A Practical Commentary on the Epistle of Jude

Every age is to consider of the next, lest we entail a prejudice upon them against the Truth: What cometh from forefathers is usually received with reverence: A vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers, 1 Pet. 1. 18. If you be not careful you may sin after you are dead, our errors and evil practises being continued and kept afoot by posterity. All the World had been lost in Error and Profaneness, if God had not stirred up in every age some faithful Witnesses to keep up the memory of Truth. There is in man a natural desire to do his posterity good; Love is descensive: Oh consider, how shall the children that are yet unborn come to the knowledge of the purity of Religion, without some public monument, or care on your part to leave Religion undefiled. Antichrist had never prevailed so much, if men had thought of after ages; they slept and unwarily yielded to encroachment after encroachment, till Religion began to degenerate into a fond Superstition or bundle of pompous and idle Ceremonies; and now we see how hard it is to wean men from these things, because they have flown down them in the stream of succession, and challenge the authority and prescription of ancient Customs. Look as sometimes the Ancestors guilt is measured into the bosom of posterity, because they continued in their practises; Matth. 23. 35. That upon you may come all the righteous blood, &c. So many times the miscarriages of posterity may justly be imputed to us, because they shipwrecked themselves upon our example: The fathers ate sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge. Well then, let us perform the part of faithful Trustees, and keep the Doctrine of Salvation (as much as in us lieth) pure and unmixed.

Every age is to consider of the next, lest we intail a prejudice upon them against the Truth: What cometh from forefathers is usually received with reverence: A vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers, 1 Pet. 1. 18. If you be not careful you may sin after you are dead, our errors and evil practises being continued and kept afoot by posterity. All the World had been lost in Error and Prophaneness, if God had not stirred up in every age some faithful Witnesses to keep up the memory of Truth. There is in man a natural desire to do his posterity good; Love is descensive: Oh consider, how shall the children that are yet unborn come to the knowledg of the purity of Religion, without some publike monument, or care on your part to leave Religion undefiled. Antichrist had never prevailed so much, if men had thought of after ages; they slept and unwarily yeilded to incroachment after incroachment, till Religion began to degenerate into a fond Superstition or bundle of pompous and idle Ceremonies; and now we see how hard it is to wean men from these things, because they have flown down them in the stream of succession, and challenge the authority and prescription of ancient Customs. Look as sometimes the Ancestors guilt is measured into the bosom of posterity, because they continued in their practises;