572 HOW TO DO GOOD TO MANY. eth to the end of our lives, and,, therefore, to our last will and tes- tament. Therefore you must make your wills so as may do good to all, and not to cherish sin and idleness. Reas. 3. You are bound to your best to destroy sin and idle- ness, and, therefore, not to feed and cherish it. Reas. 4. Doing good is the very thing which you are created, redeemed, and sanctified for; and, therefore, you must extend your endeavors to the utmost, and to the last, that as much as may be, may be done when you are dead. If magistrates and ministers took care for no longer than their own lives, what would become of the state or church? Reas. 5. The common good is better than the plenty of a sinful child ; yea, it is to be preferred before the best child, and before ourselves, and, therefore, much more before the worst. Reas. 6. It is a, dreadful thing to be guilty of all the fleshly sibs which your ungodly sons will commit with your estate, when they shall by it maintain the sins of Sodom, pride, fullness of bread, and abundance of idleness, if not to strengthen their hands for oppres- sion or persecution, to think that they will spend their days in voluptuousness,-because you give them provision for the flesh. Reas. 7. It is cruelty to them that are.already so,bad, to make their temptations to sin much stronger, and their place in hell, the worse, and to make the way to heaven as hard to them as for a camel to go through the eye of a needle ; to prepare them to want a drop of water in hell, who were clothed richly, and fared sumptuously on earth to entice them to say, ° Soul, take thine ease; thou hast enough laid up for many years,;' till they hear, ' Thou fool, this night shall they require thy soul;' to cherish that love of the world which is enmity to God, by feeding that lust of the flesh, and lust of the eyes, and pride of life, which are not of the Father, but of the world. Reas. 8. When this, preferring unprofitable and ungodly chil- dren before God and the common good is so common and reigning a sin in the world, it is a great fault for religious men to encourage them in it by their example, and to do as they. Reas. 9. It is a sin to cast away any of God's gifts. When Christ had fed menby a miracle, he saith, " Gather up the frag- ments, that nothing be lost." If you should cast your money into the sea, it were a crime ; but to leave to such as you foresee are most likely touse it sinfully, is more than casting it away. Ifyou saw men offer sacrifice to Bacchus, or Venus,. you would abhor it : do not that, which is solike it, as to leave bad men fuel for fleshly lust. Reas. 10. It is the more dreadful, because it is dying in studied sin, without repentance. To put so much sin into one's will,
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