Parenting and the Puritans

By sharing resources from the Puritans, I don't want to suggest that the time of the Puritans or the ways of the Puritans were perfect.  There is no "good old days" after the Fall (Genesis 3) that we should long for.


Here are some quotes on parenting from different Puritans.

"If parents would have their children blessed at church and at school, let them beware they give their children no corrupt examples of home by any carelessness, profaneness or ungodliness.  Otherwise, parents will do them more harm at home than bother pastors and schoolmasters can do them good abroad.  For the corrupt example of the one fighteth with the good instruction of the other, which is so much the more dangerous because that corrupt walking is armed with nature and therefor more forcibly inclineth the affections of the children to that side."  (Richard Greenham)

From the old Puritan John Flavel's classic work The Mystery of Providence.The second chapter is an explanation of why we need to worship God for his kind providence in our childhood.  To read the entire post, click HERE

"Now, the purpose of these 8 considerations is not to make parents despair, but to help them see their responsibility.  Flavel acknowledges, of course, that God is the only one who can bring a child to salvation and that God’s purposes are his own. And yet the Scriptures make it plain that the parents are to raise their children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Every parent would do well to ponder these 8 items."
This is an abbreviated version of the 8 items.

1. Consider the intimacy of the relationship between you and your children, and, therefore, how much their happiness or misery is your concern. 
2. Consider that God has charged you to tend not only to their bodies, but also to their souls. 
3. Consider what could possibly comfort you at the time of your children’s death if, through your neglect, they die in a Christless condition.
4. Consider this question: If you neglect to instruct your children in the way of holiness, will the devil neglect to instruct them in the way of wickedness?
5. Consider that if the years of your children’s youth are neglected, there is little probability of any good fruit afterwards.
6. Consider that you are the instrumental cause of all your children’s spiritual misery, both by generation and imitation, by birth and by example. 
7. Consider that there is no one in the world more likely than you to be instruments of their eternal good. 
8. Consider the great day of judgment and be moved with pity for your children.