And therefore with all imaginable Concern of Confcience, let Parents make it their Business to infuse into their Childrens Hearts early and good Principles of Morality. Let them teach them from their very Cradle, to think and speak awfully of the great God, reverently of Religion, and respectfully of the Dispensers of it; it being no part of Religion any where, but within the four Seas, to despise and scoff at the Ministers of it. But above all, next to their Duty to God himself, let them be carefully taught their Duty to their King; and not so much as to pretend to the Fear of the one, without the Honour of the other; let them be taught a full and abfolute (fo far as legal) Obedience and Subjection to him (in all things lawful); the true and glorious Characteristick of the Church of England; for I know no Church else, where you will be sure to find it. And to this end, let Parents be continually instilling into their Childrens Minds a mortal and implacable Hatred of those Twin Plagues of Christendom, Fanaticism and Rebellion; which cannot be more compendiously, and withal more effectually done, than by displaying to them the late unparallelled Rebellion, in its flaming and true Colours. For this was the Method, which God himself prescribed to his own People, to perpetuate the Remembrance of any great and notable Providence towards them; and particularly in the Institution of the Prime Instance of their Religion, the Passover, Exod. xii. 26, 27. And it shall come to pass, when your Children shall say unto you, What mean you by this Service? That you shall say, It is the Lord's Passover; who passed over the houses of the Children of Ifrael in Egypt, when he fmote the Egyptians, and delivered our Fathers, &c. So say I to all true English Parents. When your Children shall ask you, Why do we keep the Thirtieth of January as a Fast? and the Twenty ninth of May as a Festival? What mean you by this Service ? Then is the Time to rip up, and lay before them the Tragical History of the late Rebellion, and Unnatural Civil War. A War commenced without the least Shadow or Pretence of Right; as being notoriously against all Law. A War begun without any Provocation, as being against the Justest, the Mildest, and most Pious Prince, that had ever reigned. A War raised upon Clamours of Grievances; while the Subject swam in greater Plenty and Riches than had ever been known in these Islands before; and no Grievances to be found in the three Kingdoms, besides the Persons who cry'd out of them. Next to this, let them tell their Children over and C4 over, over, of the Villanous Imprisonments, and Contumelious Tryal, and the Barbarous Murder of that Blessed and Royal Martyr, by a Company of Cobblers, Taylors, Draymen, Drunkards, Whoremongers, and Broken Tradesimen; though fince, I confess, dignify'd with the Title of the Sober part of the Nation. These, I fay, were the Illustrious Judges of that great Monarch. Whereas the whole People of England, Nobles, and Commons together, neither in Parliament, nor out of Parliament, (as* that great Judge in the Tryal of the Regicides affirmed) had Power by Law to touch one hair of his Head, or judicially to call him to Account for any of his Actions. And then in the last place, They are to tell their Children also of the Base and Brutish Cruelties practised by those Blood-hounds in the Plunders, Sequestrations, Decimations, and Murders of their poor Fellow Subjects: Likewife of their horrid Oaths, Covenants, and Perjuries; and of their shameless, infatiable, and Sacrilegious Avarice, in destroying the Purest Church in the World, and seizing its Revenues; and all this under the highest Pretences of Zeal for Religion, and with the most folemn Appeals to the great God, while they were actually spitting in his Face. tuate These things, I say, and a thousand more, they are to be perpetually inculcating into the Minds of their Children, according to that strict Injunction of God himself to the Israelites, Deut. vi. 6, 7, 8. These words shall be in thine Heart, and thou shalt diligently teach them thy Children, and shalt talk of them, when thou fittest in thy House, and when thou walkest by the Way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. Such Discourses should open their Eyes in the Morning, and close them in the Evening. And I dare undertake, that if this one thing had been faithfully and constantly practised, even but since the late Restauration (which came upon these poor Kingdoms like Life from the Dead) the Fanaticks had never been so confiderable, as to cause those Terrible Convulfions in Church and State, and those Misunderstandings between the King and his People, which we have seen and trembled at, and must expect to see, as long as the same Spirit, which governed in Forty One, continues still so powerful (as it does) amongst us. For, I am fure, no King and That, can ever reign quietly together. But some, perhaps, may here very sagely object. Is not this the way to sowr and spoil the Minds of Children, by keeping the Remembrance of the late Rebellion always frefla upon them? I answer, No; no more than to warn them against Poisons, Pits and Precipices, is likely to endanger their Lives; or to tell them by what ill Courses Men come to the Gallows, is the ready way to bring them thither. No; nothing can be too much hated by Children, which cannot be too much avoided by Men. And since Vice never loses its hold, where it keeps its Reputation, the Minds of Youth can never be sufficiently fortify'd against villanous and base Actions, but by a deep and early Abhorrence, caused by a faithful Representation of them. So preposterous a Method will it be found to bring a Crime out of Fashion, by making Panegyricks upon the Criminal. upon In short, let Parents prevent and seize the very first Notions and Affections of their Children, by engaging them, from the very first, in an Hatred of Rebellion; and that, if possible, as strong as Nature, as irreconcileable as Antipathy; and so early, that they themfelves may not remember when it began, but that, for ought they know, it was even Born with them. Let them, I say, be made almost from their very Cradle to hate it, Name and Thing; so that their Blood may rise, and their Heart may swell at the very mention of it. In a word, let them by a kind of Preventing Instinct abhorr it, even in their Minority, and they |