The saints everlasting rest

6. Consider further, that the very welfare of church and state lieth mainly on this duty of well-educating children; and without this, all other means are like to be far less successful. I seriously profess to you, that I verily think all the sins and miseries of the land may acknowledge this sin for their nurse. It is not good laws and orders that will reform us, if the men be not good, and reformation begin not at home; when children go wicked from the hands of their parents, in every profession they bring this fruit of their education with them. I tell you seriously, this is the cause of all our miseries in church and state, even the want of a holy education of children. Many lay the blame on this neglect, and that; but there is none hath so great a hand in it as this.

7. I entreat you that are parents, to consider what excellent advantages you have above all others for the saving of your children.

1. They are under your hands while they are young, and tender, and flexible; but they come to ministers when they are grown older, and slif•er, and settled in their ways, and think themselves too good to be catechised. You have a twig to bend, and we an oak: you have the young plants of sin to pluck up, and we the deep-rooted vices. The consciences of children are not so seared with a custom of sinning, and long resisting grace, as others. You have the soft and tender earth to plough in, and we have the hard and stony ways, that have been trodden on by many years practice of evil. We have a double task, first to unteach them, and then to teach them better; but you have but one. We must unteach them all that the world, and the flesh, and wicked company, and the devil have been diligently teaching them in many years. You have them before they are possessed with prejudice against the truth; but we have them