Domestic Duties vol 2 William Gouge

On this ground let parents be exhorted to train up such children as they find fit, to the great and weighty calling of the ministry: no calling wherein any may do more good, and wherein [if they be able and faithful Ministers] they can receive more comfort and contentment. This exhortation is the more to be regarded, because in comparison of those who are trained up to other callings, so few are trained up to this.

33. Of parents' faults contrary to their duty of training their children up to a calling.

On the contrary, many parents much offend in not training up their children to a calling as they should. And the offence in this kind is committed many ways. As 1. When parents suffer their children to live like little masters at home, and pass over all their youth in idleness. Thus they prove very drones, and caterpillars in the Commonwealth: if they have a patrimony, they soon waste it: if they have none, they oft prove either thieves or beggars: they are fit for all companies: the readiest prey for the devil that can be: for they are like the house empty, swept and garnished (Matt 12:44), which when the evil spirit espieth, he presently entereth into it with seven other spirits worse than himself.

The wise lawmaker among the heathen is said to order that the child which by his parents had been taught no art, should not be forced to nourish them though they were old or poor. This I allege not to justify the law [for it is against the Christian rule of overcoming evil with goodness] but to shew how the very heathen judged the neglect of this duty a great fault in parents.

2. When parents neglect to teach their children in their childhood the general and common grounds of all callings: some upon niggardliness; others upon carelessness. Thus poor men make their children unfit for many means, whereby they might well maintain themselves: and rich men make theirs unfit for magistracy, and for good society. Yea poor and rich are thus nousled up the more in ignorance, and made the more unfit to profit by the preaching of the word, and other means of spiritual edification.

3. When parents bring up their children in unwarrantable and unlawful callings, as to be of popish and idolatrous orders; to attend upon papists; to be stage-players, keepers of dice-houses, &c. Some [which is horrible to think of] train up their daughters to be common strumpets: and some [which is yet more horrible] train up their children to be sorcerers and witches. How can they in these keep a good conscience, when the very works of their calling are sin? Is not this to thrust them headlong into hell? They who thus bind their children to the devil's sacrileges are spiritual murderers of them.

4. When parents have no respect at all to the fitness of the calling: as when they train up children of able bodies, but dull and slow capacity, of a stuttering tongue and other like imperfections, to learning, wherein they prove very dunces, and lose all their time, or are not able to make use of the learning which they have: or when they train up children which have a great inclination to learning, and are very fit thereunto, in some other trade, which, after many years spent therein, they are forced to leave.

5. When parents only seek after the most gainful trade, and never think to educate their children most to the honour of God. How can such expect God's blessing upon the means used for their children's good? Hence is it that among papists so many are trained up to Ecclesiastical orders and functions: and so few among Protestants. For there is very great maintenance and revenues for such among papists: but little in comparison among Protestants.

34. Of parents teaching their children piety.

The spiritual good of children, and that in their childhood, is to be procured by parents as well as their temporal. Wherefore Parents must train up their children in true piety. This is expressly commanded in my text under this phrase admonition of the Lord. Under the law God did both simply command it (Deut 4:9; 6:7; 11:19; Psa 78:5,6), and that very often, and also ordained divers outward rites (Exo 12:26; 13:14), and caused many visible and extraordinary monuments to be set up (Josh 4:6,7,21), that thereby children might be occasioned to ask of their parents the mystery of them, and that parents from that inquiry of their children might take occasion to teach them the ordinances of the Lord (Deut 6:20).

This express charge of the Lord is further commended by that practice which holy parents from time to time have yielded thereunto: instance the examples of Abraham (Gen 18:19), David (Pro 4:4), Bathsheba (Prov 31:1), Lois and Eunice (2 Tim 1:5), with many others.