of your children; which are dear to parents, and the continuance of whose lives, next to their own, is most desirable, yea, as desirable as their own; and especially it is desirable that they might have a posterity descending from them, to enjoy for ever their estates and possessions; as it was to the people of Israel, that they might have a seed always to dwell in the land which the Lord sware unto your fathers to give them; the land of Canaan, so often spoken of as the promise, oath, and gift of God: as the days of heaven upon the earth; that is, as long as the heavens and the earth shall be, and the one shall be over the other, as they will be to the end of time.