 dictate to them that God is, (as in the fourth,) and to be jointly prayed to in their families (as in the fifth).
Therefore it is their duty so to do.
Therefore the light or law of nature doth dictate, that it is their duty to pray conjunctly with their families: and if the law of nature doth, the law of God doth, because the law of nature is God's law.
PROP. II. God is the Owner of our families, as such; therefore as such they should pray unto him.—God being our absolute Owner and Proprietor, not only rationeὑπεροχηςessentiœ suœ, "by reason of the supereminency of his nature," sed etiam jure creationis, ["but also through the right of creation,"] giving us our being and all [that] we have, we ourselves and all that is ours (we and ours being more his than our own) are unquestionably bound to lay-out ourselves for God, wherein we might be most useful for our Owner's interest and glory. Beside the title of creation, God is the Owner of our families by right of conservation and redemption. For hath God a right to and propriety‡ in the persons in a family, or the particular members of it, and not of the whole? Whose are your families, if not God's own? Will you disclaim God as your Owner? If you should, yet, in some sense, you are his still, though not by resignation and wholly devoting of yourselves to him. Whose would you have your families to be, God's own, or the devil's own? Hath the devil any title to your families? And shall your families serve the devil, that hath no title to you, either of creation, preservation, or redemption? and will you not serve God, that by all this hath a title to you, and an absolute, full propriety in you? If you will say, your families are the devil's, then serve him; but if you say, they are God's, then serve him. Or will you say, "We are God's; but we will serve the devil?" If you do not say so, yet if you do so, is it not as bad? Why are you not ashamed to do that, that you are ashamed to speak out, and tell the world what you do? Speak, then, in the fear of God. If your families, as such, be God's own, is it not reasonable, that, as such, you should serve him, and pray unto him? For do not you expect honour and obedience from your children, because they be your own? and work and labour and service from your own servants, because they be your own? And whatever you are owners of, would you not have it for your use? And will you require these things from yours, because they are yours, and shall not God require service from his? And if he do, shall he not have it? especially when God's title of propriety in you is infinitely greater than any title you have to any thing you have or call your own?  (Eph. 5:25–33; 6:1–10; Col. 3:19–25; 4:1.) Is God, then, the Master of your family, as such, and should not then your family, as such, serve him? Do not subjects, as such, owe obedience to their governors? "A son honoureth his father, and a servant his master: if then I be a Father, where is mine honour? and if I be a Master, where is my fear?" (Mal. 1:6.) Where, indeed? Not in prayerless, ungodly families.
PROP. IV. God is the Benefactor of your families, as such; therefore, as such, they should serve God, in praying to him, and praising of him.—God doth not do you good, and give you mercies, only as individual persons, but also as a conjunct society. Is not the continuance of the master of the family, not only a mercy to himself, but to the whole family also? If he be not [a mercy to them,] he is not over good. Is not the continuance of the mother, children, servants, in life, health, and being, a mercy to the family? That you have an house to dwell together, and food to eat together,—do not you call these family-mercies? And do not these call aloud in your ears, and to your consciences, to give praises to your bountiful Benefactor together, and to pray together for the continuance of these, and the grant of more, as you shall need them?* It would be endless to declare how many ways God is a Benefactor to your families conjunctly; and you are shameless, if you do not conjunctly praise him for his bounty. Such an house is rather a stye for swine, than a dwelling-house for rational creatures.
May not God call-out to such prayerless families, as to them in Jer. 2:31?—"O generation, see ye the word of the Lord. Have I been a wilderness unto Israel? a land of darkness? wherefore say my people, We are lords; we will come no more unto thee?" Hath God been forgetful of you? Speak, ye ungodly, prayerless families. Hath God been forgetful of you? No!  Every time [that] you see your table spread, and food set on, you see God doth not forget you. "Why, then," saith God, "will not this family come at me? When you have food to put into your children's mouths, that they do not cry for bread, and you constrained to say, 'I would, my poor hungry child! I would, but I have it not!' Why, then, will you not come at me? live together and eat together at my cost, and care, and charge, and yet be whole months, and never come at me? and that your children have reason, raiment, limbs, not born blind, nor of a monstrous birth, (which things Heathens have been affected with,)* and a thousand ways besides have I done you good;" may God say, "why, then, will you live whole years together, and never together come at me? Have you found one more able, or more willing, to do you good? That you never can. Why then are you so unthankful as not to come at me?" After the like manner the Lord expostulates with his people, to whom he had been a bountiful Benefactor;† and yet they answered not his bounty, nor served him their Benefactor, for which he calls to the heavens to be astonished, and the earth to be horribly afraid: "Thus saith the Lord, What iniquity have your fathers found in me, that they are gone far from me? Neither said they, Where is the Lord that brought us up out of the land of Egypt?" (Jer. 2:5, 6.) Should such a people forsake such a God, and go far from Him that did them so much good? Yet they did. "Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this." (Verse 12.) You see, when God is a Benefactor to a people, (and there is the same reason for families,) and they do not serve him, what monstrous wickedness it is! God hath kept you all safe in the night, and yet in the morning you do not say, "Where is the Lord that did preserve us? Come, O come, let us give joint praises to him!" God hath done you and your families good so many years; and yet you do not say, "Where is the Lord that hath done such great things for us? Come, let us acknowledge his mercy together." God hath carried you through affliction and sickness in the family: the plague hath been in the house, and yet you live: the smallpox and burning fevers have been in your houses, and yet you are alive: your conjugal companion hath been sick, and recovered: children nigh to death, and yet restored:—and for all this you do not say, "Where is the Lord that kept us from the grave, and saved us from the pit? that we are not rotten among the dead!" and yet you do not pray to nor praise this your wonderful Benefactor together. Let the very walls within which these ungrateful wretches live, be astonished at this! Let the very beams and pillars of their houses tremble! and let the very girders of the floors on which they tread and walk be horribly afraid! that such as dwell in such an house together, go to bed before they go to prayer together! Let the earth be amazed, that the families which the Lord doth nourish and maintain are rebellious and unthankful! being worse than the very ox that knoweth his owner, and of less understanding than the very ass.* (Isai. 1:2, 3.) There is such validity in the consequence, from God's being our Benefactor to our duty to him in serving of him, that Joshua builds his exhortation to the heads and people of Israel to fear and worship God, upon this very foundation, as appeareth plainly to any that read the chapter where the text lieth.
Therefore families, as such, are jointly to worship God, and pray unto him.
First. Whose word it is that is to be read in the family together.—The word of the eternal, blessed, glorious God. And doth this call for and require preceding prayer, no more than if you were to read the book of some mortal man? The