemies to a man in the matters of his salvation (except carnal self), than carnal friends; and therefore either God or they must be denied. For when God is for holiness, and they against it: when they are for sinful pleasures and gain, and God against it, both cannot be pleased; and therefore one of them must be denied, God or they.

CHAPTER XXX.

Revengeful Passions to be Denied.

13. ANOTHER part of self-denial consisteth in the denying of revengeful passions, that provoke us against those that have done us wrong, or that we judge to be our enemies. It is the common saying of such persons as are disposed to this sin, that'revenge is sweet:' it easeth the minds of malicious persons to have their will upon their adversaries, and to see them at their feet. Nothing of all his honours and prosperity could satisfy Haman till he was revenged of Mordecai. As a burning, festering, boil, or imposthume, is eased by opening and vent, so is a boiling passionate mind, when by railing speeches, or revengeful actions, it venteth itself against them that they hate. But in this also self must be denied by all that will be Christ's disciples, for he forgiveth none but those that can heartily forgive another: and that we may know that this is a part of self-denial of great necessity, he hath put it into our prayers, and will not have us so much as ask for forgiveness ourselves, if we cannot forgive that we may know, that seeing it is not to be asked for on lower terms, it is not to be hoped for. The forgiving grace of God in Christ, doth so melt and overcome the hearts of all true Christians, that it disposeth them in their measure to imitate him in forgiving: and they cannot find in their heart to take another by the throat for a hundred pence, when their Lord hath forgiven them ten thousand talents: Matt. xviii. 24. 28. The grace that is most gloriously manifested in the Gospel, must needs make the deepest impression on the soul, and consequently conform the soul into its image: and doubtless this is love, and compassion, and forgiving mercy; and therefore he that cannot love his enemy, bless them that curse him, and pray for them that hate and persecute him, and return good for evil, can be no child of God; Matt. v. 44-46. It is an inhuman oblivion of our own condition, for a man to seek revenge of another for a trifle (for it can be no greater, as it is against such simple worms as we), when so many and heinous sins have been forgiven us. Doth God remit to us