Compassionate Counsel to All Young Men, Chapter 6
CHAP. VI. The joyful State and Blessing of good Children, to themselves and others.
§ 1. FRom what is said Chap. 2. and 5. it's easie to gather, how joyful a case to themselves, and what a Blessing to Parents and others it is, when Children betime are sober, wise, and godly, and obedient. The difference doth most appear at age, and when they come to bring forth to themselves and others the fruits of their dispositions: And the end and life to come will shew the greatest difference: But yet even here, and that betime, the difference is very great.
§ 2. I. As to themselves: How blessed a state is it to be quickly delivered from the danger of damnation, and Gods displeasure, that they need not lie down and rise in fear, lest they be in Hell whenever Death removeth them from the Body? Can one too soon be out of so dreadful a state? Can one that is in a house on fire, or falln into the Sea, make too much haste to be delivered? If a man deep in debt be restless till it be paid, and glad when it is discharged; If a man in danger of sickness or a condemning Sentence of the Judge, be glad when the fear of Death is over; How glad should you be to be safe from the great danger of Damnation? And till you are sanctified by Grace, you are far from safety.
§ 3. And if a mans Sickness, Pain, or Distraction be a Calamity, the cure of which brings ease and joy; How much more ease and joy may it bring, to be cured from all the grievous Maladies of reigning sin? Sanctification will cure your minds of spiritual blindness and madness, that is, of damnable Ignorance, Unbelief, and Error: It will cure your affections of idolatrous, distracting, carnal Love; of the itch of fleshly Desires or Lusts; of the feaver of revengeful passions, and malignant hatred to goodness and good men; and of self vexing envy and malice against others; of the greedy worm of Covetousness, and the drunken desire of ambitious and imperious minds: It will cure your Wills of their fleshly servitude and biass, and of that mortal Backwardness to God and holy things, and that sluggish dulness and lothness to choose and do what you are convinced must be done: It will make good things easie and pleasant to you; so that you will no more think you have need to beg mirth from the Devil, or steal it from sin, as if God, Grace and Glory had none for you: But it will be so easie to you, to love and find pleasure in the Bible and good Books, in good Company and good Discourse, in spiritual Meditations and thoughts, in holy Sermons, Prayers, and Church Communion and Sacraments, even in Christ, in God, and the forethoughts of Heaven, that you will be sorry and ashamed to think that ever you forsook such joys for fleshly pleasure, and defiled your Souls with filthy and forbidden things. And is not the itch of Lust better cured than scratch'd? Is not the feaverish and dropsie thirst after Drink, and Wealth, and Honour, better cured than pleased to the sinners death? And is not a lazy backwardness to Duty, better cured by spiritual health, than pleased with idleness and sleep?
§ 4. And certainly you cannot too soon attain the delights of Faith and Hope, and Love, of holy Knowledge and Communion with God and Saints: You cannot too soon have the great blessing of Righteousness, Peace, and Joy in the Holy Ghost; and live night and day in peace of Conscience, in assurance that all your sins are pardoned, and that you are the adopted Sons of God, and Heirs of Heaven, sealed by his Spirit, accepted in your Prayers, welcome to God through Christ, and when you die shall be with him: Can you make too great haste from the folly and filth of sin, and the danger of Hell, into so safe and good a state as this?
§ 5. And it will be a great comfort to you, thus to find at age and use of reason, that your baptismal Blessings ceased not with your Infancy, by your own rejection; but that you are now by your own consent in the Bond of God's Covenant, and have a right to all the blessings of it, which the Sacrament of Christs Body and Blood will confirm; as you had your Entrance by your Parents consent and accepted Dedication: For the Covenant of Grace is our certain Charter for Grace and Glory.
§ 6. And is it not a joy to you to be your Parents joy? To find them love you not only as their Children, but as Gods? Love maketh it sweet to us to please and be beloved by those whom we love. If it be not your grief to grieve your Parents, and your pleasure to please them, you love them not, but are void of natural affection.
§ 7. And O what a mercy will you find it, when you come to age and business in the World! 1. That you come with a clear Conscience, not clogged, terrified, and shamed with the sins of your Youth. 2. And that you come not utterly unfurnished with the knowledge, Righteousness and Virtue, which you must make use of in every condition all your lives: when others are like Lads, that will go to the Universities before they can so much as read or write. To live in a Family of your own, and to trade and converse in the World▪ and specially to go to Church, to hear, to pray, to communicate, in private to pray, to meditate, in a word, to live or die like a Christian, like a man, without the furniture of Wisdom, Faith, and serious Godliness, is more impossible and unwise, than to go to Sea without Provision, or to War without Arms, or to become a Priest without Book or understanding.
§ 8. II. And you that are young men can scarce conceive, what a joy a wise and godly Child is to his wise and godly Parents! Read but Pro. 10.1 & 13.1. & 17.2, 25. & 19.13, 26. & 27.11. & 23.15, 19, 24, &c. The Prayers and Instructions of your Parents are comfortable to them, when they see the happy fruit and answer. They fear not Gods Judgments upon their houses, as they would do if you were Cains, or Chams, or Absaloms: They labour comfortably, and comfortably leave you their Estates at death, when they see that they do not get and leave it for those that will serve the Devil with it, and consume it on their Lusts; but will use it for God, for the Gospel, and their Salvation: If you fall sick and die before them, they can rejoyce that you are gone to Christ, and need not mourn as David, for Absalom, that you go to Hell. If you overlive them, they leave the world the easier, when they leave as it were part of themselves here behind them, who will carry on the work of God which they lived for, and be blessings to the world when they are gone.
§ 9. III. And O what a mercy is it to Church and State, to have our posterity prove better than we have been, and do God more Service than we have done, and take warning by our faults to avoid the like? Solomon tells us of one poor wise man that saved a City: And God would have spared Sodom, had there been but ten righteous Persons in it. Wherever yet I lived, a few persons have proved the great blessings of the place; to be Teachers, Guides, and Exemplary to others, as the little Leaven that leaveneth the Lump, and as the Stomach, Liver, and other nutritive parts are to the Body. Blessed is that Church, that City, that Country, that Kingdom, that hath a wise, and just, and holy People. The nearest good and evil are the greatest: Our Estates are not so near us as Wives and Children, nor they so near us as our Bodies, nor they so much to us as our Souls: It's more to a Person, House, or Country, what they are, than what they have, or what others do for them or against them.
It is these that are Gods Children as well as ours, that are the Blessing so often mentioned in the Scripture, who will as the Rechabites obey their Fathers wholsom Counsels, rather than their Lusts and carnal Companions, and God before all: Who walk not in the Counsel of the Vngodly, nor stand in the way of Sinners, nor sit in the seat of the scornful: But their Delight is in the Law of the Lord, and in that Law they meditate day and night. Psal. 1. Lo, such Children are an heritage of the Lord; such fruit of the Womb is his Reward. They are as Arrows in the hand of a mighty man; Happy is the man that hath his Quiver full of them. They shall not be ashamed; but they shall speak with the Enemies in the gate. Psal. 127.3, 4, 5. Were it not for wise and godly Children to succeed us, Religion, and Peace, and all publick good, would be but as we frail mortals are, like the Grass or Flowers of a few days or years continuance; and the difference between a Church and no Church, between a Kingdom of Christians and of Infidels, would be but like the difference between our waking and our sleeping time, so short, as would make it the less considerable.