Selected quad for the lemma: duty_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
duty_n	action_n	good_a	law_n	1,011	5	4.8972	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A37105	The morall philosophy of the stoicks written originally in French by that ingenious gentleman Monsieur du Vaix, first president of the Parliament of Provence ; Englished by Charles Cotton ...; Philosophie morale des stoïques. English	Du Vair, Guillaume, 1556-1621.; Cotton, Charles, 1630-1687.	1663 (1663)	Wing D2915; ESTC R3984	38,326	126

win pursuing that For what remains we must neither address our vows or prayers for the impetration of any thing he hath not ordained For to ask a thing against his Providence were to corrupt the Judge and Governour of the World The most acceptable prayer we can make to him and the most profitable for our selves is that he will please to contain our affections pure and holy and so govern the will that it ever address it self to Good the Sacrifice he expects from us is an innocent life He desires not our goods but that we should render our selves worthy of His. There is no offering so mean which to him is not acceptable if presented by hands pure and innocent nor no so rich or sumptuous Sacrifice which will not offend him if it come from polluted and contaminated hands Apollo being asked how he was pleased with the Sacrifice of an hundred Oxen made answer Of Hermion I lik'd the Corn Though Offer'd in a homely Urn. As if he had said The wise man is the only true Sacrificer of the great God whose Spirit is his Temple whose Soul his Image whose affections his Offering whose greatest and most solemn Sacrifice is his Imitation not that you are not to observe the ancient Ceremonies of your Country with a decent moderation void of excess or avarice but that you must perform them with this opinion that God will be observed by the Spirit And therefore we say to conclude this discourse that the holyest manner by which we can honour and serve him is that after we have set him forth with all the titles and most magnificent Eulogies we can imagine we constantly believe and publickly confess that we have as yet presented him nothing worthy of him but that the defect is in our own impotence and infirmity which can aim at nothing of more dignity Upon the honour we owe to God depends the Opinion we ought to have that he is present at all our actions whether we be prostrate before him or in conversation among men wherefore we ought to speak to him as in the hearing of men and live with men as in the sight of God But we should above all be very religious when we attest him to the witness o a truth For the observation of an Oath is the chiefest part of Piety An Oath is no other than the image of this universal Law flowing from the bounty of God to hold all the parts of the world in their place and preserve them what they ought to be 'T is a band that tyes men together by consent 't is the Guardian of Constancy and Truth 't is as it were the knot of civil Society which is locked and shut by the reverence of the Almighties Sacred Name who overlooks the actions of Mankind It were indeed better if you could by the testimony of a pure and holy life win so much belief that your own word might assure them with whom you have to do to spare an Oath but if you cannot avoid it take heed you use it soberly and as feldom as you can for the frequent use of any thing whatever begets misprision But especially take heed you use it for no other end than the assertion of a Truth representing to your selves that God is seated above Protector of Faithful and Avenger of perjured men Now from the honour due to God the first mover we must descend to that of the heavenly powers by him constituted for the government of the world in which we must acknowledge an excellence and constancy in Vertue in their perfection admire the greatness of their Creator and respect their function as an imployment for the conservation and protection of men Thence we descend to the reverence we owe to them by whose means as by Channels selected by God for that purpose we issue into the world In which first Sally we first meet our Native Country which under a sictitious name comprehends a true and natural Charity and to it we reasonably owe more assection than to all other things in this lower world as she impales the rest we love and cherish and which stand firm in her preservation and on the contrary with her must necessarily perish From this generous affection so many eminent actions have taken birth of such Heroes as have gloriously exposed their lives for the preservation of their Country forgot their private injuries for fear of revenging them at the publick expence and undertaken a voluntary and miserable life for the peace and repose of their native soil You must then daily represent to your selves that this Clime which hath produced and nourished you claims from you in return the Laws of Piety exacts from you the duty of good and faithful Citizens and conjures you to all this by the place of your birth by the Laws of your City by the faith of civil Society and by the safety of your Fathers Children Friends and Selves You must then be more solicitous of your Country than of the world beside never to prefer your particular interest to her Good nor repell upon her the dangers that only threaten you Your Country thus served Parents succeed in the claim of Duty For God having chosen by their means to distribute life and in some measure rendred them Partners of his Vertue will also that they share a proportion in his Honour If God have bestowed them wise and vertuous we ought to esteem them as Gods upon earth not only appointed for the work of life but also to bless that life to us by good education and grave instruction if otherwise they be perverse and wicked they are notwithstanding our Parents we ought to bear it and as they carry that name serve and assist them with what we only hold of them that is to say with our Persons Goods and Lives This performed we do homage to Nature and acknowledge her bounty From our Parents we descend to our Children towards whom although the affection be not so ceremonious 't is notwithstanding of the same or a greater tenderness For God having disposed us together as it were upon a guard in the world it appears that before we go hence we ought to depute other Ministers of this Soveraign Power in our place to serve him in this Common Temple The birth of Children is but ours in part there are many other things contribute to it but their nature and precept is all our own which we owe to God to whom we present them to our Country for whose service they were born and to our selves who from their good manners are to expect the support and comfort of our old age We ought then diligently to watch for them and as much as in us lies solicite their future good After Children follow Wives who united to us by the Law and entring Society with us under the great endearment of the Posterity they bring have an eminent and legitimate share in our affection In their friendship we sweeten the adversities

of this life by their cares we lessen our own and repose under their diligence We must therefore return them a respect sit to entertain and nourish the respect they bring and value their good and their peace as persons who are part of our selves But especially we ought to assure them that that respect and honour proceeds not from any pride we take in their youth and beauty least that exalt them to sierceness and least the sires of our own affections lighted at such fading things too soon burn out but rather from the expectation we have of their sidelity chast manners and vertuous care of our common Children and to establish their assurance let us shew them that we will admit no separate interest of goods thoughts or affections for in this communion good-will and friendship have their encrease which on the contrary are dispersed and lost in the diversity of inclinations and designs This affection passes from our Wives to our Kindred to whom Nature hath ally'd us and conveyed with the blood a secret inclination and good will towards the Persons derived from the same stem and as they are nearer this affection is more lively and obliges us to more vigilant endeavours of service To observe then in this as in all other things the order Nature hath proposed as the chief ornament of all her works we must discover the affection we owe to our Kindred according to their place and as they are nearest in blood render them all the offices of assistance and service we possibly can Thus far Nature with her own hand guides our affections we must now come to the motion vertue gives them who allies us in Friendship with wise and vertuous persons and of all the goods that civil Society begets there is none we ought more to cherish and esteem than the friendship of honest men as the basis and pillar of our felicity 'T is that friendship that sweetens what is bitter and seasons what is sweet that teaches whom in prosperity to oblige with whom to rejoyce in our good fortune who in our affliction are sit to comfort and relieve us in our Youth to teach and instruct us in our old age to support us and who in our flourishing age of man are sit to second and assist us As the profession of this friendship is pretious so ought we to make use of our Prudence in acquiring it such as it ought to be And first amongst men we must seek out the most worthy love and honour them as given by God himself to engage with us in the society of good and laudable actions We ought to contract them by honest opportunities and once acquired to preserve them to us by industrious Offices for all Creatures and principally men are born with an inclination to love whatever is advantageous to them The vertuous man notwithstanding proportions not this benefit by the abundance of what we call Goods and Riches but by the advantage he receives by his Friends of advancing himself in vertuous qualities and if it so happen that we have any contest with our Friends in a share of Goods Honours or the like we ever ought to give place to them since all these can never be better imployed than in the acquisition of Friends And there is only one excuse for our withdrawing from them which is when they abandon Reason and Philosophy that unites us in that correspondence And when we do quit them we must do it with all modesty not therefore becoming their enemies but sincerely rip without tearing and without blaming their actions or opinions seek all means to restore them by Reason to their deserted duty fighting them with arguments which are the sacred arms of friendship and though we lose all hope so to reclaim them we ought notwithstanding never to become their enemies for though the good man forsake his friends when they forsake their vertue and renounce his familiarity and former intimacy he nevertheless retains for them the charitable affection which ought to be among men which obliges him to wish them well imitating the bounty of God who loves the good and yet hates not the wicked And 't is a common Proverb The Good man hath no enemies for he hates no man These are the degrees betwixt Man and the things that are without him But because it oft falls out that they draw us to diverse ends and consequently hold us suspended in doubt and anxiety we must establish our selves a Rule by which we must ever prefer the first to the last An Oath ought to be dear unto us but we had better violate an Oath than offend God by observing it Our Parents ought to be had in high reverence but if their wills be contrary to Right reason and to that which God hath put into us for our better government we ought rather to abandon them than God and Reason Our Kindred should be dear to us but if our Kindred would provoke us to things hurtful to our Parents we must not consent with them Our friends have a great power over us but after our Wives and Children There are indeed certain particular offices which we owe to persons of less interest rather than to others to our Neighbours than our Friends to our Friends than Kindred but it is ordinarily in matters of little consequence and where civil society something usurps upon Nature for the common necessity of Man I have thus far represented to you the respect that man owes to things that are without him it is now time to make him descend into himself and into himself to retire his affections as lines to their Center The wise man no doubt payes a great respect to himself and though it be only discovered to his own thoughts he is nevertheless very wary of doing or saying any unbecoming thing For right Reason which ought to sway his actions is to him the same with the severest Judge and the most rigid Censurer We must then be very circumspect as well in publick as in private so to compose our actions as not to blush at them and that Nature according to whose rule we ought to compose our selves be not violated Nature hath given us a body as a necessary instrument of life we must be careful of this body but only careful as of a thing under the tuition of the mind to which it owes a regard and not a service and ought to entertain it as a Prince not a Tyrant to nourish not to make it fat and to shew that it lives not for it but cannot here below subsist without it 'T is no little address to an Artificer that he knows how to prepare his tools nor no little advantage to a Philosopher that he can so order his body as to make it a fit instrument to the exercise of vertue The Body is to be preserved in an estate of health two wayes by moderate diet and seasonable exercise for the nature of sublunary things is so gliding