by Richard Baxter, excerpted from The Poor Man’s Family Book, 1672
In times when churches are corrupted, and good ministers are
wanting, and bad ones either deceive the people or are insufficient for their
work, there is no better supply to keep up religion than godly families. If
parents and masters will teach their children and servants faithfully, and
worship God with them holily and constantly, and govern them carefully and
orderly, it will much make up the want of public teaching, worship, and
discipline. Oh that God would stir up the hearts of people thus to make their
families as little churches, that it might not be in the power of rulers or
pastors that are bad to extinguish religion, or banish godliness from any land!
You have greater and nearer obligations to your family than
pastors have to all the people. Your wife is as your own flesh; your children
are, as it were, parts of yourself. Nature bindeth you to the dearest affection,
and therefore to the greatest duty to them. Who should more care for your
children’s souls than their own parents? If you will not provide for them, but
famish them, who will feed them? Therefore, as ever you have the bowels of
parents, as ever you care what becometh of your children’s souls forever,
devote them to God, teach them His word, educate them in holiness, restrain
them from sin, and prepare them for salvation…
Oh that I could speak what is deeply upon my heart to all
the parents of the land! God hath committed their children’s souls as much to
their trust and care as He hath done their bodies. It is they that are to teach
them, and to exhort them to keep the covenant, to catechise them, and to mind
them of the state of their souls, their need of Christ, the mercy of
redemption, the excellency of holiness, and of everlasting life. It is they
that are to watch over them with wisdom, love, and diligence, to save them from
temptation, Satan, and sin, and to lead them by the example of a holy life.
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