Selected quad for the lemma: duty_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
duty_n	ceremonial_a	law_n	moral_a	2,252	5	9.4056	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A48477	A dialogue between a minister and his parishioner concerning the Lord's Supper ... to which are annexed three several discourses, of love to God, to our neighbour, and to our very enemies / by J. Lambe ...	Lambe, John, 1648 or 9-1708.	1690 (1690)	Wing L217; ESTC R22514	60,357	190

such as these no blessing can be compared with a clear revelation without distinct and certain knowledge of our duty because we then are free from anxious fears and doubts about the nature of Religion We aim at a steddy end without the mazes and uncertain wandrings of Imagination We run within the lines the ground is set out and the Goal is before our eyes Our whole intention may be taken up in accomplishing our minds with the love of God and Man the rode to happiness is plain and easie This is the Law and the Prophets And O! that we could be perswaded to lay aside all false opinions of Religion and believe our Saviour and accept him upon his own conditions that we would pursue the favour of God and everlasting happiness in the way of universal Charity For believe it no Faith no Creed no Church-Communion no outward Sanctimony no external Piety without the Love of God and Man will avail us any thing in the Day of Judgment No though we should be honoured with the power of working Miracles and should cast out Devils in the Name of Christ yet unless we cloath the Naked visit the Sick assist whom we may and pity all we shall surely be shut out with Depart from me I know ye not Matt. 7. ult Let us therefore be perswaded since so much depends upon it to set our selves industriously upon the practice of these Duties that we may procure to our selves universal love and peace the good will of God and Man in this present life and everlasting Glory in the World to come To which God of his mercy bring us all for Jesus Christ his sake the Righteous to whom with the Father and the Holy Ghost be all Honour Glory Praise and Love now and for evermore Amen Rom. xii 21. Be not overcome of evil but overcome evil with good TO gratifie the present passion or desire by fraud by force or by any means whatsoever without respect to right or wrong to good or evil is the essential difference of irrational brutal Nature But to look before us to act for the sake of ends to do or to forbear as the event and consequence of the thing shall appear to be good or evil to us is the distinction the property indeed the definition of reasonable creatures But because the reasonable faculty in man who is the most imperfect in the kind is obscur'd and prejudic'd by the unaccountable union of the Soul and Body in our present state therefore God who is Wisdom it self has at several times but at last and especially by his Son in that most perfect institution of Reason as well as of Religion contain'd in his holy Gospel assisted our weakness clear'd our notions drawn out and set on work those eternal principles of Truth and Goodness which may be undiscern'd but can never be separated from our own minds And amongst all the excellent rules of Wisdom and Practice therein contained there is none of so high so exalted a nature as the love of Enemies for this alone is proposed under the style and character of Divine Perfection Be ye therefore perfect as your father which is in heaven is perfect S. Matth. 5. ult A Precept which through the prejudice of our passion and the depth of its reason is not easily understood hardly received more hardly practised yet in truth it is every way our interest as well as an indispensable duty and therefore if thine enemy hunger V. 20 feed him if he thirst give him drink for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head Be not overcome of evil but overcome evil with good The Judaizing Christians Eus l. 2. c. 12. Meg. Eccles His Cent. 1. l. 2. c. 5. and the Gnosticks had extremely perverted the Christian Religion by asserting the obligation of the Ceremonial Law the lawfulness of a dissembled Apostasie and a liberty of indulging any Lust or Vice we shall be addicted to Now to hinder the spreading of these pernicious Doctrines and to assert the Truth and Purity of the Christian Religion against those false and spurious accounts which they had given of it S. Paul insinuates is his chief design in this his Epistle to the Romans Ch. 1.16 And First he shews that the Ceremonial Law was but a type or shadow of a more perfect institution of Religion which in after time should be established Ch. 2. That that time is now accomplish'd and the Ceremonial Law abolished and that therefore we are now obliged to those more perfect and substantial duties which were signified and represented under the Types and Figures of the Law Ch. 8. Finally That Christianity consists in the reformation of our lives in rectifying the evil dispositions of our Souls in conforming our affections desires and actions to the most pure and perfect Laws thereof And therefore as the use of the whole Discourse I beseech you Brethren by the mercies of God Ch. 12.1 That ye present your bodies all your bodily corrupt affections and desires a Living Sacrifice a whole burnt-offering to God That ye intirely resign your selves and suffer your Religion to have its last design and end upon you V. 2. And be not conformed to this World for so the Apostle proceeds to particulars But be ye transform'd by the renewing of your minds with fervent Piety and Devotion towards God V. 11. with sincere and universal Charity towards Men extending even to the love of Enemies in the words of my Text For if thine enemy hunger feed him if he thirst give him drink c. Be not overcome of evil but overcome evil with good These words are a Precept of universal obligation which concerns our behaviour under injuries received Be not overcome of evil and our deportment to wards those who injure us but overcome evil with good And first we are instructed how to behave our selves under injuries received Be not overcome of evil We are not obliged to a Stoical insensibility To destroy our Passions is no perfection but a debility and sickness of the mind but to command them to keep them within their bounds to exercise them upon proper Objects and to a just degree is the honour of a Man and the duty of a Christian The Command it self Be not overcome of evil supposes and allows a sense of the injury but obliges us to govern our resentments by the rules of reason to mold our spirits into a temper of meekness kindness and condescension that we may be then most pleasant to our selves when we stand in the greatest need of counsel and advice that no provocation may be able to discompose our minds or transport us into frequish indecent words or actions much less into meditations of Revenge But that we receive the injury with Patience consider it sedately construe it fairly excuse it ingenuously or if the malice be too plain to be hid then to refer the Judgment of your cause to God Be not overcome of

World He that hates his brother says S. John 1 Ep. 2.11 walks in darkness but he that loves his brother abideth in the light The Metaphor of light and darkness signifies the knowledge or ignorance of our interest the selfish man is as wretched as those who are blind or travel in the dark exposed to grievous evils dangerous precipices sharp and rugged ways But he that loveth his brother abideth in the light acts wisely proceeds with confidence and good success lives safely and securely 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 there is no danger of his stumbling of his offending others or being himself offended The Second motive to universal Love and Charity couch'd and implyed in these words thy Neighbour is the propriety in and the relation that we have to one another He is thy Neighbour All Mankind are of the same extraction and original sons of the same God Vno patre conditi unâ matre tanquam fratres uterini editi as the Father speaks S. Ambrose stamped with the same Divine Image equally inspirited with the breath of God The meanest man in the world agrees with him that is the greatest in that that is truly Great and Noble in him his Reason and Understanding Wherefore then since we are all children of the same Family and which is more professors of the same most holy Faith Citizens with the Saints of the houshold of Faith Eph. 2.19 Nay farther since our union is more intimate and we are members one of another Eph. 4.25 we ought to love as brethren to sympathize as parts of the same body to be easily touch'd with a sense of each others evils forasmuch as the case of our Neighbour is in a moral sense our own and we are stupid if we neglect it There is something of our selves in every man the same Divine Principle inlivens us the same blood runs in all our veins We have therefore a propriety a real interest in one another So that to love thy Neighbour is indeed to love thy self That is the second Thirdly From the necessity of a publick spirit in order to our Happiness and from the Relation that we stand in to our Neighbour arises another motive to universal Charity namely the beauty the harmony and the pleasure of the thing Whatsoever actions necessarily tend to the good of man and are agreeable to the Laws and impressions of humane Nature must of necessity be full of ease and pleasure The Soul exults and enjoys her self in the practice of them as her proper acts and operations As on the other hand an irrational course of proceeding is unnatural and therefore a violence to our frame and constitution as poyson or the sharpest pains are to the body But to love our Neighbour as our selves is not so properly a rational act a thing that is fit to be done as Reason it self our essential difference our very form To pursue the satisfaction of naturai desires by strength by craft or by any means is the property of Beings meerly sensitive But there is no other notion of humane Nature than that of making a distinction of actions nor of Rational Ends but Good nor of Good but publick Interest And therefore universal Love or a regard to others as well as to our selves is the perfection of our Being For let our distinctions otherwise be never so many or so great yet if our Will by nature be unbounded there is no Essential difference between us and Brutes Hence Love according to St. John is the very definition of God himself who is the standard of Rational perfection 1 Joh. 4.8 Beloved Let us love one another for God is Love How easie then would all Men be in this their most Divine and perfect state What a confidence would Love create what delight what trust what assurance what a free and chearful intercourse No Man would be diffident of his Neighbour as averse to his interest or cross him as an enemy but we should enjoy the unvaluable blessings of society with ease and peace But a Man of a shrivell'd narrow spirit that is wholly resolved into himself proceeds against universal Law and Right Rows against the stream with difficulty and fear with perplexity and danger he cannot live alone and yet he can never be sure of the good will of those with whom he must converse he is always practising hypocrisie and must accomplish himself with arts of disguise and tricks of deceit that undiscern'd which is impossible he may deceive the World He is under a perpetual constraint in the management of his conversation for fear he should be betrayed into that shame confusion and hazard which attend the detection of base designs and which they deserve who depart from this Royal Law of Love thy Neighbour as thy self a Law which in the practice of it would put a new face upon the World would banish gnawing cares and angry fears and give sincerity and chearfulness to every countenance There could be no misery amongst Men. We should all be happy in one another and anticipate that concord harmony and love which are supposed to constitute the joys of Heaven And thus I have explain'd the duty of universal Love and considered the beauty and necessity thereof from the words Thy Neighbour Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thy self It now remains that I should represent the likeness of this Command to the former that of Love to God and the second is like unto it Thou shalt love thy Neighbour as thy self First In the nature of the duty they both oblige us to the same office of Love Secondly In extent and amplitude they are both comprehensive duties the former containing all the severals of the first the latter of the second Table Thirdly In that they suppose and are predicated of each other He that loveth God will love his Brother also 1 Joh. 4.20 As Philo truly says of moral vertues in the general they follow and are linked together As also Lastly I should have considered both the construction and the reason of this expression On these two Commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 They consent and agree with these St. Paul interprets the word by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Rom. 13.9 If there be any other Commandment it is briefly comprehended in this saying namely Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thy self This is the end the scope and the design of the Law and the Prophets All the Precepts of the Jewish and the Christian Religion have their ground and existence in these two and into these they are finally resolved out of these universals flow all the particulars of both Religions And therefore for a Conclusion of the whole I shall only pray to God Vse that he would affect our minds with a sense of his goodness to us who has given us a Religion so easie to be learn'd and understood If we heartily believe the Being of a God we cannot but desire his favour and to