The Christian-man's calling: or, A treatise of making religion ones business. Wherein the nature…

Reader, walk unspottedly; otherwise when thou threatenest thy children or servants with the judgements of God against fin, thou dost, like David, pass a sentence of death and condemnation against thy own soul.

Fourthly, Be careful and diligent that thy whole Family may sanctify the Lords Day: When the Israelites were to sacrifice to God in the Wilderness, they went with there little ones, and all their households, Exod. 12. When Elkanah went up to sacrifice to the Lord, all his house went with him, 1 Sam. 1.21. Thy duty is, according to these examples, to see that all thy family (unless necessity should hinder) serve the Lord in public. Do not suffer any of thine to be playing idly in the Churchyard, when they should be praying earnestly, ⟨p. 543⟩in the Church; nor to be talking vainly of the World, when they should be hearkening reverently to the Word. O what pity is it, that they should be sucking poison, when they should be sucking milk out of the breasts of Consolation! The fourth Commandment doth fully speak thy duty, not only to be careful that they forbear thy work, but also that they mind Gods Worship. Thou knowest not, but that thy child or servant, by missing one season, may miss of salvation. Possibly they are wrought hard in the Week days, and have very little time for their souls, so that their only time of improving their spiritual stock, by trading towards Heaven, is on a Sabbath Day. Or it may be they are careless of their main work (of providing for the other World) all the Week, that if thou shouldst neglect them on the Lords Day, they will he left under a necessity of perishing: Surely they who have but one good meal in seven days, and are robbed of that, are unconceivably wronged. When David came to his Brethren to the Camp, Eliab said to him, How camest thou down hither? Where is the flock? and with whom hast thou left those few sheep in the Wilderness? (1 Sam. 17.28