Page:Remarkable life and death of Agnes Webster.pdf/6

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encourage their children in acting so imprudently nay, who do not iuterpose their authority to prevent them from heedlessly exposing themselves to unseen and unsuspected danger. Indulged, because beloved, children, too, often, like Dinah, become the shame and grief of their relations. And, indeed large families even when trained up in the fear of God, will frequently occasion many trials, anxieties, aud sorrows, to their parents; and the grief of losing them in infancy is transient and tolerable compared with that of seeing them grow up and live in wickedness. Let parents then rejoice as though they rejoiced not, and submit with resignation if the Lord bereave them of their beloved offspring; and if their children be spared, let them bring them up for the Lord, and commend them to his gracious protection. When young women listen to the vile proposals or flattering promises of seducers, they not unfrequently seclude themselves from every prospect of forming honourable connexions, and voluntarily consign themselves to a single life, if still worse consequences do not ensue; aud this consideration, combined with nobler motives, should induce them to object, with determined indignation and disdain, every dishonourable proposal. No sin is made lighter of by multitudes than lewdness; yet