Genesis 34

REFLECTIONS UPON CHAP. XXXIV.—Into what scenes of guilt and misery do the pride, the vanity, and lust of young persons, often plunge themselves and their relations! One sin naturally makes way for another: and young women, who are given to gadding abroad, rarely maintain their chastity. Yet it is but just that such as have defiled young women should espouse them in marriage, and repair their outward injury, though they cannot lessen their guilt before God. How readily the affairs of a family run wrong, when parents’ authority is so low that they must stand in awe of their children! How often heathens shew more respect to parents, in point of their marriage, than many professed Christians! Men’s rage at one sin frequently issues in their doing what is still worse—in making religious pretences the mean of accomplishing the most devilish villanies; or in pretending public welfare, in order to obtain private ends! The hopes of gain will carry some men a great way in religion; and yet, after all, they lose their aim; for the profane reception of the seals of God’s covenant issues most surely in just and inevitable ruin. Nothing is so treacherous or cruel, that indulged malice will not attempt. But it is still worse when children, after plunging their parents into disgrace and danger, add to their grief by an insolent justification of their conduct.—Let parents restrain their children from idle visits and foolish amusements; let them retain their proper authority; let them transact marriages with candour and self-denial; if they wish to be happy