CHAPTER XXIX – 12. Children and relations: how to be denied
and see that if you prosper in any worldly thing, you offer it all to God, and deny yourselves, and prosper not to the flesh.
CHAPTER XXIX
Children and Relations how to be Denied 12. ANOTHER selfish interest is in friends and children, and other near and dear relations, and this is also to be denied.
Not that you should imitate those unnatural heretics that tell us that fathers and mothers, and brethren, and sisters, and husbands, and princes, and wives, and subjects, are all carnal relations that must be disowned, any further than justice binds us to a retribution to parents, or others that have been at pains or cost upon us. No, this is worse than heathenish impiety, and not only against the fifth commandment, but abundance of the plainest passages through the Scripture. To be without natural affection, and disobedient to parents, is part of the character of those impious professors of whom
Paul prophesied, 2 Tim. 3:2, 3. "If Christian servants have heathens to their masters, they must not therefore cast off the yoke, but count them worthy of all honour, that the name of God and his doctrine be not blasphemed: and if they have believing masters, they must not despise them because they are brethren, but the rather do them service because they are faithful." This is the doctrine of the Gospel, which establisheth, and not dissolveth, our relations: and "if any teach otherwise, he is proud, knowing nothing, but doating about questions and strifes of words;" 1 Tim. 6:1–4. Believing wives must stay even with unbelieving husbands, and win them to Christ by an eminent subjection, chastity, modesty, and piety; 1 Pet. 3:1–6. 1 Cor.
7:13, 14. And the like may be said of other relations. God calls us not, as Popish votaries conceive, to renounce and separate from our natural and other near relations, on pretence of being devoted to him. The words of Paul, 2 Cor. 5:16, are abused by them. It is true, we must know no man after the flesh, no not Christ himself; that is, as esteeming them principally for carnal excellencies, as personages, greatness, birth, &c. or to carnal advantages and ends, or preferring the body and common relations before the inward spiritual worth and spiritual relations; and thus we must not know either parents, or children, or husbands, or wives, after the flesh; nor should a Christian know or do any thing after the flesh as a carnal man: but yet, as we still continue our relation to Christ as his disciples, and servants, and members, and redeemed ones, for all that we know him not after the flesh, so must we continue our relations to others, and be faithful in the duties of those relations, and this after the Spirit, and for God.
So that by this you may see, that it is our relations, carnally considered, that are the fleshly interest which we must not know; that is, as they are looked upon as any part of that self, or of the interest of that self which would be its own end and God, and which is opposite to God, or not subordinate to him. To look upon your children more as yours than as God's is a carnal selfish thought: to love them inordinately, and more because they are your own than because they are God's, and to love your own interest in your children more than God's interest in them, is a selfish regarding them after the flesh. Grace doth not destroy nature, nor natural relations or affections; but it sanctifieth them all to God, and carrieth us above it and destroyeth it, as glorious intuition destroyeth gracious knowing in part, that is, by perfecting it. Before
sanctification, we know, esteem, regard, and love our parents, children, husbands, wives, merely as thus related to us, and in these carnal respects, and rise no higher; and if we had conversed with Christ himself, and eat and drank in his presence, and loved him accordingly, it would have been but a selfish, carnal knowledge, esteem, and love. But now we are sanctified, as God is exalted, and self-denied and annihilated, as opposed or separated from God, so are all things that belong to self; and therefore, if we had loved parents, or Christ himself, with such a carnal, selfish love before, yet now we love them with higher love, that carrieth self and all to God.
And thus even self is so destroyed (as opposite to God and separate from him), as thereby to be exalted as united and subservient to him.
And so is the love of friends, relations, or Christ himself (if we had loved him as a natural kinsman or brother, as some did that yet believed not in him); it is destroyed, but by an exalting, perfecting destruction. Just so far as self is dead, so far carnal knowledge and self-interest in friends is dead, and their dearness to us for that interest, and self and they are all advanced and dedicated unto God.
And thus it is that the apostle would be understood, and thus it is that self must be denied in your relations; but because much duty consisteth herein, I shall moreover tell you the several parts of it in a few directions which shall mostly extend to other relations, but principally to parents, because they are aptest to exceed.
1. See that it be God more than yourselves that you love in your children and other relations; and to that end, see what of God is in them, as they are his creatures, as devoted to him, as any way gifted by him for his service, as sanctified if they are such. He that loveth any creature for itself, and doth not principally love God in them, loveth them but carnally.
2. See therefore that you value and love those most, that have most of God in them, and the best of his endowments. Love a crooked, deformed child, that is godly, better than the most comely, or beautiful, or witty, that is ungodly. When parents have a humorous, unreasonable love, to one child above the rest, without desert, or to a worse before a better, this is but a carnal, selfish love.
3. Love none excessively, but with a moderate love, such as shall allow God and holiness the preeminence: so that when you have the most love for your relations, you may have more for God, at least in the estimation, resolution, adhesion of your souls to him, if not in the passionate part of love.
4. See that you subject them to the government of Christ; labour to win all other relations to him, and devote your children to him betimes, that they may be his as soon as yours. While they have no wills of their own to use, they are to choose with your wills; that is, you are to make choice for them: and therefore if you unfeignedly dedicate them to God, you have small reason to doubt of his acceptance. This all parents do virtually that are godly; for he that is himself devoted to God by sanctification, doth with himself devote all that he hath, and virtually all that ever he shall have: and if he understand himself, he will do it actually. And hence it is that the seed of believers (yea, of one believer,) are said to be holy; not only or chiefly because they are yours, born of your bodies, nor merely from a promise of God, that hath no pre-supposed reason from the subject; but because they are the children of one that hath devoted himself, and all that he hath, to God: and if he understand himself, doth actually offer, dovote, and dedicate his child to God in the
solemn baptism, ordinance, and covenant. And God will sure accept all, that upon his own invitation are consecrated and offered to him.
5. See that you submit them heartily to the dispose of God: so that whatever he doth with them, for sickness or health, for poverty or riches, for honour or dishonour, for life or death, you can patiently bear it, and say as Eli, "It is the Lord, let him do as seemeth him good;" 1 Sam. 3:18. Murmur not if God afflict and take them away, even at once, as he did the sons of Job; or if he should afflict you in them, as he did David in Amnon and Absalom. Remember that as the resignation of life itself, is the point by which Christ, under the Gospel, doth try men's faith, so it was the resignation of an only son, which was next to life, by which he would try Abraham, the father of the faithful, before the incarnation of Christ. If therefore you will be children of Abraham, you must walk in the steps of faithful Abraham, and remember that your children are not your own; and be content that God do with his own as he pleases.
6. Make God their portion as much as in you lieth, and seek more for a spiritual than a temporal felicity for them, and acquaint them with their Creator in the days of their youth: as believing, that those of them that are the holiest are the happiest.
7. Devote your children to such callings and employments in which they are likeliest to be most serviceable to God. Consider their dispositions and parts, and then never ask what kind of life is the most honourable or gainful for them, but in what way and course of life they may most serve God, and be most useful to his church; and to that let them be devoted.
8. Favour them not in sin; and suffer them not to dishonour God that they are devoted to: remember Eli's example. Gentle reproofs, instead of necessary severe correction, is called by God, "a despising him, and preferring his sons before him" (1 Sam. 2:29, 30), even because his "sons made themselves vile, and he restrained them not;" 1 Sam. 3:13. Take heed, as you love yourselves or them, of taking their parts against God, or against correction, and excusing the sin by which they do dishonour him.
9. Give them not, for their carnal advancement in the world, that part of your estate which is due to God. You owe it all to him; and in the disposing of it, he hath limited you to begin at home, and provide so for your children that they may have their daily bread, and so much more as they are in likelihood the fittest stewards to improve for God. But if you see the public state of the church or commonweal to stand in need of your assistance, and you shall then give almost all to your children, to make them rich and great in the world, and put off the works of greater moment with some poor, inconsiderable alms or legacy, this is to prefer self before the Lord; even as it is imagined to survive in your progeny, even when natural self can no longer enjoy it. It is a wonder, how so many men, seeming holy and devoted to God, can quiet their consciences in such a palpable sin as this. If one of them have two hundred, or three hundred pounds a year, it is a wonder if he leave a hundred a year of it to any pious or charitable use; but if he leave forty or fifty pounds to the poor, or build some small almshouse, he thinks he hath done well: all the rest must go to leave his son in equal dignity and riches in the world as himself. But of this I spoke before.
10. Lastly, be sure that you be very suspicious of self, when the case of your children or any dear relation is before you: for self is near you, and will stick close, and will not easily be thrust out of your councils, nor shaken off. And therefore in your own case, and your children's case, or the case of your near friends, you will have much ado to overcome the cunning and strong temptations to partiality, if you were the holiest saint on earth (though overcome them you will in the main, if you have true grace): but if you are dead professors, it is twenty to one but they will overcome you, and you will show the world that you are selfish hypocrites, and more for your children and friends than God.
Let me here give a few instances in this warning.
1. How often have we seen it here and elsewhere, that people that make some show of religion, and are forward to have vice punished, and discipline exercised, yet when it falls on any children, or near relations of their own, they are as much against it as they are for it in others; yea, rise up with passion and bitter reproaches of officers, ministers, or others that are the causes of it. As one hypocrite is tried when he denieth to suffer for Christ himself, so others show themselves hypocrites sooner by preferring their children; yea, their sinful children; yea, the present ease, or profit, or credit of their children, before their duty and the honour of God. And they will rather have God provoked, sin unpunished, and their children's own salvation hazarded, than they will have them justly and regularly chastised; yea, some of them rise up as malignant enemies against them that do it.
2. Again, when God hath convinced you of duty, if a carnal friend, a husband, or a parent, do but contradict it, and persuade you from a known duty or a holy life, how commonly do men obey, because forsooth they are their friends that do persuade them?
3. Moreover, when the case falls out that a man cannot follow God and his duty, and be true to his soul, but he is like to lose his friends; how commonly is God denied, that friends may not be denied, and conscience wounded, and duty balked, that the favour of friends may not be lost. O, saith one, they are the friends that I live by, my livelihood is in their hands, I am undone if they cast me off! Well, take them, and make thy best of them, and keep them as long as thou canst; if thou canst live better without God than them, or canst spare
God's favour better than theirs, and they are better friends to thee than Christ is, and would be, take thy course, and judge at last whether the friend that thou didst choose, or that thou didst neglect and abuse, was the better, and would have stood thee in more stead in thy deepest extremities. Christ hath resolved you once for all, that he that loveth father or mother more than him, is not worthy of him, and cannot be his disciple: nay, if he hate not father, and mother, and all; that is, if he will not cast them all away, and forsake them as men do hated things, rather than forsake Christ and the glory which he hath promised; Luke 14:26. 33. And therefore, seeing Christ hath thought meet to instance, in the forsaking of carnal friends for his sake, as a duty of all that will be his disciples, you may see that this is a very considerable part of your self-denial; and, doubtless, it is a point that Christians are usually put to the trial in, or else Christ would not have instanced in it. Few turn to Christ, but their carnal friends will turn from them. No greater enemies to a man in the matters of his salvation (except carnal self), than carnal friends; and