A supplement to The Morning-exercise at Cripple-Gate, or, Several more cases of conscience practically…

1. Children are more confident of their Parents love than any others. Whether Ministers and strangers speak to them in love, they are uncertain, but of their Parents love they are well assured. Now nothing takes so much with any one, as that which is believed to proceed from love, specially by one that loves. This instruction, saith the loving Child, comes not only from my dear Father's lip or head, but from his affectionate heart; and therefore I will readily receive it, and lodge it in my own.

1. Children are more confident of their Parents love than any others. Whether Ministers and strangers speak to them in love, they are uncertain, but of their Parents love they are well assured. Now nothing takes so much with any one, as that which is believed to proceed from love, specially by one that loves. This instruction, saith the loving Child, comes not only from my dear Father's lip or head, but from his affectionate heart; and therefore I will readily receive it, and lodg it in my own.

2. Parents have their children in hand betimes, before they are fly-blown with any false Opinions, or leavened with bad impressions; before they have any other sin than that which was born with them. Parents therefore have an opportunity of making the first impressions on them, even while they are most docile, tender, flexible, and least apt to make resistance against instruction. But now when they come to their Minister, Instructor, Tutor, they are as a Paper Printed before, and therefore unapt to receive another Impression. They have much to be untaught before they can be taught: fraught with self conceitedness and proud objections, more apt to strive against and resist Instruction, than humbly and readily to receive it.

2. Parents have their children in hand betimes, before they are fly-blown with any false Opinions, or leven'd with bad impressions; before they have any other sin than that which was born with them. Parents therefore have an opportunity of making the first impressions on them, even while they are most docile, tender, flexible, and least apt to make resistance against instruction. But now when they come to their Minister, Instructer, Tutor, they are as a Paper Printed before, and therefore unapt to receive another Impression. They have much to be untaught before they can be taught: fraught with self conceitedness and proud objections, more apt to strive against and resist Instruction, than humbly and readily to receive it.