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your kindness, which can not be received from other hands. Their child is ftill the comfort and delight of their dying eyes; and no other object pleafing. You will be ready to anfwer fuch demands: your heart will correfpond to these calls of nature. You will be proud of the humbleft offices, and pleafed with the moft irkfome. They cannot give your patience more exercise, than you have given their's. They will not live to let you clear your obligations. Pay what you can, you will still be debtors. Your felicity must be fingular, or their distress,

if

you recompenfe them the things that they Ecclus vii. have done for you.

It is written indeed in history, that one woman, when her aged father was confined in prison, and like to die by famine there, obtained leave of his keepers to vifit him once a day, and fuftained him with her breast. Filial duty in this inftance took the place of parental love, and

taught

28.

Valer.
Max.

Ecclus iii.

5.

taught her in his extremity to become a mother to him.

One writer feems to intimate, that this fame old man, who had fo much comfort in his daughter, had been a voluntary prisoner himself in his younger years for his father. How remarkably would be fulfilled the words of the wife Jewish writer? He that honoureth his father, fhall have joy of his own children.

SER

SERMON XI.

FIFTH COMMANDMENT. PART III.

PROV. x. I:

A WISE SON MAKETH A GLAD

TH

FATHER.

HERE is no period of life, in which it is not better and happier to be wife and good, than profligate and wicked. For the reason, why God, who is love and goodness itself, requires any thing of us, is because it is fuitable to the nature he has given us, and for our good.

This

This is the general ground of his commands. And if in any inftances, it seem otherwise; it is not fo in reality; our true good is not that, which appears to us as fuch. In these cafes, we are to rely on the providence and promises of God. Matt.xix. Every one that hath forfaken houses, or bre

29.

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thren, or fifters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's fake; Shall receive an hundred fold, and shall inherit everlasting life.

But, though virtue is indeed always perfectly reasonable, yet it is most amiable in youth. It is ever, and in every one the object of our approbation; but then especially of our love.

Decency in men of years is no more, than what we look for; the payment as it were of a debt. We demand it, in return perhaps for that veneration and respect, which is given to age, and as the natural confequence of the wisdom taught by Time.

But

But when we behold in youth, the fame degree of regularity and piety, which we are wont to expect only from the aged; when we fee one, who is comparatively but a child, grown up to such a height of devout reverence for the Supreme Being, fuch prudent government of himself, and exact attention to all the rights and demands of other men, as are mostly the product, when they are produced at all, of long experience, and the labour of years; his excellent accomplishments are the more admirable for being lefs looked for; and the natural gracefulness of youth adds alfo fomething of it's own beauty, and reflects a lustre upon every virtue, with which itself is adorned.

Hardly indeed does a late penitent give us, or himself, any good proof of the fincerity of his repentance, and a true hearty attachment to the cause he has at laft chofen. May we not furmife it poffible, that no defire of leading a holy life,

but

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