N00593:40
Help for distressed parents. Or, Counsels & comforts for godly parents afflicted with ungodly…
Help for distressed parents. Or, Counsels & comforts for godly parents afflicted with ungodly children; and warnings unto children to beware of all those evil courses, which would be afflictive unto their parents. / By Cotton Mather. ; [Two lines of quotation in Latin]
Boston: printed by John Allen for Vavasour Harris, 1695
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Help for Distressed Parents. Offered, at the LECTURE in Boston, 14.… › Case 1: The first CASE.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
II. Since you are Afflicted with Ungodly Children, you should set your selves to make a Right Use of your Affliction. Indeed there are Scorpions at the End of the Rods, when God makes Rods of Children, to Scourge the Parents with them; and now 'tis time to do that thing, whereto we are called, in Mic. 6. 9. Hear the Rod. Parents, The Use that you should make of your deplorable Affliction, is to be in a suitable Examination, Humiliation, and Reformation.
II. Since you are Afflicted with Ungodly Children, you should set your selves to make a Right Use of your Affliction. Indeed there are Scorpions at the End of the Rods, when God makes Rods of Children, to Scourge the Parents with them; and now 'tis time to do that thing, whereto we are called, in Mic. 6. 9. Hear the Rod. Parents, The Use that you should make of your deplorable Affliction, is to be in a suitable Examination, Humination, and Reformation.
Have you any Ungodly Children? They may serve as Glasses, wherein you may Behold something of your Sinfulness before the Lord. Your own Original Sin, is written with […] in all the Ungodliness or your Children. Your Children had never been Ungodly, if they had not from you been, Shapen in iniquity, and Conceived in Sin. Reflect […] The […] Nature which carries out this poor […], ⟨p. 18⟩unto all these Exorbitancies, 'tis by Me derived unto them; 'tis I, 'tis my Corruption, that is the Parent of an the Wickedness, in any Depraved and […] Offspring. It would be a very Lamentable Thing, if a man should, though out Occasionally & Involuntarily, Hurt one of his own Children. Man, Thou hast Poisoned all thy Children; Their Sinning against God, is but the Swelling of the Poison, that is by Thee Transfused into them. When thou […] them Sin, Oh! Remember This, and Let thy Soul be Humbled in thee. And it is possible, That much of your Actual Sin may likewise be Read by you, in their Ungodliness.