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their souls? Your affections are tender, and will it not move you to think of<br />
their perishing for ever? I beseech you, for the sake of the children of your<br />
own flesh, teach them, admonish them, watch over them, and give them no<br />
rest till you have brought them to Christ.<br />
I shall conclude with this earnest request to all Christian parents that<br />
read these lines, that they would have compassion on the souls of their poor<br />
children, and be faithful to the great trust that God hath put on them. If you<br />
cannot do what you would for them, yet do what you can. Both the church<br />
and the state, the city and the country, groan under the neglect of this<br />
weighty duty. Your children know not God nor his laws, but "take his name<br />
in vain," and slight his worship, and you neither instruct them nor correct<br />
them; and therefore God corrects both them and you. You are so tender of<br />
them, that God is the less tender of both them and you. Wonder not if God<br />
makes you smart for your children's sins; for you are guilty of all they<br />
commit by your neglect of your duty to reform them. Will you resolve,<br />
therefore to enter upon this duty, and neglect it no longer? Remember Eli.<br />
Your children are like Moses in the bulrushes, ready to perish if they have<br />
not help. If you would not be charged before God as murderers of their souls,<br />
nor have them cry out against you in everlasting fire, see that you teach them<br />
how to escape it, and bring them up in holiness and the fear of God. I charge<br />
every one of you, upon your allegiance to God, as you will very shortly<br />
answer the contrary at your peril, that you neither refuse nor neglect this<br />
most necessary duty. If you are not willing to do it, now you know it to be so<br />
great a duty, you are rebels, and no true subjects of Jesus Christ. If you are<br />
willing, but know not how, I will add a few words of direction to help you.<br />
Lead them, by your own example, to prayer, reading, and other religious<br />
duties; inform their understandings; store their memories; rectify their wills;<br />
quicken their affections; keep tender their consciences; restrain their tongues,<br />
and teach them gracious speech; reform and watch over their outward<br />
conversation. To these ends, get them Bibles and pious books, and see that<br />
they read them. Examine them often as to what they learn; especially spend<br />
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