The saints everlasting rest

2. Then think as sadly how you have wronged your children. If an unthrift that hath sold all his lands, will lament it for his children's sake, as well as his own, much more should you.

3. Next set presently to work, and learn yourselves. If you can read, do; if you cannot, get some that can; and be much among these that will inst••ct you: be not ashamed to be seen among learners, but be ashamed that you had not learned sooner. GOD forbid you should be so mad, as to say, I am now too old to learn; except you be too old to serve GOD, and be saved, how can you be too old to learn to be saved? Why not rather, I am too old to serve the devil and the world, I have tried them too long to trust them any more. What if your parents had not taught you any trade to live by? Would not you have set yourselves to learn, when you had come to age? Remember that you have souls to care for, as well as your children, and therefore first begin with yourselves.

4. While you are learning yourselves, teach your children what you do know; and what you cannot ⟨p. 255⟩teach them yourselves, put them to learn of others that can: persuade them into the company of those who will be glad to instruct them. Have you no neighbours that will be helpful to you herein? O do not keep yourselves strange to them, but go among them, and desire their help, and be thankful to them, that they will entertain you in their company. GOD forbid that you should be like those that Christ speaks of, Luke xi. 52. that would neither enter into the kingdom of God themselves, nor suffer those that would to enter. GOD forbid you should be such barbarous wretches, as to hinder your children from being godly, and to teach them to be wicked! If any thing that walks in flesh may be called a devil, I think it is a parent that hindereth his children from salvation: nay, I will say more, I verily think that in this they are far worse than the devil. GOD is a righteous judge, and will not make the devil himself worse than he is: I pray you be patient while you consider it, and then judge yourselves. They are the parents of their children, and so is not the devil: do you think then that it is as great a fault in him to seek their destruction, as in them? Is it as great a fault for the wolf to kill the lambs, as for their own dams to do it? Is it so horrid a fault for an enemy in war to kill a child, or for a bear or a mad dog to kill it, as for the mother to dash its brains against a wall? You know it is not: do you think then that it is so hateful a thing in Satan to entice your children to fin and hell, and to discourage and dissuade them from holiness, as it is in you? You are bound to love them by nature, more than Satan is. O then, what people are those that will teach their children, instead of holiness, to curse, and swear, and rail, and back-bite, to be proud and revengeful, to break the Lord's day, and to despise his ways, to speak wantonly and filthily, to scorn at holiness, and glory in sin! O when GOD shall ask these children, where learned you this language and practice? and they shall