Kings xxi. What else is it but to sacrifice
one's own child to the idol and to burn it, when parents train their
children more in the way of the world than in the way of God? let them
go their way, and be burned up in worldly pleasure, love, enjoyment,
possessions and honor, but let God's love and honor and the desire of
eternal blessings be quenched in them?

O how perilous it is to be a father or a mother, where flesh and blood
are supreme! For, truly, the knowledge and fulfilment of the first
three and the last six Commandments depends altogether upon this
Commandment; since parents are commanded to teach them to their
children, as Psalm lxxviii. says, "How strictly has He commanded our
fathers, that they should make known God's Commandments to their
children, that the generation to come might know them and declare them
to their children's children." This also is the reason why God bids us
honor our parents, that is, to love them with fear; for that other love
is without fear, therefore it is more dishonor than honor.

Now see whether every one does not have good works enough to do,
whether he be father or child. But we blind men leave this untouched,
and seek all sorts of other works which are not commanded.

IV. Now where parents are foolish and train their children after the
fashion of the world, the children are in no way to obey them; for God,
according to the first three Commandments, is to be more highly
regarded than the parents. But training after the fashion of the world
I call it, when they teach them to seek no more than pleasure, honor
and possessions of this world or its power.

To wear decent clothes and to seek an honest living is a necessity, and
not sin. Yet the heart of a child must be taught to be sorry that this
miserable earthly life cannot well be lived, or even begun, without the
striving after more adornment and more possessions than are necessary
for the protection of the body against cold and for nourishment. Thus
the child must be taught to grieve that, without its own will, it must
do the world's will and play the fool with the rest of men, and endure
such evil for the sake of something better and to avoid something
worse. So Queen Esther wore her royal crown, and yet said to God,
Esther xiv, "Thou knowest, that the sign of my high estate, which is
upon my head, has never yet delighted me, and I abhor it as a
menstruous rag, and never wear it when I am by myself, but when I must
do i