Obedient Patience, Chapter 2 · Case 8
CASE VIII.
Superiours sufferings by bad Children, Servants, Tenants, or Subjects.
VIII. ANother Case, that needeth Patience, is the suffering of Superiors by bad Children and Servants, Tenants, Tradsmen, and others, whom they must use and trust. Of bad Children I have partly spoken before: Natural love maketh this one of the heaviest afflictions in the world: When Parents have been at all that suffering, care, labour, and cost, which go to the bringing of Children into the world, and bringing them up from the breasts to maturity, and teaching them their duty to God and Man, and preparing them to be useful to themselves and others, that after all this they should prove bruitish fleshly Sots, that are slaves to their bellies, and wallow in the sink of filthy lust, and savour nothing but pride and fleshly pleasure, and the belief of Gods word hath no power to change them, yea perhaps prove haters of serious holiness, and enemies of Good men, and plagues to their Country, and fight against the only means of their own and other mens Salvation. Oh, what a heart breaking affliction is this? Yea, when in Case of the most ungodly error, or swinish appetite and lust, the counsel, the tears, the prayers of Parents cannot move them, to any true repentance or reformation: I consess, I that never had a Child, am no fit Judge of the heavyness of this Cross.
I have written my thoughts to such miserable youths, and partly to Parents, in a small Book, called Compassionate Counsel to Young-men: I here briefly adde,
1. In this sad Case, make not light of it, or as ungodly Parents do, that are troubled more for their Childrens wastefulness and want than for their Souls; And yet be not over much cast down: Neglect no means (prayer, counsel, company, &c.) which may tend to their recovery, while there is any hope; And especially look back (not with despair, but) with true repentance upon your own sins of youth against God, your Parents, and your selves. And then examine, whether you have dealt with Christian wisedome and fidelity to have prevented their misery, in their education. Did you with love and diligence labour to make them understand the things of God and their Salvation? Did you labour to bring it to their hearts, that they might fear God and his judgements, and know the evil and danger of sin? Did you labour to make Religion pleasant to them by shewing them the goodness of it, and avoiding harsh averting wayes? Did you watch over their wayes, and keep them from a custome of pleasing their appetites over much? And did you ingage them in wise and godly Company, and use them in religious Exercises, and keep them from the infectious company of bad licentious youths, especially in places of Plays and Gaming, drinking and idleness, wicked Schools, or Academies, where temptations are too strong for fleshly unexperienced youth. If you have failed in these duties, and have sent your Children among the vicious, sensual and malignant, whether on pretence of learning, Ministry, Courtship, breeding, or gainful Trades; no wonder, if both they and you do suffer by it, and if they be plagues to their Country and to you, who have been plagues and treacherous to them, and sent them as into a Pest-House, or a Stews, and then are greived for their diseases.
2. Be humbled for the vitiousness of your own natures, which had the root of all these sins, and conveyed them originally to your Children.
3. Let it make you the more sensible of the greatness of Gods Mercy, which hath healed your natures, and pardoned your sin, and saved you from that wilful fottishness and wickedness, which others are given over too, of which you were in danger.
4. The thoughts of the far greater misery of most of the world, who lie in Idolatry, Infidelity, wickedness, or Errour, may somewhat drown the sense of a particular affliction; As the common plague in London did overcome the sense of the loss of our own friends; and the Common fire overcame the sense of the loss of our Houses.
5. Yet while there is life there is hope: God hath waies enow to humble and break the stiffest and the heardest heart: Therefore pray for them and warn them to the last.
6. Grace maketh all Christs Members dear to us as well as our own Kindered: Christ himself answered when they mentioned his Mother and Bretheren, that they that heard Gods word and kept it were his Mother, Sisters and Bretheren: And when one said, Blessed is the Womb that bare thee, he said, yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and do it. Therefore rejoyce in the welfare of all the Chlidren of God in Heaven and on Earth, who will be as dear to you, as your own Children.
7. Submit to Gods absolute Dominion who best knoweth what to do with his own, and never did wrong to any, nor can do, and will satisfie all at last of the Wisdom and goodness of all his dispensations.
II. Bad Servants also are to some an exercise of Patience, some will not learn nor be reformed, but hate goodness and live wickedly: Some in Drunkenness, Filthyness, Gaming, and Play-houses: Some deceive and rob their Masters; some are Eye Servants and Slothful, and make no Conscience of any fault or neglect which they can but hide, or excuse with lying: Some burn their Masters Houses, or undo them, or at least much damage them by heedlessness, carelessness, and forgetfulness; and the best oft times prove very costly by such neglects.
In all these Cases 1. Repent of all your neglects of them: If you have not diligently taught them the principles of Religion, which should have made them better, or if you have not seriously endeavoured their true Conversion and Sanctification, and bringing Heavenly things to their hearts, which would have kept out the Love of sin; or if you have not taught them a Conscionable life, by a careful example of it in your selves; be humbled, and acknowledge the justness of your Correction, and bear as the fruit of your own sin.
2. Be sure that the sin and misery of your Servants be more grievous to you, than your own loss and suffering by them: It is but temporal things that you lose.
3. Remember what profitable and unfaithful Servants we have been to God, and how much more he daily beareth with in us all.
4. Remember that the frailty of Man is such, that nothing will be done perfectly which imperfect persons do: The wisest and best are lyable to many oversights, forgetfulness, and omissions, and have much which must be born with.
5. Be the more careful that you fail not in any of the duty which you owe to them or any others: For our own sin hurts us more than theirs.
III. What I say of Servants, may serve as to the Case of bad Tenants who will not pay their Rents: And bad Tradesmen that unconscionably borrow and break, and live on other Mens Estates and ruine others by their falseness. God will permit Mans badness to shew it self; and he will have all worldly things appear to be transitory, unsatisfactory, and accompanied with vexation.
IV. As to the patience necessary in Princes and Magistrates to bad provoking Subjects, I am not to meddle with it, being discharged by Rulers from being a Moniter to them.