that God would be pleased to forgive them, so that neither we, nor they, may sink under the wrath of God for them: "Remember not, Lord, our offences, nor the offences of our forefathers, neither take thou vengeance of our sins:" Ours, in common and conjunction. And David confessed to God, and humbled himself for the sins of his ancestors and predecessors: "Our fathers have done amiss, and dealt wickedly, neither kept they thy great goodness in remembrance, but were disobedient at the sea, even at the Red Sea." So did good King Josiah; "Great is the wrath of the Lord, which is kindled against us, because our fathers have not hearkened unto the words of this book."* But this is to be done between God and ourselves: or, if in public, then to be done by general accusation; that God only may read our particular sorrows in the single shame of our families, registered in our hearts, and represented to him with humiliation, shame, and a hearty prayer.

2. Those curses, which descend from the fathers to the children by imitation of the crimes of their progenitors, are to be cut off by special and personal repentance and prayer, as being a state directly opposite to that which procured the curse and if the sons be pious, or return to an early and severe course of holy living, they are to be remedied as other innocent and pious persons are, who are sufferers under the burdens of their relatives, whom I shall consider by and by. Only observe this; that no public or imaginative disavowings, no ceremonial and pompous rescission of our fathers' crimes, can be sufficient to interrupt the succession of the curse, if the children do secretly practise or approve what they in pretence or ceremony disavow. And this is clearly proved; and it will help to explicate that difficult saying of our blessed Saviour, "Wo unto you, for ye build the sepulchres of the prophets, and your fathers killed them. Truly ye bear witness that ye allow the deeds of your fathers: for they killed them, and ye build their sepulchres :"+ that is, the Pharisees were huge hypocrites, and adorned the monuments of the martyr-prophets, and in words disclaimed their fathers' sin, but in deeds and design they approved it; 1. Because they secretly wished all such persons dead; "colebant mortuos, quos nollent superstites:" In charity

2 Kings xxii. 13.

Luke xi. 47, 48.

to themselves some men wish their enemies in heaven, and would be at charges for a monument for them, that their malice, and their power, and their bones, might rest in the same grave; and yet that wish and that expense is no testimony of their charity, but of their anger. 2. These men were willing that the monuments of those prophets should remain, and be a visible affrightment to all such bold persons and severe reprehenders as they were; and, therefore, they builded their sepulchres to be as beacons and publications of danger to all honest preachers. And this was the account St. Chrysostom gave of the place. 3. To which also the circumstances of the place concur. For they only said, "If they had lived in their fathers' days, they would not have done as they did ;"* but it is certain they approved it, because they pursued the same courses: and, therefore, our blessed Saviour calls them γενεὰν ἀποκτείνουσαν, not only the children of them that did kill the prophets, but a killing generation;' the sin also descends upon you, for ye have the same killing mind and although you honour them that are dead, and cannot shame you; yet you design the same usages against them that are alive, even against the Lord of the prophets, against Christ himself, whom ye will kill. And as Dion said of Caracalla, Πᾶσι τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς ἀνδράσιν ἀχθόμενος, τιμῶν τινὰς αὐτῶν ἀποθανόντας ἐπλάττετο, “ The man was troublesome to all good men when they were alive, but did them honour when they were dead;"+ and when Herod had killed Aristobulus, yet he made him a most magnificent funeral: so, because the Pharisees were of the same humour, therefore our blessed Saviour bids them "to fill up the measure of their fathers' iniquity;"‡ for they still continued the malice, only they painted it over with a pretence of piety, and of disavowing their fathers' sin; which if they had done really, their being children of persecutors, much less the adorning of the prophets' sepulchres,' could not have been just cause of a wo from Christ; this being an act of piety, and the other of nature, inevitable and not chosen by them, and therefore not chargeable upon them. He therefore that will to real purposes disavow his father's crimes, must do it heartily, and humbly, and charitably, and throw off all affections to the like actions. For he that finds fault with his father for killing • Matt. xxiii. 30. + Reimar. t. 2. p. 1302. Matt. xxiii. 32.

Isaiah or Jeremy, and himself shall kill Aristobulus and John the Baptist; he that is angry because the old prophets were murdered, and shall imprison and beggar and destroy the new ones; he that disavows the persecution in the primitive times, and honours the memory of the dead martyrs, and yet every day makes new ones; he that blames the oppression of the country by any of his predecessors, and yet shall continue to oppress his tenants, and all that are within his gripe; that man cannot hope to be eased from the curse of his father's sins; he goes on to imitate them, and, therefore, to fill up their measure, and to reap a full treasure of wrath.

3. But concerning the third, there is yet more difficulty. Those persons that inherit their fathers' sins by possessing the price of their fathers' souls, that is, by enjoying the goods gotten by their fathers' rapine, may certainly quit the inheritance of the curse, if they quit the purchase of the sin, that is, if they pay their fathers' debts; his debts of contract, and his debts of justice; his debts of intercourse, and his debts of oppression. I do not say that every man is bound to restore all the land, which his ancestors have unjustly snatched: for when by law the possession is established, though the grandfather entered like a thief, yet the grandchild is 'bonæ fidei' possessor, and may enjoy it justly. And the reasons of this are great and necessary; for the avoiding eternal suits, and perpetual diseases of the rest and conscience; because there is no estate in the world that could be enjoyed by any man honestly, if posterity were bound to make restitution of all the wrongs done by their progenitors. But although the children of the far-removed lines are not obliged to restitution, yet others are: and some for the same, some for other reasons.

1. Sons are tied to restore what their fathers did usurp, or to make agreement and an acceptable recompense for it, if the case be visible, evident, and notorious, and the oppressed party demands it: because in this case the law hath not settled the possession in the new tenant; or if a judge hath, it is by injury; and there is yet no collateral accidental title transferred by long possession, as it is in other cases: and therefore, if the son continues to oppress the same person whom his father first injured, he may well expect to be

the heir of his father's curse, as well as of his cursed purchase.

2. Whether by law and justice, or not, the person be obliged, nay, although by all the solemnities of law the unjust purchase be established, and that in conscience the grandchildren be not obliged to restitution in their own particulars, but may continue to enjoy it without a new sin; yet if we see a curse descending upon the family for the old oppression done in the days of our grandfathers, or if we probably suspect that to be the cause; then, if we make restitution, we also most certainly remove the curse, because we take away the matter upon which the curse is grounded. I do not say, we sin, if we do not restore: but that, if we do not, we may still be punished. The reason of this is clear and visible for as without our faults, in many cases, we may enjoy those lands which our forefathers got unjustly; so without our faults we may be punished for them. For as they have transmitted the benefit to us, it is but reasonable we should suffer the appendant calamity. If we received good, we must also venture the evil that comes along with it. "Res transit cum suo onere:" "All lands and possessions pass with their proper burdens."—And if any of my ancestors was a tenant, and a servant, and held his lands as a villain to his lord; his posterity also must do so, though accidentally they become noble. The case is the same. If my ancestors entered unjustly, there is a curse and a plague that is due to that oppression and injustice; and that is the burden of the land,' and it descends all along with it. And although I, by the consent of laws, am a just possessor, yet I am obliged to the burden that comes with the land: I am indeed another kind of person than my grandfather; he was a usurper, but I am a just possessor; but, because in respect of the land this was but an accidental change, therefore I still am liable to the burden, and the curse that descends with it. But the way to take off the curse is to quit the title; and yet a man may choose. It may be, to lose the land would be the bigger curse: but, if it be not, the way is certain how you may be rid of it. There was a custom among the Greeks, that the children of them, that died of consumptions or dropsies, all the while their fathers' bodies were burning on their funeral piles, did sit with their feet in cold water, hoping

that such a lustration and ceremony would take off the lineal and descending contagion from the children. I know not what cure they found by their superstition: but we may be sure, that if we wash (not our feet, but) our hands of all the unjust purchases which our fathers have transmitted to us, their hydropic thirst of wealth shall not transmit to us a consumption of estate, or any other curse. But this remedy is only in the matter of injury or oppression, not in the case of other sins; because other sins were transient; and, as the guilt did not pass upon the children, so neither did the exterior and permanent effect: and, therefore, in other sins (in case they do derive a curse) it cannot be removed, as in the matter of unjust possession it may be; whose effect (we may so order it) shall no more stick to us, than the guilt of our fathers' personal actions.

The sum is this: as kingdoms use to expiate the faults of others by acts of justice; and as churches use to remove the accursed thing' from sticking to the communities of the faithful, and the sins of Christians from being required of the whole congregation, by excommunicating and censuring the delinquent persons; so the heirs and sons of families are to remove from their house the curse descending from their fathers' loins-1, by acts of disavowing the sins of their ancestors; 2. by praying for pardon; 3. by being humbled for them; 4. by renouncing the example; and, 5. quitting the affection to the crimes: 6. by not imitating the actions in kind, or in semblance and similitude: and, lastly, 7. by refusing to rejoice in the ungodly purchases, in which their fathers did amiss, and dealt wickedly.

Secondly; but, after all this, many cases do occur, in which we find that innocent sons are punished. The remedies I have already discoursed of, are for such children, who have, in some manner or other, contracted and derived the sin upon themselves: but if we inquire how those sons,-who have no intercourse or affinity with their fathers' sins, or whose fathers' sins were so transient that no benefit or effect did pass upon their posterity,-how they may prevent, or take off, the curse that lies upon the family for their fathers' faults; this will have some distant considerations.

1. The pious children of evil parents are to stand firm upon the confidence of the divine grace and mercy, and