1 Timothy v. 4,) to requite his parent. And yet the debt (I mean only the principal, not counting the interest) cannot fully be paid, and therefore he compounds with his father to accept in good worth the utmost of his endeavor.

Such a child God commonly rewards with long life in this world. If he chance to die young, yet he lives long that lives well; and time misspent is not lived but lost. Besides, God is better than his promise, if he takes from him a long lease, and gives him a freehold of better value. As for disobedient children,

If preserved from the gallows, they are reserved for the rack, to be tortured by their own posterity. One complained, that never father had so undutiful a child as he had. "Yes," said his son, with less grace than truth, "my grandfather had."

I conclude this subject with the example of a Pagan's son, which will shame most Christians. Pomponius Atticus, making the funeral oration at the death of his mother, did protest that living with her threescore and seven years, he was never reconciled unto her, "Se nunquam cum matre in gratiam rediisse;" because (take the comment with the text) there never happened betwixt them the least jar, which needed reconciliation.

THE GOOD MASTER.

He is the heart in the midst of his household, "primum vivens et ultimum moriens," first up and last abed, if not in his person yet in his providence. In his carriage he aimeth at his own and his servants' good, and to advance both.

He oversees the works of his servants. One said that the dust that fell from the master's shoes was the best compost to manure ground. The lion out of state will not run whilst any one looks upon him; but some servants out of slothfulness will not run except some do look upon them, spurred on with their master's eye. Chiefly he is careful exactly to take his servants' reckonings. If their master takes no account of them, they will make small account of him, and care not what they spend who are never brought to an audit.

He provides them victuals, wholesome, sufficient, and seasonable. He doth not so allay his servants' bread to debase it so much as to make that servants' meat which is not man's meat. He alloweth them also convenient rest and recreation; whereas some masters, like a bad conscience, will not suffer them to sleep that have them. He remembers the old law of the Saxon

King Ina, "If a villain work on Sunday by his lord's command, he shall be free."

The wages he contracts for, he duly and truly pays to his servants. The same word in the Greek, 'os, signifies rust and poison and some strong poison is made of the rust of metals, but none more venomous than the rust of money in the rich man's purse, unjustly detained from the laborer, which will poison and infect his whole

estate.

He never threatens his servant, but rather presently corrects him. Indeed conditional threatenings with promise of pardon on amendment, are good and useful. Absolute threatenings torment more, reform less, making servants keep their faults, and forsake their masters: wherefore herein he never passeth his word, but makes present payment, lest the creditor run away from the debtor.

In correcting his servant, he becomes not a slave to his own passion. Not cruelly making new indentures of the flesh of his apprentice. To this end he never beats him in the height of his passion. Moses being to fetch water out of the rock, and commanded by God only to speak to it with his rod in his hand, being transported with anger, smote it thrice. Thus some masters, which might fetch penitent tears from their servants with a chiding word (only shaking the rod

withal for terror), in their fury strike many blows which might better be spared. If he perceives his servant incorrigible, so that he cannot wash the blackamoor, he washeth his hands of him, and fairly puts him away.

He is tender of his servant in his sickness and age. If crippled in his service, his house is his hospital yet how many throw away those dry bones out of the which themselves have sucked the marrow? It is as usual to see a young serving-man an old beggar, as to see a light-horse first from the great saddle of a nobleman to come to the hackney-coach, and at last die in drawing a car. But the good master is not like the cruel hunter, in the fable, who beat his old dog because his toothless mouth let go the game: he rather imitates the noble nature of our Prince Henry, who took order for the keeping of an old English mastiff which had made a lion run away. Good reason good service in age should be rewarded. Who can without pity and pleasure behold that trusty vessel which carried Sir Francis Drake about the world?

Hitherto our discourse hath proceeded of the carriage of masters towards free covenant servants, not intermeddling with their behavior towards slaves and vassals, whereof we only report this passage: When Charles the Fifth Emperor returning with his fleet from Algiers was extreme

ly beaten with a tempest, and their ships overloaden, he caused them to cast their best horses into the sea to save the life of many slaves, which according to the market price was not so much worth. Are there not many that in such a case had rather save Jack the horse than Jocky the keeper? And well may masters consider how easy a transposition it had been for God, to have made him to mount into the saddle that holds the stirrup; and him to sit down at the table, who stands by with a trencher.

THE GOOD SERVANT.

He is one that out of conscience serves God in his master, and so hath the principle of obedience in himself. As for those servants who found their obedience on some external thing, with engines, they will go no longer than they are wound, or weighed up.

He doth not dispute his master's lawful will, but doeth it. Hence it is that simple servants (understand such whose capacity is bare measure, without surplusage, equal to the business he is used in) are more useful, because more manageable, than abler men, especially in matters wherein not their brains but hands are required.