(3.) Masters should endeavour to instruct their servants in the principles of religion, especially if ignorant. And,
(4.) They should allow them sufficient time for religious duties; which, if needful, ought to be taken out of that time, wherein they would otherwise be employed in their service: And this they ought to do, as considering, that the best Christians are like to make the most faithful servants.
3. We are now to consider the duty of magistrates towards their subjects. This consists,
(1.) In their endeavouring to promote their liberty, safety, and happiness, by the justice and clemency of their administration. Thus it is said, He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God, 2 Sam. xxiii. 3. By this means they will lay their subjects under the highest obligation to duty and obedience; and the respect which they have from them, will render the station, in which they are, more agreeable.
(2.) They ought to defend the rights of subjects, when injured, against their oppressors; that they may appear to be, as it were, their common fathers, to whom they have recourse in all difficulties, and find redress.
(3.) They ought to encourage and support the common design of Christianity, by suppressing irreligion and profaneness, and every thing which is a scandal to the Christian name, or a reproach to a well-ordered government. This leads us,
II. To consider the sins of superiors. These sin in their behaviour towards their inferiors,
1. By pride and haughtiness; when they treat those who are below them, with contempt and disdain; as though, because they are not, in many respects, their equals, they are not their fellow-creatures. This discovers itself either in reproachful words or actions. Thus the Pharisees treated those whom they apprehended inferior to them, in gifts or station, in the church, with contempt; so that they often made use of that aphorism; This people, who knoweth not the law, are cursed, John vii. 49.
2. Another sin of superiors is, when masters exact severe and unmerciful labour, beyond what is reasonable, of their servants, which is little better than the oppression of the Egyptian task-masters; who commanded them to make brick without straw, Exod. v. 15,16. and beat, and dealt severely with them, because they could not fulfil their unreasonable exactions.
3. Sin is committed by those who, being princes, or generals, exercise inhuman cruelty, contrary to the law of nature and nations, towards their conquered enemies, when they have them in their power. This David seems to have been charged with, as a blemish in his reign; when he put the men of Rabbah, after he had conquered them, under saws, and under harrows of iron, and made them pass through the brick-kilns. Thus did he unto all the cities of the children of Ammon; which seems hardly justifiable by marshal law; and therefore it must be reckoned a failing in him; especially unless the Ammonites had done something extraordinary, to deserve such treatment, or had used Israel in the like manner, so that this might be reckoned a just reprizal upon them, 2 Sam. xii. 31.