The Fountain of Life Opened

But yet grace hath not so far prevailed in the sanctification of any mans affections, but that there will be excesses or defects in the exercise of them towards our relations, yea, and in this the most eminent Saints, have been eminently defective. But the pattern I set before you this day, is a perfect pattern. As the Church finds him the best of Husbands,¹ so to his Parents he was the best of Sons, and being the best and most perfect, is therefore the rule and measure of all others. Christ knew how those corruptions we draw from our Parents, are returned in their bitter fruits upon them again to the wounding of their very hearts, and therefore it pleased him to commend obedience and love to Parents in his own example to us.

1. 1Optimus i• ••• quoque genere, est regula & mens•ra caterorum.

It was anciently a Proverb among the Heathen, in sola Sparta, expedit senescere, It's good to be an old man or woman only in Sparta, The ground of it was the strict Laws that were among the Spartans to punish the rebellions and disobedience of Children to their aged Parents. And shall it not be good to be an old Father or Mother in England, where the Gospel of Christ is Preached, and such an argument as this now set before you urged; an argument which the Heathen world was never acquainted with? Shall Parents here be forced to complain with the Eagle in the Fable, that they are smitten to the heart, by an arrow winged with ⟨p. 420⟩their own Feathers. Or as a Tree rived in pieces by the wedges that were made of its own body? God forbid.