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

7. It would be an effectual way and means to make those in your Families more obedient and better towards you, if you would call on them to serve the Lord, and you were more in Prayer with them. You cry out of stubborn an disobedient Children: They grieve and break my heart saith one; I have a Child that is my daily wound and sorrow, saith another; and Servants never worse, is your often complaint: Who is all this long of? do not you read your sin in your punishment. If you had taught them better their duty towards God, they would have made more Conscience of their duty towards you; if you had prayed with them, God might have bowed their hearts, as a return to your Prayers, to have walked more suitable to their relative duties. I have read of a young man going to the Gallows desired to speak with his Mother in her ear, who bit off her ear with his teeth, crying out against her as the cause of his death; by your negligence, saith he, I am come to this woeful end: If you are alike careless of your Families, if you do not lose your ears by your own Children, yet you might lose something that is better.

7. It would be an effectual way and means to make those in your Families more obedient and better towards you, if you would call on them to serve the Lord, and you were more in Prayer with them. You cry out of stubborn ann disobedient Children: They grieve and break my heart saith one; I have a Child that is my daily wound and sorrow, saith another; and Servants never worse, is your often complaint: Who is all this long of? do not you read your sin in your punishment. If you had taught them better their duty towards God, they would have made more Conscience of their duty towards you; if you had prayed with them, God might have bowed their hearts, as a return to your Prayers, to have walked more suitable to their relative duties. I have read of a young man going to the Gallows desired to speak with his Mother in her ear, who bit off her ear with his teeth, crying out against her as the cause of his death; by your negligence, saith he, I am come to this woful end: If you are alike careless of your Families, if you do not lose your ears by your own Children, yet you might lose something that is better.