This devotion would give them another spirit, and make them consider how to make proper returns of care, kindness, and protection to those, who had spent their strength and time in service and attendance upon them.
12. Now if gentlemen think it too low an employment to exercise such a devotion as this for their servants, let them consider how far they are from the spirit of Christ, who made himself not only an intercessor, but a sacrifice for the whole race of sinful mankind?
Let them consider how miserable their greatness would be, if the Son of God should think it as much below him to pray for them, as they do to pray for their fellow-creatures?
Let them consider how far they are from that spirit, which prays for its most unjust enemies, if they have not kindness enough to pray for those, by whose labours and service they live in ease themselves.
13. Again: If parents should thus make themselves advocates and intercessors with God for their children, constantly applying to heaven in behalf of them, nothing would be more likely, not only to bless their children, but also to dispose their own minds to the performance of every thing that was excellent and praise-worthy.
I don’t suppose, but that the generality of parents remember their children in their prayers. *But the thing here intended is not a general remembrance of them, but a regular method of recommending all their particular needs unto God; and of praying for every such particular grace and virtue for them as their state and condition of life shall seem to require.
The state of parents is a holy state, in some degree like that of the priesthood, and calls upon them to bless their children with their prayers and sacrifices to God. Thus it was that holy Job watched over, and blessed his children, he sanctified them, he rose up early in the morning, and offered burnt-offerings, according to the number of them all, Job i. 5.
If parents therefore, considering themselves in this light, should be daily calling upon God in a solemn, deliberate manner, altering and extending their intercessions, as the state and growth of their children required, such devotion would have a mighty influence upon the rest of their lives; it would make them very circumspect in the government of themselves; prudent and careful of every thing they said or did, lest their example should hinder that which they so constantly desired in their prayers.
14. If a father was daily making particular prayers to God, that he would please to inspire his children with true piety, great humility, and strict temperance, what could be more likely to make the father himself become exemplary in these virtues? How naturally would he grow ashamed of wanting such virtues as he thought necessary for his children? So that his prayers for their piety, would be a certain means of exalting his own.
If a father thus considered himself as an intercessor with God for his children, to bless them with his prayers, how would such thoughts make him avoid every thing that was displeasing to God, lest when he prayed for his children, God should reject his prayers?