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2 lines
1.3 KiB
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<p>This expresses that very emphatically which many wise and good men feel very sensibly, what a grievous vexatious thing it is to have a foolish wicked child. See here, 1. How uncertain all our creature-comforts are, so that we are often not only disappointed in them, but that proves the greatest cross in which we promised ourselves most satisfaction. There was <i>joy when a man-child was born into the world</i>, and yet, if he prove vicious, his own father will wish he had never been born. The name of Absalom signifies his <i>father’s peace</i>, but he was his greatest trouble. It should moderate the desire of having children, and the delights of their parents in them, that they may prove a grief to them; yet it should silence the murmurings of the afflicted father in that case that if his son be a fool he is a fool of his own begetting, and therefore he must make the best of him, and take it up as his cross, the rather because Adam begets a son in his own likeness. 2. How unwise we are in suffering one affliction (and that of an untoward child as likely as any other) to drown the sense of a thousand mercies: <i>The father of a fool</i> lays that so much to heart that he <i>has no joy</i> of any thing else. For this he may thank himself; there are joys sufficient to counterbalance even that sorrow.</p>
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