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Parents and Children
PARENTS AND CHILDREN
In much love to the rising generation, we exhort them to
avoid the many vanities and ensnaring corruptions to which they
are exposed. Bear in mind, dear youth, that "the fear of the
Lord is the beginning of wisdom," and that "a good understanding
have all they who do his commandments." Psalm 111:10. Take the
advice of godly parents, guardians and friends; ever remembering
that, next to our Creator, children ought to obey their parents,
and that disobedience to them is a breach of the moral law, and
was always offensive in the Divine sight. Submit to their
reasonable requirings with cheerfulness, though these may
sometimes thwart your own inclinations, and answer them not
frowardly or crossly. They watched over you and took care of
you, when you were utterly unable to help or care for yourselves.
Why then should any of you grieve and wound their still anxious
minds by a conduct which (because of its tendency to obstruct
your welfare and happiness) you know they cannot approve? Such
as, running into vain and expensive fashions, associating with
corrupt and libertine persons; frequenting taverns and places of
diversion; wasting your precious time in idle discourse, and
drawing the affections and inflaming the passions one of another;
all which we have no doubt the divine Monitor in your own breasts
often pleads with you against, and shews to be destructive of
your peace. We beseech you, as fathers, to attend to this
heavenly Instructor, and dutifully yield to the correspondent
tender advice of your friends. Shrink not from the cross of
Christ in your garb, language or manners; but, through a
subjection of your wills to the divine will, in these and all
other respects, walk answerably to the purity of our profession,
and the simplicity and spirituality of our worship: so may you be
instructive examples to serious enquirers after truth; and not of
those who, under a profession thereof, are preferring their own
crooked ways, and turning others aside from the footsteps of its
followers.
It is advised that where the pious exercise of parental care
and authority is disregarded, and any of the youth in membership
with us appear obstinately determined to run into and copy after
the vain and extravagant fashions of the world in their dress and
address, exposing themselves to the corrupting influence of evil
company and excesses, whereby designing persons may entangle
their affections, and draw them into unsuitable and unhappy
connections in marriage or otherwise, that such be timely and
tenderly treated with, and shown the dangerous tendency of their
conduct; and, if they cannot be prevailed with to desist
therefrom, and amend their ways, they ought to be dealt with by
their respective preparative or monthly meetings, as in other
cases of offence; and if, after due expostulation and
forbearance, they prove irreclaimable, they may be testified
against. -- 1792.
And if any parents in membership with us, willingly indulge
their children, or youth under their care in such extravagance,
liberties and excesses, as are here pointed out, and persist in
vindicating their conduct, they ought in like manner to be
treated with and disowned.
Friends are advised to bring up their children to habits of
industry, placing them with sober and exemplary members of the
society, for instruction in such occupations as are consistent
with our religious principles and testimonies, that as far as in
us lies they may be preserved in a becoming conduct and
demeanour.
And it is desired that those whose circumstances may furnish
with ability for instructing, in useful and suitable employments,
the children of members who are in situations less affluent, may
receive them into their families upon terms so moderate and
equitable as to remove every plausible reason for placing them
with those not in membership with us. -- 1799.