N00618:70
A good master well served. A brief discourse on the necessary properties & practices…
A good master well served. A brief discourse on the necessary properties & practices of a good servant in every-kind of servitude: and of the methods that should be taken by the heads of a family, to obtain such a servant. / By Cotton Mather. ; [Two lines from Joel]
printed by B. Green, 1696
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.
III. Let your Obedience to your Masters (and Mistresses) while you are Servants be such, as will manifest that you are the Obedient Children of God. You are the Animate, Separate, Active Instruments of other men. Servants, your Tongues, your Hands, your Feet, are your Masters, and they should move according to the Will of your Masters. It you are those Eye-servants, who will Obey your Masters no longer than their Eye is upon you, know it, the Eye of the All seeing, and Almighty God, is upon you, to Condemn you, for this Disobedience. The most becoming intercourse between Masters and Servants, is that in Math. 8. 9. I say to this man, Go, and he goes; and unto another, Come, and he comes; and unto my servant, Do This, and he doth it. You should •y a Ready Obedience, procure the pleasure of ⟨p. 39⟩your Masters, to be as well Executed, as if you Masters themselves did Execute it; and let I not be said by them, I must Command my man and do it my self. It was said, in Rom. 6. 18 His Servants ye are, to whom you Obey. You have but the Name, the meet, the bare Name of Servants, if you don't Obey your Masters; and, that I assure you, is not a Little Criminal! The ju• Commands of your Masters, cannot be broken but at the same instant you break the Command of the most High God, whose Kingdom Rule• over all. As 'tis said of Magistrates, in Rom. 13 2. Whosoever Resisteth the Power, Resisteth the Ordinance of God; and they that Resist, shall Receive: themselves Damnation. So may it be said of Masters; Their Power over you is the Ordinance O God; When you Refuse or Forget the Doing of what they have Bidden you to do, you do so far affront the Ordinance of God. So then, th• Anger of your Masters is not all that you do by your Disobedience Expose your selves unto; you become obnoxious to the Anger of a Dreadful God, by your Disobedience. Think of it, Servants; When you have wilfully, yea, or though but carelessly, transgressed, the Commands of you Masters, you may thus animadvert upon you• selves, I have Sinned against God, in this Miscarry age!