SECTION X, 575 practice. They slight the religion which their parentshave taught them, that they may appear to have chosen a religion for them- selves ; and when they have made a creed or belief of their own, or rather borrowed some scraps of infidelity from their vain com- panions and equals, they find pretences enough to cast off all other creeds at once, as well as the counsels and customs of their religious predecessors. The practices of our fathers (say they) were precise and foolish, and shall be no rule for our conduct; the articles of their faith were absurd and mysterious, but we will believe nothing of mystery, lest our faith should be as ridiculous 'as theirs. In their younger years, and before their reason is half - grown, they pretend to examine the sublimest doctrines of christianity ; and a raw and half- witted boy shall commence an infidel, because he cannot comprehend some of the glorious truths of the gospel ; and laughs at his elders and his ancestors, for believing what they could not comprehend. The child now -a-days forgets that his parent is obliged, by all the laws of God and nature, to train him up in his own reli- gion, till he is come to the proper age of discretion to judge for himself ; he forgets, or he will not know, that the parent is en- trusted with the care of the souls of his young offspring by the very laws of nature, as well as by the revealed covenants of in- nocency and of grace. The son now -a -days forgets the obliga- tions he is under to honour and obey the persons that gave him birth; he pays no regard to the doctrines which led on his ances- tors to the love of God and man ; whereas doctrines that have such influence, claim at least some degrees of attention, and especially from a son who has been trained up in them, and be- held the effect of them in the piety of his parents ; nor will the very light of nature suffer him to depart from them, but upon the clearest judgment of his own mature reason, a thorough and impartial search into the subject, the loud inward dictates of his conscience, and the full evidence of his parent's mistake. So wanton and licentious a spirit has possessed some of the youth of the nation, that they never think they have freed them- selves from the prejudices of their education, till they have thrown off almost all the yokes of restraint that were laid upon them by God or man. Some take a particular pride in laying aside the holy scriptures, for the same reason that Timothy was advised to Continue in them ; and that is, because they have learned and known them from their very childhood ; 2 Tim. iii. 15. And some, perhaps have been laughed out of their christianity, lest it should be said, their mothers and their nurses had made them Christians. Heretofore the sons were scarcely suffered to be absent from home an hour, without express leave, till they were arrived at
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