ishonoring of parents, much more dangerous
and subtle than this first, which adorns itself and passes for a
real honor; that is, when a child has its own way, and the
parents through natural love allow it. Here there is indeed
mutual honor, here there is mutual love, and on all sides it is a
precious thing, parents and child take mutual pleasure in one
another.

This plague is so common that instances of the first form of
dishonoring[37] are very seldom seen. This is due to the fact
that the parents are blinded, and neither know nor honor God
according to the first three Commandments; hence also they cannot
see what the children lack, and how they ought to teach and train
them. For this reason they train them for worldly honors,
pleasure and possessions, that they may by all means please men
and reach high positions: this the children like, and they obey
very gladly without gainsaying.

Thus God's Commandment secretly comes to naught while all seems
good, and that is fulfilled which is written in the Prophets
Isaiah and Jeremiah, that the children are destroyed by their own
parents [Is. 57:5, Jer. 7:31; 32:35], and they do like the king
Manasseh, who sacrificed his own son to the idol Moloch and
burned him, II. Kings xxi [2 Kings 21:6]. 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." [Ps.
78:5] 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 oth