A guide to godliness or a Treatise of a Christian life showing the dutiesA guide to godlynesse or a Treatise of a Christian life shewing the duties

§. Sect. 2 Of family exercises after we are come from the Church.

At our meals we are to spend the time in such holy and religious conferences, as may be no less profitable for the cheering and refreshing of our souls, then our corporal food for the nourishment of our bodies; and in the performance of such other Christian duties tending to piety and Gods service, as before we prescribed for other days, which upon the Lords Day, above all the rest, ought to be done with greatest zeal and devotion; which being finished, it is good to sing a Psalm to Gods praise, and to read one or more Chapters of the holy Scriptures. After which Christian exercises, we may, if time will permit, confer together of those things which we have heard and learned at the forenoons Sermon, and by causing every one (as it were) to offer his shot, to make up the whole reckoning, one remembering what another hath forgotten, and he again supplying that wherein the other is defective, whereby it will come to pass, that whatsoever any one hath gathered of these spiritual treasures, shall not only be more firmly locked up and deeply imprinted in his own memory, but shall also serve as a common stock for the enriching of ⟨p. 399⟩the whole company. And this being done, we are then again by Prayer and Meditation, to prepare our selves for the well performing of Gods public service in the evening exercise, as we did in the forenoon; which being finished in that holy and religious manner before prescribed, and afterwards by some meditation recalled to our remembrance for our own private use, it will be profitable for governors of families to call together their children and servants, and either by strength of their memories, or help of their Notes taken of the Sermon, to repeat as near as they can what hath been delivered, that so the things not marked may be better observed, and that which was forgotten may be recalled, and by this repetition may more surely be engraven in the memory. Sometimes also it will be fit and necessary to prevent negligence in the younger sort, that the governors of the family do examine them, and require of them an account of that which they have heard, that they may see how they have profited by the public Ministry. For if they think it necessary that they should give them an account of their worldly business, or how they have laid out their moneys when they have sent them to the Market;