Flavel: "O, it is no common mercy to descend from pious parents."

I have been greatly blessed in reading John Flavel’s The Mystery of Providence. It’s one of those books that as you read you think, “Why didn’t I discover and read this book before now?” The "Paperback Puritan" version from Banner is very easy to read (more like reading Thomas Watson than John Owen). I highly commend it. Here’s another nugget as Flavel reflects on the blessing of Providence toward those born to Christian parents:

O, it is no common mercy to descend from pious parents (p. 54).

And was it not a special favour to us to have parents that went before us as patterns of holiness, and beat the path to heaven for us by their examples? They could say to us: ‘those things ye have heard and seen in me, do’ (Phil 4:9); and ‘be ye followers of me, as I also am of Christ’ (1 Cor 11:1). The parents’ life is the child’s copy. O, it is no common mercy to have a fair copy set before us, especially in the moulding age; we saw what they did, as well as heard what they said. It was Abraham’s commendation, ‘that he commanded his children, and his household after him, to keep the way of the Lord.’ And such mercies some of us have also had (p. 55).