Did your parents love God above all earthly things, and will ye prefer the love of this world above all things heavenly and divine? Have ye had such shining examples of holiness brought so near you to no purpose? Do they pray for you daily? Do they daily mourn over you, and hope, and wish, and exhort you to take care of your souls? And are you resolved that their counsels, their prayers, and their tears, shall be laid out upon you in vain? Is this the return you make for all their care and compassion? They tell you daily that they can have _no greater joy than to see their children walking in the truth_, and will you cruelly disappoint their pleasures, and bring down their grey hairs with sorrow to the grave? Perhaps there are some of you, who already have parted with your parents, and their spirits are at rest; and has neither their life, nor their death, made serious and lasting impressions upon you; have they entreated you in their last dying moments, by all that is dear and sacred, to make sure of heaven? And will you abandon these entreaties, and sell your souls to the world, and to death, for a few perishing temptations? Have they laid a solemn charge upon you at their last farewell, to travel in the paths of piety, and meet them on mount Sion in the great day? and have you wandered already from this high road of holiness, and forgot the solemnity and the charge? Shall your parents dwell for ever with their God, and shall their children for ever dwell in fire prepared for the devil and his angels? You cannot sin at so easy and so cheap a rate as others. You must break through stronger bonds, and do bolder violence to your consciences, before you can indulge iniquity, and pursue wickedness. Your temptations to sin have been less than others, and your advantages for salvation have been much greater. Our hearts bleed within us, to think of your double guilt, and your aggravated damnation: to think that you should not only be separated from your parents, and their God, for ever, but that your place of torment shall be the hottest also, amongst all your companions in misery. What anguish and inward vexation will seize you, when ye shall reflect how nigh ye were raised in outward privileges, and how near ye were brought to heaven? and how you quitted your interest, and your hopes there, for the trifles of this life, for a base lust, or a foolish vanity: What will ye say, when ye shall see _many coming from the east, and from the west_, from families of wickedness, from the ends of the earth, and from the borders of hell, and sit down with your fathers in the kingdom of heaven; while you _the children of the kingdom, are cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth_; Mat. viii. 11, 12. I presume thus far with freedom to address you, _if by any methods I might provoke to emulation them which are of the flesh of Israel, of the kindred of the saints, and might save some of them_; Rom. xi. 14.