additional duties contained In the gospel, the principal whereof are faith in Christ, repentance towards God, and love and charity towards men. 3. The things to be prayed for and desired of God, the sum whereof is contained in the Lord's prayer.

This is the Christian religion, into the profession of which you were all baptized, and therein made a solemn vow to profess it and obey it to your lives' end, and is that which is at this day publicly professed and maintained in the Church of England; and is the same which Christ and his apostles commended to the world.

It is true that some hundred years after Christ's ascension, the pride and covetousness of the church of Rome added a great many new doctrines of their own invention to the Christian doctrine, as the doctrine of purgatory, praying to saints and angels, adoration of images, transubstantiation, the pope's supremacy, and some more of the like kind, and also loaded the Christian religion with many vain and superstitious rites and ceremonies; these and very many of this kind the church of England reject as untrue and vain superadditives to the Christian religion, and hath retained and professeth the true Christian doctrine as it was delivered by

Christ and his apostles. Into this Christian doctrine you were all baptized, and in it I would have you live and die, and assure yourselves that in the faith and obedience thereof, you shall most certainly attain everlasting blessedness. And thus far touching religion, and Christian religion in general. And though these matters will be of more ease to you hereafter as your understanding increaseth than they can be now when you are children, yet I thought it fit to mention these general things also, because I intend this little book as a guide to all of your lives, and to be accommodated to the several stations and periods of your ages as they increase. I shall now, as I promised, descend to more particular directions, which will be of daily use and practice to you.

CHAPTER VII.

Particular Directions relating to Religion and the Worship of God; and first concerning Prayer.

You must know that every moment that you live, you live by the bounty of Almighty God: every blessing that you have you receive from him; your health and preservation from dangers, and your preservation in them, your necessary supply, your understanding, senses, strength, all these are his gifts, and he can take them from you when it pleaseth him: again you must know, that there is scarce any day, or any hour of your lives, but you are subject to dangers; a slip of your feet may break a bone, a fall from a horse may kill you, crossing a river you may be drowned, a drunken man or a quarrelsome fellow may stab you when you think not of it, you may happen into a house infected with a pestilential disease, you may take a malignant and poisonous vapour in the air you breathe in, a tyle may fall from a house and kill you, nay a crumb

of bread the wrong way in your throat may choak you; a thousand instances of this kind happen almost every year to some or other, so that considering the danger that we are subject unto, it is a greater miracle that any man lives, than to die among such a number of accidents to which you as well as others are subject.

You must also know and consider that none of all these accidents come to pass without the knowledge or against the will of almighty God. A sparrow falls not to the ground without his permission or providence, and certainly therefore a man falls not to the ground without his permission or providence, who is of more value than many sparrows. When you rise in a morning you know not what dangers you may meet with before night; but he sees and knows, and can suffer or prevent them. When you go to bed you know not what dangers may seize upon you, and possibly take you out of the world in your sleep; but he that neither slumbers nor sleeps, sees, and knows, and permits, and prevents them at his pleasure.

And as thus there be dangers from evil and unexpected accidents, so there be a world of dangers that unexpectedly happen by the means of evil men. It may be, as soon as you are out

of doors, you meet with a man that may seduce you to evil company, to debauchery or intemperance; or that may draw you into a quarrel that may cost you your life.

And as there are unexpected dangers from evil accidents and evil men, so there are unseen dangers which you may meet with from evil angels. The prince of darkness, that common enemy to mankind, hath a thousand ways to endanger you, either by bringing some danger or mischief on you, or by tempting you to some base sin or enormity; and these mischievous and powerful spirits would be too hard for the wisest and strongest man, were they not restrained and chained up by the power and goodness of God.

And I shall add this one consideration more: there are thousands of dangers that are in our way and walk through the world, which we may see and observe; many more we pass through and along by, and see them not, and therefore cannot at present make any observation touching them. I speak it by experience; any man that attentively considers his events in this life, may easily find that in many, nay, most of the dangers he escapes or avoids, there is a secret hand or means of his preservation or deliverance, that acts beyond and without the contrivance or