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of a finner, the unhallowed wish of a vicious parent, is but a poor gift to bestow upon a child, who received from him poi: fon instead of nourishment, and derives curfing from his parents. They are punished with a double torture in the fhame and pain of the damned, who, dying enemies to God, have left an inventory of fins and wrath to be divided amongst their children.

But they that can truly give a bleffing to their children, are fuch as live a blessed life, and pray holy prayers, and perform an entire repentance, and separate from the fins of their progenitors, and do illuftrious actions, and begin the bleffing of their family upon a new stock.

For as there is a connection between the feveral virtues and vices, fo it is also amongst men. A good man is a friend to every good man. A ufurer knows a ufurer ; and one rich man another: There being, by the very manners of men, contracted a fimilitude of nature, and a communication of effects. So in parents and their chil

dren a

dren, there is fo great a fociety of nature and of manners, of bleffing and curfing, that an evil parent cannot perish in a single death; and holy parents never eat their meal of bleffing alone, but they make all to shine about them like the fire of an holy facrifice; and a father's or a mother's piety makes all the house festival and full of joy, from generation to generation,

SERMON

SERMON XVII.

Of redeeming the Time.

[From Dr. PELLING on Time. I

COL. iv. 5.

Walk in wisdom toward them that are without, redeeming the time.

T. PAUL is here exhorting to redeem

ST

the time. And that I may not, by

any needlefs preface, fpend that which he thought fo precious, I fhall immediately enter upon the confideration of the matter, and enquire into these two neceffary things:

I. What is meant by redeeming of time. And,

II. For what reasons we must do fo.

And, I. Let us enquire, What is meant by redeeming of time.

Now, to redeem, is to recover that which was once loft; and when we apply it to time, it fignifies the recovering of thofe hours, which have been mifpent, and thrown away, by labouring hard for the future, to employ every minute we have, to good purpose.

Time is always in the flux; nor can we have any prefent poffeffion, but of a moment. God gives us our time, minute by minute; that we may be the better hufbands of it efpecially confidering, that on every moment an eternity of happiness of mifery doth depend. Nor is it poffible for us to recover yesterday, fo as to make that to be prefent again, which is actually gone. The nature of the thing will not allow it: and yet it is poffible to do it in a moral way; by making all the compenfation we can for what is gone, by the incitement of our zeal, and by the multiplication of our good actions; by adding in weight, that which is wanting as to the number of our days; by rendering ourselves

doubly

doubly beneficial; as if we made one day two, by improving the present in propor tion to what is gone.

This is, in God's account, a recalling of our time; a redemption of it; fo as to make it our own again, by laying out an equivalent proportion of industry and labour, in lieu of those hours which have been either fquandered away, or not half fo well employed, as they ought, and might have been.

And this feemeth to be the ground of that rule, by which our Saviour tells us he will proceed, when he fays, that the first fhall be laft, and the last firft; meaning, that though God is pleafed to call fome to the knowledge of the gofpel, much earlier than he doth others; yet many of those who embrace the faith later than the reft, fhall receive an equal reward with fuch as profeffed it fooner, And the reafon is, because these made up their time, by their extraordinary diligence, They that go into the vineyard at the last call, may by the earnestness and vigour of their per formances, deferve as well, and do as

much

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