His Grace John Ld. Arch-Bpp of Canterbury AEtat 64 AnÌ„o 1694 SIX SERMONS I. Of Stedfastness in Religion II. Of Family-Religion III. IV. V. Of Education of Children VI. Of The Advantages of an early Piety Preached in the Church of St. Lawrence Jury in London By His Grace JOHN Lord Archbishop of Canterbury The Second Edition LONDON Printed for B. Aylmer at the Three Pigeons against the Royal-Exchange in Cornhill and W. Rogers at the Sun against St. Dunstan's Church in Fleetstreet M DC XC IV. THE PREFACE TO THE READER BEING I hope for the remainder of my Life released from that irksome and unpleasant work of Controversy and Wrangling about Religion I shall now turn my thoughts to something more agreeable to my temper and of a more direct and immediate tendency to the promoting of true Religion to the happiness of Human Society and the Reformation of the World I have no intention to reflect upon any that stand up in defence of the Truth and contend earnestly for it endeavouring in the spirit of meekness to reclaim those that are in Error For I doubt not but a very good man may upon several occasions be almost unavoidably engaged in Controversies of Religion and if he have a head clear and cool enough so as to be master of his own Notions and temper in that hot kind of Service he may therein do considerable advantage to the Truth Though a man that hath once drawn blood in Controverâ—y as Mr. Mede expresseth it is seldom known ever perfectly to recover his own good temper afterwards For this reason a good Man should not be very willing when his Lord comes to be found so doing and as it were beating his fellow-servants And all Controverâ—y as it is usually managed is little better A good man would be loth to be taken out of the World reeking hot from a sharp contention with a perverse Adversary and not a little out of countenance to find himself in this temper translated into the calm and peaceable Regions of the Blessed where nothing but perfect charity and good will reign for ever I know not whether St. Paul who had been taken up into the third Heavens did by that Question of his Where is the Disputer of THIS WORLD intend to insinuate that this wrangling work hath place only in this World and upon this Earth where only there is a Dust to be raised but will have no place in the Other But whether St. Paul intended this or not the thing it sâ—lf I think is true that in the other World all things will be clear and past dispute To be sure among the Blessed and probably also among the Miserable unless fierce and furious Contentions with great Heat without Light about things of no moment and concernment to them should be design'd for a part of their Torment As to the following Sermons I am sensible that the Style of them is more loose and full of words than is agreeable to just and exact Discourses But so I think the Style of Popular Sermons ought to be And therefore I have not been very careful to mend this matter chusing rather that they should appear in that native simplicity in which so many years ago they were first fram'd than dress'd up with too much care and Art As they are I hope the candid and ingenuous Readers will take them in good part And I do heartily wish that all that are concern'd in the respective Duties treated on in the following Sermons would be persuaded so to lay them to heart as to put them effectually in practice That how much soever the Reformation of this corrupt and degenerate Age in which we live is almost utterly to be despair'd of we may yet have a more comfortable prospect of future Times by seeing the foundation of a better World begun to be laid in the careful and conscientious discharge of the Duties here mention'd That by this means the Generations to come may know God and the Children yet unborn may fear the Lord. I have great reason to be sensible how fast the infirmities of Age are coming upon me and therefore must work the Works of Him whose Providence hath placed me in the Station wherein I am whilst it is Day because the Night cometh when no man can work I knew very well before I enter'd upon this great and weighty Charge my own manifold defects and how unequal my best abilities were for the due discharge of it but I did not feel this so sensibly as I now do every day more and more And therefore that I might make some small amends for greater failings I knew not how better to place the broken hours I had to spare from almost perpetual business of one kind or other than in preparing something for the Publick that might be of use to recover the decayed Piety and Virtue of the present Age in which iniquity doth so much abound and the Love of God and Religion is grown so cold To this end I have chosen to publish these plain Sermons and to recommend them to the serious perusal and faithful practice both of the Pastors and People committed to my Charge earnestly beseeching Almighty God that by his Blessing they may prove effectual to that good end for which they are sincerely design'd Concerning Resolution and Stedfastness in Religion A SERMON Preached at St. LAWRENCE JURY JUNE the 3 d. 1684. JOSH. XXIV 15. But as for me and my house we will serve the Lord. AFTER Joshua had brought the People of Israel into the promised Land and setled them in the quiet possession of it his great desire was to establish them in the true Religion namely in the Worship of the One true God who had brought them out of the Land of Egypt and given them the possession of that good Land the Land of Canaan And now finding himself weak and declining being an hundred and ten years old and fearing leâ—t after his death the People should fall off from the true Religion to the worship of Idols he like a wise and good Governour considers with himself what course he had best to take to keep them firm and stedfast in their Religion and to prevent their defection to the Idolatry of the Nations round about them And to this end he calls a general Assembly of all Israel Chap. 23. V. 1. that is of the Elders and Heads and Judges and Officers of the several Tribes and in a very wise and eloquent Speech represents to them in what a miraculous manner God had driven out the Naâ—ions before them much greater and strongâ—r Nations than they and had given them their Land to possess it And in a word had performed punctually all that he had promised to them And therefore they ought to take great heed to themselves to love God and to serve Him and if they did not he tells them that it should come to pass that as all good things are come upon you which the Lord
care and choice It always exposeth them to manifest inconvenience and sometimes to great danger even to that degree as in the consequence of it is but little better than the laying a Child in the Streets and leaving it to the care and compassion of a Parish There are two very visible inconveniencies which â—o commonly attend it 1 st Strange Milk which is often very disagreeable to the Child and with which â—he Child to be sure sucks in the natural inâ—irmities of the Nurse together with a great deal of her natural inclinations and irregular passions which many times stick by the Child for a long time after And which is worse than all this it sometimes happens that some secret Disease of the Nurse is conveyed to the Child 2 dly A shameful and dangerous neglect of the Child especially by such Nurses as make a Trade of it of whom there are great numbers in and about this great City Who after they have made their first and main advantage of the Child by the excessive not to say extravagant vailes which usually here in England above all places in the Woâ—ld are given at Christeningsâ— And then by the strait allowances which are commonly made afterwards for the nursing and keeping of the Child are often tempted not to say worse to a great neglect of the Child which if it happen to dye for want of due care â—ets the Nurse at liberty to make a new advantage by taking another Child Nor can it well be otherwise expected than that a Nurse who by this course is first made to be unnatural to her own Child should have no great care and tenderness for a Child which is not her own I have heard a very sad Observation made by those who have had the opportunity to know it that in several of the Towns and Villages about London where this Trade of nursing Children is chiefly driven hardly one in five of these Children lives out the year And this surely is a danger which natural affection as well as duty does oblige Parents to take all possible care to prevent Secondly This course doth most certainly tend very much to the estranging and weakning of natural affection on both sides I mean both on the part of the Mother and of the Child The pains of nursing as well as of bearing Children doth insensibly create a strange tenderness of affection and care in the Mother Can a woman says God forget her sucking child that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb Isa 49. 15. Can a Woman that is a Mother not a Nurse for the sucking child is said to be the son of her womb God speaks of this as a thing next to impossible And this likewise is a great endearment of the Mother to the Child Which endearment when the Child is put out is transferr'd from the Mother to the Nurse and many times continues to be so for a great many years after yea and often to that degree as if the Nurse were the true Mother and the true Mother a meer stranger So that by this means natural affection must be extremely weaken'd which is great pity because when it is kept up in its full strength it often proves one of the best securities of the Duty of a Child But because this severe Doctrine will go down but very hardly with a great many I must take the more care to guard it against the Objections which will be made to it Those from natural disability or sickness from evident and apparent danger of the Mother or from the interposition of the Father's Authority or from plain necessity or if there be any other that have an equal Reason with these I have prevented already by allowing them to be just and reasonable exceptions from the general Rule when they are real and not made Pretences to shake off our Duty But there are besides these two Objections which indeed are real but yet seem to have too great a weight with those who would fain decline this Duty and are by no means sufficient to excuse Mothers no not those of the highest Rank and Quality from the natural obligation of it And they are these The manifest trouble and the manifold restraint which the careful discharge of this Duty does unavoidably bring upon those who submit themselves to it 1 st For the trouble of it I have only this to say and I think that no more need to be said about it that no body is discharged from any Duty by reason of the trouble which necessarily attends it and is inseparable from it since God who made it a Duty foresaw the trouble of it when he made it so 2 dly As to the manifold restraint which it lays upon Mothers this will best be answer'd by considering of what nature these restraints are And they are chiefly in these and the like instances This Duty restrains Mothers from spending their Morning and their Money in curious and costly Dressing from misspending the rest of the Day in formal and for the most part impertinent Visits and in seeing and hearing Plays many of which are neither fit to be seen or heard by modest Persons and those who pretend to Religion and Virtue as I hope all Christians do especially Persons of higher Rank and Quality And it restrains them likewise from trifling away a great part of the Night in Gaming and in Revelling till past Midnight I am loth to say how much These are those terrible restraints which this natural Duty of Mothers nursing their Children lays upon them Now I cannot but think all these to be very happy restraints Happy surely for the Child and in many respects happy for the Father and for the whole Family which by this means will be kept in much better order But happiest of all for the Mother who does herein not only discharge a great and necessary Duty but is hereby also hinder'd from running into many great Faults which before they will be forgiven must cost her a deep Contrition and a very bitter Repentance Perhaps I may have gone further in this unusual Argument than will please the present Age But I hope Posterity will be so wise as to consider it and lay it to heart For I am greatly afraid that the World will never be much better till this great Fault be mended I proceed to the next Particular wherein the good Education of Children doth consist namely II. In bringing them to be Baptized and admitted Members of Christ's Church at the times appointed or accustomed in the National Church of which the Parents are Members I mean to bring them to the Church to be there publickly initiated and solemnly admitted by Baptism And this the Rules of the Church of England do strictly enjoyn unless the Child be in danger of death and in that case only it is allow'd to administer Baptism privately and in a summary way without performing the whole Office But then if the Child live it
the weeding of Corn which is a necessary piece of good Husbandry Vices like ill weeds grow apace and if they once take to the Soil it will be hard to extirpate and kill them But if we watch them and cut them up assoon as they appear this will discourage the Root and make it dye Therefore take great heed that your Children be not habituated and accustomed to any evil course A Vice that is of any considerable growth and continuance will soon grow obstinate and having once spread its roots it will be a very difficult matter to clear the ground of it A Child may be so long neglected till he be overgrown with Vice to that degree that it may be out of the power of Parents ever to bring him to good fruit If it once gain upon the depraved disposition of Children it will be one of the hardest things in the World to give a stop to it It is the Apostle's caution to take heed of being harden'd by the deceitfulness of Sin which they who go on in an evil course will most certainly be We should observe the first appearances of evil in Children and kill those young Serpents assoon as they stir lest they bite them to death Fourthly Bring them assoon as they are capable of it to the publick Worship of God where He hath promised his more especial presence and blessing It is in Zion the place of God's publick Worship where the Lord hath commanded the blessing even Life for evermore There are the means which God hath appointed for the begetting and increasing of Grace in us This is the Pool where the Angel useth to come and to move the Waters Bring your Children hither where if they diligently attend they may meet with an Opportunity of being healed And when they come from the Church call them frequently to an account of what they have heard and learn'd there This will make them both to attend more diligently to what they hear and to lay it up in their Memories with greater care and will fix it there so as to make a deeper and more lasting impression upon their Minds Fifthly Be careful more especially to put them upon the exercise and practice of Religion and Virtue in such Instances as their understanding and age are capable of Teach them some short and proper Forms of Prayer to God to be said by them devoutly upon their knees in private at least every Morning and Evenâ—ng A great many Children neglect this not from any ill disposition of mind but because no body takes care to teach them how to do it And if they were taught and put upon doing it the habit and custom of any thing will after a little while make that easy and delightful enough which they cannot afterwards be brought to without great difficulty and reluctancy Knowledge and Practice do mutuallyâ— promote and help forward one anotherâ— Knowledge prepares and disposeth for Practice and Practice is the best way to perfect Knowledge in any kind Mere Speculation is a very raw and rude thing in comparison of that true and distinct knowledge which is gotten by Practice and Experience The most exact skill in Geography is nothing compared with the knowledge of that Man who besides the Speculative part hath travell'd over and carefully view'd the Countries he hath read of The most knowing man in the Art and Rules of Navigation is no body in comparison of an experienced Pilot and Seaman Because knowledge perfected by practice is as much difâ—erent from mere Speculation as the skill of doing a thing is from being told how a thing is to be done For men may easily mistake Rules but frequent Practise and Experience are seldom deceived Give me a man that constantly does a thing well and that shall satisfy me that he knows how to do it That Saying of our B. Saviour If any man will do my will he shall know of the Doctrine whether it be of God or whether I speak of my self is a clear determination of this matter namely That they understand the Will of God best who are most careful to do it And so likewise the best way to know what God is is to transcribe his Perfections in our Lives and Actions to be holy and just and good and merciful as He is Therefore when the minds of Children are once thoroughly possest with the true Principles of Religion we should bend all our endeavours to put them upon the practice of what they know Let them rather be taught to do well than to talk well rather to avoid what is evil in all its shapes and appearances and to practise their Duty in the several Instances of it than to speak with the Tongues of Men and Angels Unto Man He said Behold the fear of the Lord that is wisdom and to depart from evil is understanding Job 28. 28. Hereby â—aith St. John we know that we know him if we keep his Commandments He that saith I know him and keepeth not his Commandments is a liar and the truth is not in him 1 Joh. 2. 3 4. Xenophon tells us that the Persians instead of making their Children learned taught them to be virtuous and instead of filling their heads with fine Speculations taught them honesty and sincerity and resolution and endeavoured to make them wise and valiant just and temperate Lycurgus also in the institution of the Lacedemonian Commonwealth took no care about Learning but only about the Lives and Manners of their Children Though I should think that the care of both is best and that Learning would very much help to form the Manners of Children and to make them both wiser and better Men And therefore with the leave of so great and wise a Lawgiver I cannot but think that this was a defect in his Institutionâ— Because Learning if it be under the conduct of true wisdom and goodness is not only an ornament but a great advantage to the better Government of any Kingdom or Commonwealth Sixthly There must be great care and diligence used in this whole business of Education and more particularly in the Instruction of Children There must be line upon line and precept upon precept here a little and there a little as the Prophet expresseth it Isa 28. 10. The Principles of Religion and Virtue must be instill'd and dropt into them by such degrees and in such a measure as they are capable of receiving them For Children are narrow-mouth'd Vessels and a great deal cannot be poured into them at once And they must also be accustomed to the practice and exercise of Religion and goodness by degrees till Holiness and Virtue have taken root and they be well settled and confirm'd in a good course Now this requires constant attendance and even the patience of the Husbandman to wait for the fruit of our labours In some Children the Seeds that are sown fall into a greater depth of earth and therefore are of a â—low disclosure and it may be a