Page:Dissertation on family worship, or, A guide, to domestic happiness.pdf/23

 instruction, and from an absolute in capacity, may, not be able to preserve their authority: but I cannot easily reconcile with true piety, the absolute neglect of either the one or the other.

I must add, that I take family religion, and the careful discharge of relative duties, o be an excellent mean of the growth of religion in a man's own soul. How can any person bend his knees in prayer every day with his family, but it must be a powerful restraint upon him from the indulgence of every sin which is visible to them? Will such person, think you, dare to indulge himself in anger, or choose to be seen by them when he comes home staggering with drunkenness, unfit to perform any duty or ready to sin still more by the manner of performance? When figure to myself a master of a family, who had come home sotted like a beast, and half- supported to his house, rising in the morning, I am not able to conceive how he can see the looks of those members of his family who had been witnesses of his shame. But, beside