I thought I had done. But I am sensible how little I have done : and therefore, before I make an end, I must try to set two sorts of people a-doing more for poor unconvert young ones;-two very concerned ones in the case; two that my text hath surely somewhat to do with. I mean, PARENTS and MINISTERS. Surely natural and ecclesiastical fathers are all bound to join me in preaching of this portion of scripture.

1. To you, NATURAL PARENTS, I first address; beseeching you, that you go [and] study what you have to do, and do all that you shall know, for your children's early conversion. I am of the mind, that "gallant language never did God's work;" and do find it what you call "wild note," rather than "set music," that I can ever move you by. Wherefore plainly I tell you, We may thank you for earth's becoming thus unlike heaven, and like to hell. We may thank your negligence, and worse, for the ruin of more children than ever Herod slew, or the liar and murderer of France himself. We may thank you, that children be so generally beasts, before they are young men ; and young devils, before they are old men. We may thank you for vitiating the most numerous, the most ductile, and the most hopeful part of the world; for robbing God of his first-fruits in the world.

I beseech you by God's tender mercies, repent of your cruelties, And I charge you before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, reform ye straightway, and do as aforesaid. The light of nature, that guides you to help your children to go, and to speak, and to do what is necessary for this life, guides you also to help them for the divine life. Nor can you doubt but God's ordinance in the old church for the appearance of the male children before him thrice in the year, was to bring them to an early acquaintance with himself: and there is still both need and obligation to keep the substance of that precept now under the gospel. O let it not be said any longer, that your care is more for your children's clothes, than their souls! For shame, sirs, for shame! let them not be wicked without your pity, nor converted without your pains! Think ye daily of both the advantages and engagements to do it.

Your advantages.-You do love your children best; do you not? and you are best-beloved by them. You are nearest unto them, and have most authority over them. You do know their capacities and their tempers. Who can suit them as you?

Your engagements.-Their sore needs do engage you: and so do the sore evils that (however undesignedly) you have done them. Who brought Adam's sin upon them and into them, but you? And who dares say, that your own personal sins have done them no wrong?

Dying Dr. Harris said, he had made his peace with God, and told his children, that his sins should not hurt them therefore, unless they made them their own. Can you say so, if you were now to die? Well; very nature also engages you. Ay, and equity binds you: for your children are God's, more than yours: and, surely it is to him,

and for him, that you should educate his children. Truth also engages you. For you promised you would so educate them, when you had them baptized; did you not? *

The fear and love of God, if any be in you, do engage you.

And

so doth your own interest also. Yea, lastly, shame engages you. For it is a shame is it not?-to teach children to honour and serve you, and not to honour and serve their God and yours. I have bid many

children ask you, whether, if they were too young to be bound to keep God's commands, they were not also too young to be bound to keep yours. Listen not to the white devils that will suggest, "If your children take not to religion of themselves without your a-do, your pains will do but little good." Do horses or camels tame themselves? Do men tame beasts of the wilderness? and do you not tame the children of your own bodies and families? But, all in a word: does God set you a work, and promise you success; and [do] you dream it to no purpose to set about it? Read you Prov. xxii. 6: "Train up a child in the way he should go : and when he is old, he will not depart from it." "Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell." (Prov. xxiii. 13, 14.) "The rod and reproof give wisdom: but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame. Correct thy son, and he shall give thee rest; yea, he shall give delight unto thy soul." (Prov. xxix. 15, 17.)

2. As for you, CHURCH-FATHERS, may I humbly assume to stir up your minds but in way of remembrance? You know, if the lambs be lost, the Lord of the flock will with great anger ask, "Where were the shepherds all the while? What were they doing?" Nor will our highest feeding of the sheep compound for the loss of his lambs. And I doubt, it will not suffice to say, "Lord, we were the while digging for profound notions, or disputing nice questions, or studying polite sermons, for people whose peace and whose praise we could not have cheaper."

Brethren, for the Lord's sake, let us all do somewhat weekly, and set the parents of our congregations doing somewhat daily, for young people's souls. And let both set to it hopefully, for the reasons foresaid. The difficulty and impossibility, as to our endeavours, be left but to drive us to diligence, and dependence on Him to whom nothing is difficult or impossible. The more we do look for success, the more it will come. Let not catechising, that is praised by all, be unpractised by any. And in preaching, let none of us make need, where we find none, to shoot over young folk's heads, and use a language [which] we must needs know they understand not. Love of God and of them would make us willing rather to be trampled under scorners' feet for our faithfulness, than to ride over their heads in

A minister of the church of England told me, he had refused to baptize some of his parishioners' children, because, as he saw, they would not afterward breed them up to Christianity.

figures of vain-glorious impertinence; the which, wise hearers do no more commend, than weak hearers do understand. Neither be it any more grievous to us than it was to St. Austin, to have now and then an Ad vos, juvenes; to call and tell them, "Young people, this is for you." I would be glad to see wanton wits have less sauce, and weak souls have more meat, in all our sermons; and to discern that our pains in making converts did exceed the Papists' in making proselytes. For it must be owned, it is an uncolourable profaneness, to baptize infancy and not teach youth, or but slightly: because otherwise we shall starve the nursery; and then what becomes of Jesus Christ's family?

The good Lord awaken us all, and set ministers, parents, young people themselves, all a-doing, and well-doing! Our churches then shall be beautified, and joyed, and strengthened with abundance of young meditating Isaacs; young Jacobs, seeking the blessing; young Solomons, choosing wisdom; young Obadiahs, fearing the Lord; young Johns, lying in Christ's bosom; yea, young children, crying "Hosanna;" stilling, or shaming at least, and balking, God's enemies and ours. Origen's father, Leonides, would sometimes uncover his breast as he lay asleep, and solemnly kiss it; blessing God, that had given him to be a father to so excellent a child. And so shall many of us have warrant to do. Upon our houses, schools, and churches, it shall be writ and read of all, Jehovah-shammah, "The Lord is there." Amen and Amen.

SERMON XVIII.

BY THE REV. DANIEL WILLIAMS, D.D.

WHAT REPENTANCE OF NATIONAL SINS DOTH GOD REQUIRE, AS EVER WE EXPECT NATIONAL MERCIES?

Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground: for it is time to seek the Lord, till he come and rain righteousness upon you.-Hosea x. 12.

THE prophet joineth counsel with threatenings. Amendment is that he calleth them to, as a means to save them. That he might induce them to this, he represents their aggravated sins, and the dangers to which they were exposed by their provocations: yet lest this call should still be uneffectual, through an opinion that repentance could avail little to a people so guilty, he addeth, that if they returned to God, their sins, though great, should not prevent mercy, and the threatened judgments, though near, might be diverted.

By this text God proclaims, not only to particular persons, but to nations, how desirable it is to him to execute his goodness; and his extreme backwardness to avenge himself on the most provoking kingdoms, unless they add impenitency under solemn warnings unto their rebellion.

God seems to address himself to Ephraim to this purpose: "Thou art a very guilty people; yet turn, that I may forgive. Thou art on the very brink of ruin. Thy obstinateness is so notorious, that it will not consist with the rules or credit of my government to spare thee longer. O, yet be persuaded to render thyself a subject capable of my kindness! I have long pleaded, and thou seemest even unpersuadable. Yet I will make one further essay; I will try thee once more. 'Sow to yourselves in righteousness.'

999

First. The words contain some of the essentials of repentance, and suppose the rest.—Under a metaphor from tillage, God applieth himself in the description of this duty. As if he were to say,

1. He that will repent must deal with his indisposed heart.— "Break up the fallow ground: " whatever pain or difficulty attends so barren or obstinate a frame of soul, you must strive with yourselves; pluck up those weeds, strike at the root of your lusts, which render the fruits of righteousness impossible. This sense of that clause is more evident from those words of another prophet: "Break up your fallow ground, and sow not among thorns." (Jer. iv. 3.)

2. When the heart is thus prepared, we must proceed to proper acts of reformation.-"Sow to yourselves in righteousness," ad justitiam, ["to righteousness"]. Let the rule of righteousness be observed in your hearts and ways; be just to God and men; return to

God in sincerity; be and do what may argue you to be "trees of righteousness." (Isai. lxi. 3.) Do thus "to yourselves; that is, Leave it not to others: or, You shall reap the advantage of it yourselves, if you repent.

3. You must also " seek the Lord."-That is, worship God, and not idols, as hath been your way. Follow after him, who is departed from you; call him; upon crave his grace to help you. But be not satisfied with faint and short attempts; persist in this work till you find his favour in the blessed effects of it, even "till he come and rain righteousness upon you."

These heads of repentance this text affords.

Secondly. This repentance is urged from a variety of arguments : but principally from this, that national mercies would certainly follow this national repentance.

"Reap in mercy." "Reap at the face of mercy, or immediately." It is promised more strongly, than if it had been said indicatively, "You shall reap," in the future tense. Being put thus imperatively, the import of it is this: "You have no more to do, but possess your mercies upon your repentance; mercy will of itself grow from that root. God hath provided all antecedent causes; he hath ordained the connexion; and it lies on him to make a repenting people happy. You may be assured of this; for that which was mere mercy in making the promise, is become an act of righteousness by the promise. You may now expect it from God as just;" in which sense I take that clause, "Till he come and rain righteousness upon That which was you." mercy" in the first part of the verse, is "righteousness" in the last part. I know it is true doctrine to say, “Till God bestow on you holy inclinations, and ability to perform;" but that is not the most designed sense. He further argues from the plenty of those blessings which God would afford on their repentance: "Till he come and rain righteousness." The returns of God to a repenting people are in a fulness of blessing: "And there shall be showers of blessings." (Ezek. xxxiv. 26.)

66

There is one motive more, namely, the seasonableness. "It is time to seek the Lord." It is high time, and but barely so you cannot say, "There is no hope;" (Isai. lvii. 10;) though you must repent soon, or not at all. The consideration of this paraphrase must lead any one to the case that I am to handle: Can any serious spirit think it vain to ask, "What is that national repentance, which may give a sinful people hope of mercy?" Which is the same with the case as it is given me :

What repentance of national sins doth God require, as ever we may expect national mercies?

I have led you to it by this text, that it may not seem a melancholy fancy, a mystery not to be handled, or a needless inquiry.

It is an awful case. It is not put to satisfy your curiosity, but to guide your fears and hopes. It is not only to direct your minds to a right judgment of the matter, but to excite your hearts to that repentance which may afford us hope in the midst of our dangers and