friendship advis'd him to and when all those little arts and ignoble devices of entertaining him in his Palace and at his Table and making him drunk would not bring Vriah to his purpose then how basely and unworthily does he plot and contrive his Murder by giving Orders to his General to set him in the most dangerous place in the Front of the Battel which poor Innocent Vriah might possibly take for an Honour and interpret it an Argument and esteem of his greater Courage when in truth he was onely plac'd there as a mark to be shot at and to fall a Sacrifice to his Sovereigns Lust Which accordingly hapned Vriah being slain upon the spot and dying in that station where it was not likely he should live And when David had thus secretly in his heart designed Vriahs Death yet when news was brought to him that Vriah was dead he cunningly and slily pretends to look upon it as no other than a Casualty the misfortune of War saying with himself that such chances will come and bid the Messenger tell Joab that there was no reason why he should be troubled or concern'd at the Death of Vriah for there was no saving any mans life in Battel none could be priviledg'd from Death in Warlike Encounters and that the Arrows or Bullets made no distinction and that all are alike liable to destruction and that Vriah might as well fall and be slain as any other in the Army which is the sence of those very words which David caus'd to be return'd to Joab in the 25. ver of the foregoing Chapter Then David said unto the Messenger Thus shalt thou say unto Joab Let not this thing displease thee For the Sword devoureth one as well as another And lastly When David had thus dispatcht and caus'd the Innocent Husband to be made away he then takes the guilty Wife into his possession and marries her and expects to live many happy and pleasant days in mutual endearments But though David thought that the marrying her would legitimate their love and take off the old scandal of their former Embraces yet it was an act highly offensive to God and is so exprest in the last v. of the Chapter And when the mourning was past David sent and fet her to his House and she became his Wife and bare him a Son but the thing which David had done displeased the Lord. But then notwithstanding that David had committed those two horid sins of Adultery and Murder yet he had not any true sense and feeling of his guilt nor that remorse of Conscience which he should have had for sins of that Crimson die but he rubs on a considerable time without any regret or sign of repentance which insensibility and hardness of heart we may justly ascribe to his living in ease and enjoying the Charms of Bathsheba's Beauty which at first inticed him to sin and afterwards made him forget it whilst his Soul was steep'd in pleasure and triumphing in the injoyment of his new Spouse But whilst David was in his Nuptial jollity and swallowed up in fond Caresses and doting upon that Beauty which had formerly bewitcht him God stirs up his Prophet Nathan to give him some check and interruption in his solaces by propounding something that might bring his late horrid sins to his remembrance And accordingly the Prophet does his office and propounds to him the Parable of the poor man with his little Ewe-Lamb How that this was his only Companion his only Darling his Bosom Friend that he had nothing else to love and delight in nor that he could call his own but this one poor Innocent Creature and yet there was a rich man which had a numerous Flock and enough to make a Feast for any Friend or Stranger whatsoever and yet was guilty of so much incivility and injustice as to take away this single Lamb from a poor man with a pretence that he needed it to make an Entertainment which he might have done without the least wrong or detriment to himself as having such a number of his own and so many which he might well have spar'd Which Parable was no sooner propounded to David but he resents the Act with a great deal of indignation and delivers his opinion against him that should do such a fact as an unpardonable offender and that he was guilty of such a high piece of injustice that he was not fit to live For him that had enough of his own and yet to invade the right and property of a poor man and to rob him of his little All was in Davids Judgment an unsufferable wrong and injury and that he that did it deserv'd nothing less than Death for so are the words in the fifth ver of this Chapter And Davids anger was greatly kindled against the man And he said to Nathan As the Lord liveth the man that hath done this thing shall surely die And he shall restore the Lamb fourfold because he did this thing and because he had no pity So just and severe was David in condemning the robbing of a poor man and taking away the small substance he had But then when the Prophet took upon him to make a nearer Representation of the case and to bring it home to himself and point-blank to charge him with the like injustice which he had so severely condemned in another saying Thou art the man We must needs think that David was much startled when the guilt recoil'd upon himself and that his own Conscience made the rebound But then when it was brought so close to him that there was no avoiding his own self-Condemnation David presently makes an ingenuous Confession saying I have sinned against the Lord. And such we may observe are the mercies of God that his pardon follows immediately upon his Confession And Nathan said unto David The Lord hath also put away thy sin thou shalt not die in the 13. v. Howbeit in the next v. says the Prophet Because thou hast by this deed given great occasion to the Enemies of the Lord to blaspheme the Child also that is born unto thee shall surely dy Where we may observe that although God was pleased to grant him the greatest pardon of his life yet he does not give him a general pardon from other Punishments but assures him at the same time that he granted him his life that he should have such a punishment wherein he might read the nature and deserts of his sins The Child that is born unto thee shall surely die From whence it may not be unuseful to observe that God is pleased sometimes to lay the Punishment due to the Parents sin upon their Children and so here David had sinned and the Child must die for it which may be of great use and moment to make people more wary and deliberate how they enter into the Holy State of Matrimony For though it be a Divine Institution and ordained of God in Paradise and the State of Mans Innocency
attend our Children and those great infirmities which they often labour under and the more reason to be humbled when we reflect upon our selves as the Authors of them The truth is we have laid a train of mischiefs in our Bodies by our Vices which will certainly ruine and blow up our Children we have Created Diseases in our Bodies by trespassing too much upon nature and offering great violencies to our Constitution we have broken and shattered our Bodies by great excess by hard and unseasonable Drinkings and that may be one reason why we deliver down such a weak and crasie Progeny We have turn'd our Bodies into Bogs of uncleanness and putrefaction by our lust and wantonness and that may be a very proper reason why our Children carry about them such an Hospital of Diseases We have made our Bodies Sepulchres and burying places of Wine and that may be another reason why our Children become Corpses so soon and go so early to their Graves we eat and drink destruction to our Children by our Gluttony and Drunkenness we dig their Graves as well as our own with our Teeth and by swallowing down over-much we prepare them for the devoration of the Worms and 't is not any whit probable or likely that our Children should prove sound and healthful when we distemper our Bodies and treasure up Diseases And we may consider that we do propagate Diseases many times as well as our nature and there are Diseases which our Posterity find by woful experience run in a blood And therefore it is the duty of all Parents who desire the good of their Posterity and have a regard to the welfare and happiness of their Children to be very strict and punctual in observing the Rules of temperance and sobriety and in keeping their Bodies pure and undefil'd forasmuch as by a vicious and debaucht life we store up Diseases for Posterity and transmit great evils to our Generation For 't is certain that by great excesses and impure mixtures we do corrupt our bloud and consequently must convey a taint to our Off-spring and a rotten Father seldom produces any other than a Consumptive Child and besides our Vices are as communicable to our Children as our Diseases and who knows but that God might determine to take away Davids Child for this very reason lest he should Patrissare take after his Father he being the Child of an Incontinent Father and the Issue of such unhallowed Embraces And therefore when David was devoting his Enemies he makes this one of his dreadful Curses Let the iniquity of his Father be remembred with the Lord and let not the sin of his Mother be blotted out in the 119. Ps and 14. v. And truly I fear that there are too many ungodly Fathers and Mothers in the World whose wickedness and folly is such as that their Children suffer for it deeply being cover'd with Sores and Boils and having such Diseases breaking forth as are plain marks and tokens of their Parents sins God visiting the iniquities of the Fathers upon the Children and not suffering the iniquity of the Father to be conceal'd nor the sin of the Mother to be blotted out And therefore those Parents that are conscious to themselves of any such great and foul sin as Davids was have very great reason to lament the Diseases and Death of their Children when they consider that they themselves were the great Instruments of bringing all those miseries upon their Children and that their sins have had the greatest hand in their destruction And 't is very well worth our observation that in the first Age of the World it was never seen that the Son died before the Father but the oldest always went first But then when the wickedness of men grew great and their Pride so great that they were too high for their Station and would needs be building Castles in the Air and climbing up to the Battlements of Heaven it hapned presently afterwards that Terahs Son died before his Father and there is a special note and mark set upon it as a kind of wonder in the 9. of Genesis and 28. v. And Haran died before his Father Terah in the Land of his Nativity From whence we may observe that the wickedness of a Father is enough to alter the course of nature and to shorten his Childrens days and to accelerate their Death and bring them to the dust before their time And thus I have been somewhat long on this Argument that I might represent to you the danger of a sinning Father and Mother and what a fatal mischief they do their Children by their wickedness in that they bring a Curse upon their Family and by their sin occasion the Death and ruin of an Innocent Child as is clear and manifest in this one instance of Davids Child being taken away for the sin of his Father And we may also remember what a greivous Curse God entailed upon old Eli's Family and Posterity that they should die in the Flower of their Age and be cut off in their very prime and that chiefly upon the account of old Eli. And therefore Parents had need take a care to please God and that they do commit no great offence and to keep from great transgressions that so their Children may not repent that ever they were born of them and suffer sadly for their miscarriages And indeed all Parents that desire it should be well with their Children and that they should live long and see good days are concern'd to live a pure and unspotted life to possess their Vessels in sanctification and honour not in the lust of Concupisence otherwise they may bring great miseries upon their Children and perhaps a sudden Death and if they are resolv'd to continue their debaucheries and lewd Amours they had even as good strangle their Children when they are newly born and it may be a mercy to tear them in pieces as Medea did her Brother Absyrtus rather than they should live to inherit their Phthisicks Consumptions and loathsome Diseases and to be plagu'd all their life long with the miserable effects of their Parents sins And truly all vitious and ungodly Parents have the same grounds that David had to lament over their Children when they shall see them sick of their Diseases consuming with their Lusts and expiring under the curse of their sins And therefore if Parents would but take care to live better and more vertuously possibly their Children would not prove so sickly and might live longer for 't is certain that Davids Child was sick and died so soon for the wickedness of the Father Secondly Davids great grief and mourning for his Child during the time of its sickness was very just and reasonable upon another account as being an expression of humanity and the result of a natural affection For our Religion has not like the Stoick seal'd up the fountain of tears and wip'd them away from our eyes whilst we are in this bitter Achor
has perform'd greater Cures and greater Recoveries and done greater wonders than all the Elixirs or Proprietates or Nostrums of the most skilful and renown'd Physicians It was Prayer that restored Hezekiah from a dangerous sickness and prolong'd his Days it was Prayer which supported David under all his troubles and gave him ease in his greatest extremities it was Prayer that opened the eyes of the blind and ejected the Devils and did the most glorious things to all Admiration and therefore we must apply our selves to God and depend upon our Prayers as the most proper and specifick remedy in afflictions We must be fervent and frequent and importunate in Prayers to God on the behalf of our Friends and Relations and who can tell whether God will be gracious to us that our Friends may live But then may some reply and say it was in vain for David to use Prayer or any other means it was to no purpose for him to expect the recovery of his Child or that God should answer him though he pray'd never so much For he knew that God had decreed the Death of his Child and told him in as plain words as could be by his Prophet that the Child should surely die and why then should David flatter himself so as to imagine that he could do the Child any good by his Prayers or prevail with God for his Recovery Why should he use that dubious Language as who can tell 't is possible or it may be that the Lord will be gracious to me that the Child may live Why should he stand doubting or supposing a possibility of a thing when God had positively declared the contrary To which I Answer That God declared by his Prophet Jonah the destruction of the Ninevites and prefixt the time to just forty days and this was declared with as great positiveness as the Death of Davids Child by the Prophet Nathan and the Prophet Jonah try'd and said Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown in the 3. of Jonah and 4. v. and yet after the delivery and promulgation of this sentence the Ninevites did not despond or utterly despair of Gods mercy but fell to repentance and humbling themselves and put the success to the same venture that David did and much in the same Language saying in the 9. v. Who can tell if God will return and repent and turn away from his fierce anger that we perish not And what was the Issue of their Repentance and Humiliation and using the best means they could to divert Gods Judgments Why the Issue was that by their Repentance they stav'd off the judgment and put it back as we may see in the 10. and last ver And God saw their works that they turned from their evil ways and God repented of the evil that he had said that he would do unto them and did it not And so in the 20. Ch. of the 2. of Kings God ordered the Prophet Isaiah to go and carry to Hezekiah the same message of Death and to acquaint him that he must expect no other than Death Thus saith the Lord Set thine House in order for thou shalt die and not live Could any thing be more absolute and positive than these words and yet Hezekiah instead of melancholizing himself with the thoughts of Death or expecting it every hour turned his face to the Wall and prayed unto the Lord saying I beseech thee O Lord remember now how I have walked before thee in truth and with a perfect heart and have done that which is good in thy sight and Hezekiah wept sore in the 3. ver And what good will you say could Hezekiah's praying and weeping and appealing to the Righteousness of his life do him Could that or any thing else save him and prevent his dying when God had so solemnly Decreed yes truly his Prayer and Repentance did him so much good as to prevail with God to grant him a longer Lease of his life and ordered the same Prophet that had just now told him of his Death to return forthwith and acquaint him also that he had reverst the fatal sentence Turn again and tell Hezekiah the Captain of my people Thus saith the Lord the God of David thy Father I have heard thy Prayer I have seen thy tears behold I will heal thee on the third day thou shalt go up unto the House of the Lord. And I will add unto thy days fifteen years What then shall we say that there is any change in the Divine Decrees or any inconstancy in God or that he is worse than his word when he thus positively denounces judgment and yet suspends it God forbid says the Apostle yea let God be true but every man a lyar as it is written that thou mightest be justified in thy sayings And therefore for the clearing of God from all imputation of falshood or mutability in these instances of his judgments denounced against sinners without any actual execution we are to understand that those threatnings of God in Scripture which run in an absolute form have a condition imply'd that is Nineveh shall be destroyed and Hezekiah shall die except they repent So that God does still reserve a power of revocation and puts in a conditional clause of repentance which though it be not exprest yet is always to be understood and therefore where Gods threatnings of death and destruction seem most peremptory and final we are yet to attempt the diverting and preventing them by our Prayers and repentance we are to use the means and as we say leave the success to God For who knows but the Lord may be gracious But if God will not hear our Prayers nor accept our Repentance as he did neither in the present Case of Davids Child yet we are to use the most proper means and to try all the ways imaginable to pacify Gods anger and to appease his wrath and still to go on praying and repenting as David did We are not to despond of mercy or to despair of success but at the very last push and the utmost extremity of affliction to say who can tell but the Lord will be gracious And thus I have delivered to you the just reasons why David mourn'd so exceedingly for his Child when it lay upon a Bed of sickness and languishing As first considering that his own sin was the chief and declared cause of his Child 's grievous and desperate sickness and secondly upon the account of that natural affection which is in all Parents toward their Children which moves their bowels to pity and bewail them when they are in misery and distress But then the great wonder is that the Father which was so much concern'd and deeply immerst in sorrow for the sickness of his Child should give over mourning upon the death and loss of it that his sorrow should expire and be at an end as soon as the Child was departed and had given up the Ghost But now he is dead why
yet there may be ways of unhallowing Marriage and turning that into a sin which was at first ordained for the greatest Blessing For if only Interest or Humour or Lust be the chief foundation and ingredient of our Choice or if some sinful pre-ingagement or lewd Amours make Marriage necessary for the hiding our shame or if any of these things do cause a Contract or make up the match we may expect that God in justice may blast and curse the fruits of our Body for the sin of our Soul and for the sins of our flesh too An instance whereof we have in Gods decreeing the death of Davids Child which though it was born in Marriage yet God utterly dislik'd the Conjunction the first occasion and grounds thereof being laid in Adulterous Embraces David making no scruple to murder the Husband that he might obtain the Wife But when David heard that heavy sentence against his Child that he should surely die for his sin might not he have confest himself altogether in the fault and desired to suffer wholly himself and have said as in another Case 1 Chron. 21. 17. It is I have sinned and done evil indeed but as for this Lamb this Innocent Babe what has it done Let thy hand be upon me or my Fathers House and not on this Child that that should be plagued I say one would think that David should have set himself to deprecate Gods displeasure against his Child upon his account and desired to have sustained the burthen of his own sin But the sentence was gone out and what was written was written and there was no reversing the Decree And therefore all they that intend to change their condition and desire that they may leave their Inheritance to their Children had best look to it and have a care that they do not make Lust or any sinful Pre-ingagement a Preamble and Introduction to Marriage for fear God disappoint them in their hopes and desires and either write them Childless or take away their Children in wrath for their folly and wickedness For though God spared David and gave him a grant of his own life that he should not die yet there is no begging the life of his Child the Prophet reading its Destiny the Child that is born shall surely die So that for people to couple together in a scandalous and sinful way and to make Lust the basis and foundation of Marriage is to murther their Children in the Womb and in a manner to predestinate them to destruction But then when David heard that his Child should not live but was under a sentence of Death and that according to the words of the Prophet it presently fell sick and was desperately ill How then did he behave himself Truly like a very kind and indulgent Father for it was no sooner struck with sickness but David besought God for the Child And David fasted and went in and lay all night upon the Earth and the Elders of the House arose and went to him to raise him up from the Earth but he would not neither did he eat bread with them in the 16 and 17. v. of this Chapter Here we see David in a sad and mournful posture expressing all the symptoms and signs of a mighty sorrow and being earnest in Prayer to God for it which if all Parents would do the like upon the same occasion when their Children are sick or any ways afflicted they would find their Prayers to be a more efficacious way than all the Drugs of the Apothecary or the numberless prescriptions of the Physicians for the recovery of their Children For the effectual fervent Prayer of the Righteous availeth much But then we may consider that David had great reason to bewail the sickness of the Child as first being the effect and punishment of his sin and secondly upon the account of natural affection First He had a great deal of reason to grieve and be troubled at the sickness of his Child it being sent as a punishment for his own personal sin and therefore when he saw it in misery and pain and great anguish and considered that it suffered all this principally for his sake that he had the greatest hand in bringing all this trouble and sorrow upon it and that he was the great Actor in the Tragedy and this his sin occasion'd this great scene of sorrows How could he do otherwise than lay the sickness of it to heart and take on bitterly to think that by the murder of Vriah he had caus'd the Death of his Child and that by committing folly with Bathsheba he had brought such an affliction upon their Issue I say such a consideration must needs wound David to the very heart and cause him to make great Lamentations over the Child And truly the same sorrows would become even the best Parents and it might not be amiss for them to make some like Reflections For the Parents are generally apt to impute the Distempers the Sickness the Death of their Children either to want of due care in their Nurses or to the badness of the Air or the unwholesomness of the Season or ill diet or the irregular course of the Physician I say though we are apt to ascribe the sickness and Death of our Children to these outward and secondary Causes yet we should do well to suspect our sins as the cause of their misery and sufferings and to believe that there is something more than ordinary in the afflictions of such harmless and innocent Creatures Surely the Parents have sin'd though these poor Lambs suffer and therefore it is good and convenient that all Parents do examine themselves and see whether they need go any further than themselves to find out the true cause and original of those many weaknesses and distempers which they see in their Children and for which they seem so much concern'd and troubled How mightily are some Parents troubled to see their Children grow crooked and deform'd and yet little consider that possibly their Children are the unhandsomer for their being so proud of themselves and glorying in their Beauty others are griev'd to see their Children prove such Punies so feeble and infirm and of such a weak Constitution and do not reflect upon the debaucheries of their life and how they have lost their strength in Dalilahs Lap. And it is a general complaint and observation that every Age declines more and more in strength and virility and that the latter Generation of men are dwindled almost into Pigmies in comparison of what they were formerly and yet men do little consider that Luxury and riotous Living may be assigned as the grand Causes and Reasons of this great Degeneracy And we also see that new and strange Diseases do creep up daily and multiply and invade humane Bodies and yet we seldom impute these decays and breakings of nature to the vices of our Progenitors Whereas we have just reason to grieve at the sight of those many Diseases which
us And if we do but look into the Proverbs we may be easily convinc't and observe how we read there that Children are not always such blessings that we should desire so much their living for they may be Curses as well as Blessings to us according as they shall prove A wise Son maketh a glad Father but a foolish Son is the heaviness of his Mother Prov. 10. 1. and in the 23. of Prov. and 24. v. The Father of the righteous shall greatly rejoice and he that begetteth a wise Child shall have joy of him and in the 17. ch and 21. v. He that begetteth a Fool doth it to his sorrow and the Father of a Fool hath no joy and in the 25. v. A foolish Son is a grief to his Father and a bitterness to her that bare him In all which expressions we may see that a man is much happier in having no Children than such as are foolish and vitious and that nothing can be a greater grief and dishonour to Parents than to have silly and wicked Children What comfort is there in having such lewd and profane Sons as old Eli's who brought a scandal upon their Father and a Curse upon their Family the whole Generation Oâ— what can be a greater grief to a Father than to have such a Son as Jeroboam the Son of Nebat who made Israel to sin that is one that shalâ— prove the pest of the Age and theâ— bane of Mankind And thereforâ— we need not be so greedy and desirous of Children or so loth to parâ— with them when we have them unless we could have a better prospect of their conditions and assuredly knew that they would prove Comforts and Ornaments to us by theiâ— wisdom and good conversation Anâ— therefore David might well comforâ— himself and take heart after the loâ—â— of his Child to think that though he had lost a Child yet it was aâ— Innocent Child one that had nâ— great sin if any to answer for onâ— that had not sullied its Soul with the least tincture of any actual sin or transgression and that it went as pure out of the World as it came into it whereas if it had liv'd to maturity it might have been like the rest of the World or died with some great sin upon it unrepented of as well as some of his Children had done And truly the same consideration may well be made use of by all Parents to bring them quietly to sustain the loss of their Children when they die in their nonage and very young And what can be a more comfortable consideration than for Parents under such losses to think that their Childrens Virtue if they had liv'd was very uncertain and that Vice was the most likely to prevail that sin reigned more in the World than goodness that the greater part of the World was stark naught and that but few continued in it but contracted some spot or stain and none that was perfectly Innocent And therefore it might be a mercy to their Children to be set out of the reach of sin and temptation and to have such an early translation to Heaven before they had done any thing to hazard their Salvation or to forfeit the love of God and title to Eternal Life and Happiness Well may Parents pronounce their Children blessed when they die in such a state of Innocency For of such says our Saviour is the Kingdom of Heaven Fourthly Another consideration which pacify'd Davids sorrows for the loss of his Child might very well be this That it was remov'd from the great Evils and Calamity of the World This World God knows is but a troublesome place at the best to live in and no man must think to go scot-free from troubles of one kind or other The Thracians as Cicero reports out of Herodotus were wont to weep at the Birth and Nativity of their Children to think what a sad and troublesome Theatre they entered upon and that they were born to know a great deal of sorrow and misery but to rejoice at their departure and going off the Stage to think that they then retired from the distracting cares and inquietudes of a troublesome World and were past the reach and grievance of all misfortunes This World is too low a Region to be free from storms and tempests and there is no expecting a perfect serenity but above the Clouds and there is no such happiness to be enjoy'd here as a freedom from all misery and trouble he being the happiest man at present that meets with the least trouble or perplexity and therefore no man of experience in the World needs to be told that all here is Vanity and vexation of Spirit and whoever shall consider the great changes of misery that are in the World from War to Pestilence from Pestilence to Fire from Fire to great Confusions which have hapned not only in the memory of many but in our days and within the compass of a few Years and moreover what great and terrible judgments are continually impending over our Heads and full upon the Inhabitants of the Earth because their wickedness is great and also the continual losses and crosses the sorrows and disappointments which come of course and happen according to the mutable condition of things below Whoever I say shall seriously consider this sad revolution and mixture of sorrows cannot judge it in reason good being here or look upon the World as a desirable place to live in much less think his Children or Relations the happier for being here And therefore David might well think it unreasonable to mourn for the loss of his Child when it was consider'd that it was gone out of a cross and troublesome World where the highest and most advantageous condition as himself had found by sad and woful experience could not exempt a man from great Calamities when he who was his Father and a King was forc'd from his Throne and put to his shifts and driven from Post to Pillar and perhaps was reduc'd to such great straits and extremities that he would have exchang'd his condition with the meanest of his Subjects How could he mourn for the Death of his Child when he considered that it was subject to the same Calamities as himself and perhaps might prove every whit as unfortunate in the World if it had liv'd to succeed him and might have Inherited his troubles as well as his Crown And therefore he lookt upon it as a kind Providence that God had so happily prevented the Childs seeing any of those miseries which the Father had felt and thought it a singular happiness and favour of Heaven that his Child went out of the World without knowing or being sensible what a trouble meant whereas himself had been sufficiently tossed up and down upon the waves of affliction and miserably broken with the cares and inquietudes of a troublesome World and knew the World better than to esteem it the best or happiest place that his Child could be
the dead give hearty thanks to God that it hath pleased him to deliver our Dear Friends and Relations out of the miseries of this sinful World which may furnish us with another consideration that might possibly incur into Davids mind and help to suspend and allay his sorrowing for his dead Child and that is this That it was remov'd far above the power of sin and temptation We at present as the Apostle Paul complains carry about us a Body of sin and death We are subject to manifold sins and temptations and have brought with us into the World those corruptions which in time will ripen into and sally forth in great actual transgressions Job makes a kind of wonder at it that any man should think he can be perfectly pure and innocent in this body of flesh For what is man that he should be clean or he that is born of a woman that he should be righteous Job 15. 14. and so David tells us Psal 51. 5. That sin is the Inheritance of our Parents that we are infected with it in the Womb and that we are born with propensions to evil Behold I was shapen in iniquity and in sin did my Mother conceive me So that the seeds of disobedience are lodged in our nature and the ground-work of sin is laid deep within us and there is nothing wanting but time and opportunity to make it bring forth in abundance So that when our Children die very young and go early to their Graves we may comfort our selves with this consideration that we lose them in good time and before they have added any actual to original sin and that if they had liv'd much longer they would have contracted a new and further guilt and perhaps have advanc'd in sin as they did in Years for 't is certain that the strength of nature gives strength to our sins too and 't is only Age that qualifies and fits us for great and notorious wickedness So that that sin which was only in Embryo in our infancy comes within a few years to a perfect shape and our propensions to evil in a small process of time are reduced to real and visible acts My meaning is that although there is a natural aptness and proclivity in Mankind to sin and err from the Laws of our Maker yet sin does lie hid and brooding in the time of our infancy and is only hatcht into perfection by the addition of longer time and although we have all the principles of wickedness inherent in us at the very first moment of our Nativity yet we are too impotent to commit evil and to offend God at that rate as when we come to a full stature in Years and knowledge We may be full of bad inclinations when we are young and Children but 't is only Age that can make us capable of doing mischief and to be workers of iniquity and we cannot so highly provoke God when we are ignorant and childish and know nothing of him as when we come to the perfect use of reason and to know his will and yet run Counter to it And therefore the Death of our Children may be a happy prevention of their sining and if they live so long as to receive the benefit of Baptism and to be regenerate and born anew of Water and the Holy Ghost and so be made lively members of Christs Church we are bound to thank God for the mercy of their Regeneration and that they had their sins wash'd away in the laver of Holy Baptism so as that they go much purer out of the World than they came into it whereas if they had liv'd longer in the World they would have contracted a greater guilt and had more sins to answer for they would have been continually liable to temptations and in danger of falling into great and grievous sins and to be corrupted by the bad examples which abound in all places of the World And therefore there is no reason why Parents should so much lament their Childrens leaving them so soon if they do seriously consider that 't is a naughty World we live in and that mens love and practice of wickedness is exceeding great and that 't is impossible to escape all the pollutions that are in it and if they do further consider how much humane nature is tainted with original sin and corruption which prompts us on to evil continually and what a subtile and vigilant Adversary we have who is always seeking to beguile and destroy us and how thick set the World is with snares and temptations I say if this consideration did but enter into our minds it would be of great force and power to asswage our Passion and to allay our sorrow for the death of our Friends and Relations it being a very comfortable thing to contemplate the happiness and priviledge of those that have shook of the clogs and fetters of the flesh and let fall their Bodies the troublesome Mantles of their Souls and are now expatiating in Regions of Bliss and Happiness and live in the pure Element of Goodness and where 't is impossible that any temptation should approach or sin have any Dominion over them Lastly Another thing which might stop Davids sorrowing for the loss of his Child might be this consideration that it was the will of God it should be so He considered that it was altogether foolish and in vain to enter into any controversie with God about his dealings with his Child or to stand expostulating the justice of God in taking it away For he was convinc'd that Gods will ought to be a Law unto us and that there is no need of disputing the Righteousness and Equity thereof it being always rul'd and determin'd by his wisdom and justice and goodness For though God be of an infinite and uncontroulable power and can do whatsoever he pleases both in Heaven and Earth yet there is a Maxime in Theology as well as Policy That the King of Heaven can do no wrong It must be acknowledg'd by us all that our life and being is the gift and blessing of God and so is the life of our Children too and therefore when God does in mercy give us Children so he may with justice take them away For may not he dispose of his gifts and do with his own as he pleases God lent us Children for a little time on purpose to please us shall we be troubled when he resumes them to himself or griev'd when he requires them back we are to observe that there is a great difference between Gods way of disposing his gifts and that of mens For though it be common with men to make a Deed of Gift and to transfer their own right to a thing wholly to another so as to lose all propriety in it yet God does not make the same disposition of his gifts in that absolute manner but when he gives us Riches or Honour or Children or any other gifts he does not make over to us all