The Fountain of Life Opened

(2.) My next request is, that you will all be persuaded, whether converted, or unconverted; to set up all the duties of Religion in your families, and govern your Children, and Servants as men that must give an account to God for them in the great day. O that there were not a prayerless Family in this Town. How little will your Tables differ ⟨image 11⟩from a manger, where beasts feed together, if God be not owned, and acknowledged there, in your eating, and drinking? And how can you expect blessings should dwell in your Tabernacles, if God be not called upon there! Say not you want time for it, or that your necessities will not allow it, for had you been more careful of those duties, it's like you had not been exposed to such necessities; besides, you can find time to be idle, you can waste a part of every day vainly. Why could not that time be redeemed for God? Moreover, you will not deny, but the success of all your affairs at home, and abroad, depends upon the blessing of God, and if so, think you it is not the right way, even to temporal prosperity, to engage his presence, and blessing with you, in whose hand your all is? Say not, your Children, and servants are ignorant of God, and therefore you cannot comfortably join with them in those duties. For the neglect of these duties, is the cause of their ignorance and it is not like they will be better, till you use Gods means to make them so.

(2.) My next request is, that you will all be perswaded, whether converted, or unconverted; to set up all the duties of Religion in your families, and govern your Children, and Servants as men that must give an account to God for them in the great day. O that there were not a prayerless Family in this Town. How little will your Tables differ ⟨image 11⟩from a manger, where beasts feed together, if God be not owned, and acknowledged there, in your eating, and drinking? And how can you expect blessings should dwell in your Tabernacles, if God be not called upon there! Say not you want time for it, or that your necessities will not allow it, for had you been more careful of those duties, it's like you had not been exposed to such necessities; besides, you can find time to be idle, you can waste a part of every day vainly. Why could not that time be redeemed for God? Moreover, you will not deny, but the success of all your affairs at home, and abroad, depends upon the blessing of God, and if so, think you it is not the right way, even to temporal prosperity, to engage his presence, and blessing with you, in whose hand your all is? Say not, your Children, and servants are ignorant of God, and therefore you cannot comfortably joyn with them in those duties. For the neglect of these duties, is the cause of their ignorance and it is not like they will be better, till you use Gods means to make them so.