N00727:27
A family well-ordered. Or An essay to render parents and children happy in one…
A family well-ordered. Or An essay to render parents and children happy in one another. Handling two very important cases. I. What are the duties to be done by pious parents, for the promoting of piety in their children. II. What are the duties that must be paid by children to their parents, that they may obtain the blessings of the dutiful. / By Cotton Mather. ; [Three lines from Malachi]
Boston: printed by B. Green for Michael Perry, 1699
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. Improve the Baptism of your Children, as an Obligation, and an Encouragement unto you, Parents, to Endeavour the Salvation of your Baptised Little Ones. Of your Children, you may say, with Jacob, in Gen. 33.5. These are the Children, that God hath graciously given to me. Now, Will not you Heartily give back those Children to God again: Their Baptism is to be the Sign and Seal of your doing so. You generally bring your Infant Children unto the Baptism of the Lord: I suppose, 'tis because you are satisfied, That the Children of Believers were in Covenant with God, in the Days of the Old Testament; and, That the Children of Believers ⟨image ?⟩Then had a Right unto the I••ial Seal of the Covenant; and, That in the Days of the New Testament, they have not Lost this privilege. Well, But when you bring your Children to the Sacred Baptism, what is it for? Oh, Let it not be done, as an Empty Formality; as if the Baptism of your Children, were for nothing, but only a Formal and a Pompous putting of a Name upon them. No, but let the serious Language of your Souls, in this Action, be that of Hannah, in 1 Sam 1.28. I have given this Child unto the Lord, as long as he Lives he shall be given unto the Lord. I find in the private Writings of an Holy Man, who dyed in this place, not much above a year ago; That the Day before one of his Children was to be Baptised, he spent the Time in giving up himself and his Child unto the Lord, and in Taking hold of the Covenant for both of them, and in praying, that he might on the morrow, be able in much Faith and Love, and Covenant Obedience, to do it, at the Baptism of the Lord On which he writes, It is not easy tho' common, to offer a Child unto God in Baptism.
II. Improve the Baptism of your Children, as an Obligation, and an Encouragement unto you, Parents, to Endeavour the Salvation of your Baptised Little Ones. Of your Children, you may say, with Jacob, in Gen. 33.5. These are the Children, that God hath graciously given to me. Now, Will not you Heartily give back those Children to God again: Their Baptism is to be the Sign and Seal of your doing so. You generally bring your Infant Children unto the Baptism of the Lord: I suppose, 'tis because you are satisfied, That the Children of Believers were in Covenant with God, in the Dayes of the Old Testament; and, That the Children of Believers