Of What Public Concernment the Quality of Youth Is
Of What Public Concernment the Quality of Youth Is SECT. 1. The welfare of the world is of far greater worth than of any one single person; and he hath put off humanity who doth not more earnestly desire it. If this world consisted but of one generation, then to make that generation wise and good would be enough to make it a happy world. But it is not so. In heaven, and in the future glorious kingdom, "there is neither marrying, nor giving in marriage, but they are as the angels," in a fixed everlasting state, and one continued generation maketh up the new Jerusalem: being once holy and happy, they are so forever. But here it is not so: one generation cometh, and another goes: if the father be as wise as Solomon, the son may be as foolish as Rehoboam. Oh what a great work it is to make a man truly wise and good! How many years' study doth it usually require! What wisdom and diligence in teachers! What teachableness and diligence in learners; and especially the grace of God! And when all is done, the man quickly dies and obtains his ends in another world. But his children are born as ignorant, and perhaps as bad, as he was born: he can neither leave them his knowledge, nor his grace. They must have all the same teaching, and labor, and blessing as he had, to bring them to the same attainments.
The mercy and covenant of God taketh them into his church, where they have great advantages and helps; and promises them more
mercy for their relation to a faithful parent, if he or they do make no forfeiture of it. But as their nature is the same with others, so their actual wisdom must come by God's blessing on the use of the same means, which are necessary to the children of the worst men. A Christian's child is born with no more knowledge than a heathen's and must have as much labor and study to make him wise.
Sect. 2. It is certain then, that the welfare of this world lieth on a good succession of the several generations; and that all the endeavors of one generation, with God's greatest blessing on them, will not serve for the ages following. All must begin anew, and be done over again, or all will be as undone to the next age. And it is not the least blessing on the faithful, that their faith and godliness dispose them to have a care of posterity, and to devote their children wholly to God, as well as themselves, and to educate them in his fear. If nature had not taught birds and beasts to feed their young, as well as to generate them, their kind would be soon extinct. Oh what a blessed world were it, if the blessings of men famous for wisdom and godliness were entailed on all that should spring from them! and if this were the common case!
Sect. 3. But the doleful miseries of the world have come from the degenerating of good men's posterity. Adam hath his Cain, and Noah his Ham, and David his Absalom; Solomon, Hezekiah, and Josiah, left not their like behind them. The present state of the Eastern churches is a dreadful instance. What places on earth were more
honorable for faith and piety than Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, Constantinople, Ephesus, Philadelphia, and the rest of those great and noble countries? and these also strengthened with the powerfullest Christian empire that ever was on earth. And now they are places of barbarism, tyranny, and foolish Mahometanism, where the name of Christ is made a scorn, and the few Christians that keep up that sacred profession, by tyranny kept in so great ignorance, that, alas! the vices of most of them dishonor their profession, as much as their enemies' persecutions do. Oh what a doleful difference is there between that great part of the world now, and what it was fourteen hundred or a thousand years ago!
And alas! were it not for the name of a pompous Christian church, how plain an instance would Rome be of the same degeneracy! And some countries that received the blessing of reformation, have revolted into the darkness of popery. What a change was in England by Queen Mary's reign! And how many particular cities and towns are grown ignorant and malignant, which in former times were famous for religion! The Lord grant it may never be the case of London! Yea, how many persons of honorable and great families have so far degenerated from the famous wisdom and piety of their grandfathers yea, and fathers, as to hate that which their parents loved, and persecute those whom their ancestors honored! The names of many great men stand honored in history for their holiness to God, and their service to their several countries, whose posterity
are the men that we are most in danger of. Alas! in how few such houses hath piety kept any long succession! Yea, some take their fathers' virtues to be so much their dishonor, that they turn malignant persecutors, to free themselves from the supposed reproach of their relations. Yea, some preachers of the gospel, devoted to God by pious parents, become revilers of their own parents, and despisers of their piety, as the effect of factious ignorance.
Sect. 4. And on the other side, when piety hath successively, as a river, kept its course, what a blessing hath it proved! (But how rare is that!) And when children have proved better than their parents, it hath been the beginning of welfare to the places where they lived.
How marvelously did the Reformation prevail in Germany in Luther's time, when God brought out of popish monasteries many excellent instruments of his service; and princes became wise and pious, whose parents had been blind or impious! Godliness or wickedness, welfare or calamity, follow the changes and quality of posterity.
And men live so short a time, that the work of educating youth aright is one half of the great business of man's life. He that hath a plantation of oaks, may work for twenty generations: but he that plants gardens and orchards with plants that live but a little time, must be still planting, watering, and defending them.
Sect. 5. Among the ancient sages of the world the Greeks and Romans, and much more among the Israelites, the care of posterity and public welfare was the great thing which differenced the virtuous and laudable, from those of a base, selfish, sensual disposition. He was the bravest citizen of Rome that did most love and best serve his country. And he was the saint among the Jews who most loved Sion, and the security and succession of its holy and peaceable posterity. And the Christian faith, hope, and interest, do lead us herein to a much higher pitch, and to a greater zeal for public good, in following HIM that whipped out profaners from the temple, even a zeal of God's house which eats us up. It teaches us, by the cross, most effectually to deny ourselves, and to think nothing too dear to part with to edify the church of God; nor any labor or suffering too great for common good. It teaches us to pray for the hallowing of God's name, the coming of his kingdom, and the doing of his will on earth, as it is done in heaven, before our daily bread, and any other personal interest of our own. Therefore the families of Christians should be as so many schools or churches, to train up a succession of persons meet for the great communicative works to which God calleth all believers, in their several measures: it is eminently teachers, but it is also all others in their several ranks, who must be "the salt of the earth, and the lights of the world." And indeed the spirit of holiness is so eminently the spirit of love to God and man, that it inclines every sanctified person to a communicative zeal, to make others wise, and good, and happy.
Sect. 6. And God in great mercy hath planted, yet more deeply and fixedly, the natural love of parents to their children, that it might be in them a spring of all this duty; so that though fleshly vice may make men mistake their children's good, as most ungodly men do their own, and think that it consists in that in which it doth not; yet still the general desire of their children's welfare, as well as of their own is deeply rooted, and will work for their welfare, as soon as they well know wherein it doth consist. And God hath not given them this love, only for the good of the individual children, but much more for the commonwealth and church; that as many sticks make one fire, and many exercised soldiers one army, so many welleducated children may make up one peaceable and holy society.
Sect. 7. And accordingly it is much to be observed, that God hath not given children a natural love and submissiveness to parents, only for the personal benefit of their provision, and other helps; but especially that hereby they may be teachable and obedient to those instructions of their parents by which they may become blessings in their generations, and may conjunctly make up wise and holy societies, families, churches, and commonwealths. For these ends it is, that God hath bound you, as to reverence your masters, tutors, and pastors, so especially both to reverence and love your parents, that you may be the more capable of their necessary instruction and advice.
Sect. 8. Yea, the great strictness of God, in condemning polygamy, adultery, and fornication, seems to be especially for the securing of the good education of children, for their souls and for the public good. For it is notorious, that confusion in marriages and generation would many ways tend to the depraving of human education, while mothers had not the necessary encouragement to perform their part.
The younger women would be awhile esteemed, and afterwards be cast off and made most miserable; and families be like wandering beggars, or like exposed orphans; disorder and confusion would deprive children of much of their necessary helps, and barbarousness and brutishness corrupt mankind.
By all this it is most evident, that the great means of the welfare of the world must be the faithful and holy endeavors of parents, and the willing teachableness and obedience of children, that they may escape the snares of folly and fleshly lusts and may early get that wisdom and love of goodness which may make them fit to be blessings to the places where they live.