Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: DISCOURSE I. THE NATURE OF FAMILY WORSHIP, AND THE OBLIGATIONS TO IT FROM PRINCIPLES OF REASON. ACTS X. 2. Cornelius?A devout man, and one that feared God ‘ with all his house, which gave much alms to the people, and prayed to God alway. J. HIS is the character of Cornelius; and a noble character it is. What makes it more remarkable is, that he was a heathen and a soldier. He was a devout man, a worshipper of the true God; he feared him, and made a conscience of praying to him ahuay; he was very charitable to the people among whom he lived. It is likewise observed, that he feared ’ God with all his house, which plainly intimates, that his family was a worshippmg Family. His pious care in praying with them, and for them, and teaching them the fear of God, was successful to make them devout and pious; so we read (v. 7.) of a dfvoitt soldier that waited on him contmuallv. was, in modern language, the captain’s own man. This example of the personal and family religion of a heathen and a soldier, will I hope, appear very proper to introduce an important design I have before me; namely, to lay before you at large
the na. ture and obligation of family worship, and endeavour to excite you to the practice of it. You vill bear me witness, that I do not curiously pry into the affairs of your families: but it is easy to know, and almost impossible not to know, from children, servants, neighbours, or others, who for a longer or shorter time reside in your houses, whether there be family worship there: and indeed were a minister to make a particular inquiry of them, or yourselves, about it, he could not be reckoned impertinent, but must appear to act in character. In some families, there is no more acknowledgment of God, in the exercise of the devotion, than if there we…