The Charge of many Children.

We have a title to be provided for, as we are God’s creatures, another title as we are his children, another because God hath promised — and every of our children hath the same title; and therefore it is a huge folly and infidelity to be troubled and full of care because we have many children. Every child we have to feed is a new revenue, a new title to God’s care and providence; so that many children are a great wealth; and if it be said they are chargeable, it is no more than all wealth and great revenues are. For what difference is it? Titus keeps ten ploughs, Cornelia hath ten children: he hath land enough to employ and feed all his hinds; she, blessings and promises, and the provisions and the truth of God to maintain all her children. His hinds and horses eat up all his corn, and her children are sufficiently maintained with her little. They bring in and eat up, and she indeed eats up, but they also bring in from the store-houses of heaven, and the granaries of God; and my children are not so much mine as they are God’s — he feeds them in the womb, by ways secret and insensible, and would not work a perpetual miracle to bring them forth, and then to starve them.