Early piety, exemplified in the life and death of Mr. Nathanael Mather, who ...…

'Tis thy Creator certainly: The Young Man, be he never so young, has cause to Remember him. It was but a rational Proposal in Psal. 95. 6. O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker. If God be thy Maker, it becomes thee to be his Servant: Thou art wholly beholden to God for all the Powers of thy Spirit, for all the Members of thy Body: Whom shouldest thou then first use them for, but the Lord alone? It was a sharp Rebuke to Belshazzar in Dan. 5. 22. The God in whose hands thy breath is, him thou hast not glorified: Even so, thy Breath and Being is from the Lord, and shall it be said of thee, Him thou hast not Remembered? ⟨p. 58⟩this were a very vile thing indeed! It is a similitude used, if I mistake not, by some of the Ancients, If any Man could be so ingenious as to make an Engine able to think or speak, he might justly expect the first work of that Engine should be to acknowledge the maker of it. Thus, Young Man, it was but lately that thou camest out of the Hands of God; the first rational Action of such an one, surely should be a Religious Action. It cannot be too soon for thee to Remember him, in whom thy living, and thy moving, and thy very being is.

'Tis thy Creator certainly: The Young Man, be he never so young, has cause to Remember him. It was but a rational Proposal in Psal. 95. 6. O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker. If God be thy Maker, it becomes thee to be his Servant: Thou art wholly beholden to God for all the Powers of thy Spirit, for all the Members of thy Body: Whom shouldest thou then first use them for, but the Lord alone? It was a sharp Rebuke to Belshazzar in