Selected quad for the lemma: duty_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
duty_n	child_n	mutual_a	parent_n	1,913	5	9.2702	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A84659	Theion enōtikon, A discourse of holy love, by which the soul is united unto God Containing the various acts of love, the proper motives, and the exercise of it in order to duty and perfection. Written in Spanish by the learned Christopher de Fonseca, done into English with some variation and much addition, by Sr George Strode, Knight.; Tratado del amor de Dios. English	Fonseca, Cristóbal de, 1550?-1621.; Strode, George, Sir, 1583-1663.	1652 (1652)	Wing F1405B; Thomason E1382_1; ESTC R772	166,624	277

full of them in which blessing the woman hath not the least share for she is the quiver which keeps and yeelds the blessing of such arrowes as are children Yea S. Paul saith 1 Tim. 2.15 the woman shall be saved in child-bearing if she continue in faith charity holinesse and sobriety Yet because simply and absolutely all children are not blessings therefore to make them such Ps 128. the Psalmist saith they shall be as Olives now the oyle of Olives is not only good to smooth the countenance but to expell poison or poisonous cares from the heart and such shall the children be of the virtuous wife and the good husband and though these Olives must not hold the like place with the wife to be on the side of the house yet they shall be round about the table there ready to wait and serve both father and mother at their call or need in all faithfulnesse and obedience as they are taught by the Apostles S. Peter and S. Paul 1 Pet. 1.14 Tit. 1.6 And yet I cannot promise that this blessing of having children shall overtake all good husbands and wives no nor that all such as have children shall be blessed in them For the Psalmist restrains this blessing of good obedient and faithfull children only to such Parents as fear the Lord Loe thus saith the holy Ghost shall the man be blessed that feareth the Lord Ps 128.4 and I cannot but observe that King Davids were good till he became bad but when once he deflowred Bathsheba the wife and murdered Vriah the husband then his children committed uncleanness and rebelled against him The fear of the Lord in the parents begets and preserves the fear of the Lord in the children and this the parents ought to observe and do not only for their childrens good but that their children may be good and a blessing to their parents CHAP. XXXIX Of the mutuall love and duty between Parents and Children ONe especiall end of mariage is the propagation of children and therefore from mariage and the duties thereof we shall proceed to that between parents and children and herein considering whence children come to see the love and duty of parents to their children and the return of honour obedience and other duties of children to their parents The Hebrews say that God keeps the keyes of the womb and of the grave which agrees with that that he kills and he gives life or more neerly as to our purpose children are the gift and heritage of the Lord but by the agency and instrumency of the parents so that they are as slips or ciences taken from them and this makes the relation between them so neer that some have observed that when God said A man shall leave father and mother for his wife yet he saith not he shall forsake children for his wife for though the man and wife are as the Apostle phraseth it joyned or glewed together as made into one flesh yet except Eve no wife is out of or a part of the mans flesh But I speak not this to lessen the relative love between husband and wife so much as to heighten that which is between parents and children And this is so great even in all sensitive Creatures beasts and birds that not only the Lion Dog and Bear but the Doe the Ewe and Hen will oppose the strongest creature and interpose between them and their young hazarding their own lives to preserve that of their young ones And it hath not been less seen among men for so we read that Octavius Albanius keeping a castle beseiged when one cryed out your son without is in danger to be slain he suddenly sallied out for his rescue though with the loss of his own life an other hearing that his son was sentenced to death for a murder he appeared before Charles the great swearing it was he that slew the man and thereupon was put to death thereby to save his sons life and Agrippina mother of Nero being told that it would cost her life to have her son Emperour answered So he may be Emperour let me die and how much short is the affection of Jacob to his children Joseph and Benjamin or that of David to Absalom Gen. 42.38 when Jacob said If mischief shall befall Benjamin it will bring down my gray haires with sorrow to the grave and he hearing that his son Joseph was dead he rent his clothes put sackcloth on his loins and mourned for him many days and would not be comforted saying I will go down into the grave unto my son Gen. 37.35 and how much short of this was Davids expressions for the death of a rebellious son who though he sought his fathers crown and life yet the father thus passionately laments him 2 Sam. 1 33. O my son Absalom my son my son Absalom would God I had dyed for thee O Absalom my son my son It hath been a question whether the love of the father or the mother be the greater to the child and if we answer by the consideration of examples we shall leave the question unresolved For as we found Jacob and David most tenderly loving so the like we shall see in Rachel Ge. 30.1 who sels her husband to Leah for mandrakes whereby she hoped to get children which she so much longed for that she cries out give me children else I dye and having lost them she weeps for them Jer. 31.15 Mat. 1.8 and would not be comforted because they were not But if we consider the mothers pain in breeding danger in bringing forth and her care and trouble in their first training up we may conceive that her love exceeds especially if we add hereunto that which the Prophet saith if a mother he saith not if a father but if a mother can forget the child of her womb which may seem to intimate that a father may sooner forget the son which he got then the mother which bore him in her womb which womb nature as the Anatomists observe hath filled with most tender affectionate baggs membranes veines and sinewes thereby to make her more loving to the child Gen. 29.32 and if to this we add what Leah speaks who having born a son unto Jacob her husband she saith now my husband will love me Then we may conclude that the mother for her own sake loves the child more tenderly or fondly but the father for the childs sake loves him more wisely and strongly or we may say that the man and the woman love their child as Alexander was said to love his two intimate friends Ephestion and Parmenio who loved the former as a fine delicate man and such women delight in but Parmenio he loved as a brave man for action and such a wise father is pleased with And from hence we may assoile an other question why both father and mother oft-times loves one child better then an other as Rebecca did Jacob the younger more

then Esau the elder I and Jacob affected his two youngest Joseph and Benjamin more then his first born Reuben and Simeon and King David placed the crown on the head of Salomon contrary to the Jews law and custome though he had six sons elder then Salomon and a great part of this act in King David we may ascribe to the affection policy and power of Batsheba the mother as that other the like act of Isaac in preferring Jacob to Esau may be attributed to Rebecca Now from this root of love in the parents shoot out the branches of their care in nursing breeding and providing for their children all which are so naturall and necessary that who neglects the performance of these duties deserves not the name of father and mother nor yet so much as to be called Syre or Damme for beasts and birds generally performe these cares for their young untill they are able to provide for themselves for did we ever know or read that an Ewe a Doe or a Sow put out her young to nurse or would suffer any other to give their young suck but themselves so long as themselves were able to do it and must we conceive that nature hath less power or works less in a woman which hath reason then in a beast or will ye have me think that reason and grace which add unto and strengthen the gifts of nature do both weaken nature in the woman and if not which indeed cannot be thought by any indued with grace or reason why then think we that nature hath given the mother breasts and fountains of milk if not to suckle her young or why think ye that a strange womans milk should be so naturally and properly good for the child as the mothers which brought it into the world and why rather consider you not that as children with the milk draw that humour which makes for the good or ill of their bodies so many by sucking cruell drunken unchast women have become such in quality and condition as their nurses were It may be instanced in Tiberius Commodus Emperors of Rome and divers others but not to be long on this subject remember that Sarah is said to have given her son suck from which act I shall draw no other inference but that of S. Peter 1 Pet 3.6 whose Daughters ye are as long as ye do well doing as she did who gave suck to her child But the mothers duty ends not in this but that she with the husband and each and both must labour with the soonest to administer the spirituall milk of the knowledge and fear of God thereby to nourish the childs soul to everlasting life and this duty lies more straightly and strongly upon the parent in as much as the soul the Temple of God is more excellent of greater esteem then the body which is but an house of clay The father and mother of Samson inquire of the Angell of the Lord saying Judge 13 12. How shall we order the child and bow shall we do unto him and that the child Samuel may be ordered aright his mother brings him very young to the house of the Lord and she lent saith the text or returned him to the Lord 〈◊〉 1 2●.8 to be his as long as he lived and what follows so good an entrance and beginning I Sam. 2.11 as in the very next chapter that the child according to his matriculation did ever after minister unto the Lord. And what the further duties of parents are in this kind S. Paul intim●●es in one place when he saith I Thes 2.11 I exhort and not only so but I charge you as a father doth his children that ye walk worthy of God who hath called you to his Kingdome and in another text he expresseth it more plainly as a precept to parents fathers bring up your children in the nu●ture and fear of the Lord. and if you will have a more especiall and particular account of the severall lessons to be taught this child you may read them set down by the wise man in his Proverbs ●●ov 4. where that whole chapter contains the full instruction of a child in the ways of godliness and the fruit thereof the parents shall find in the same book where it is said Prov. 23. ●4 The father of the righteous shall have great joy and be shall rejoyce that hath a wise son And that Parents may receive this joy Prov. 22. ● the wise man counsels them Train up or catechise the child in his youth in the way he should go Prov. 23.13 14. and with hold not correction from the child for if thou beatest him with the rod he shall not die but thou shalt deliver his soul from hell Prov. 29. ●5 Whereas a child left to himself brings his mother to shame I have read of a son who on the Gallows called to speak with his father where he bit off his eare telling him that if he had done the part of a Father in training him up with due correction he had never come to that end And was not Eli to blame suffering his sons to behave themselves wickedly when all the correction he gave them was Why do ye so my sons And what was it leste if not more in Lot to drink immoderat●ly with his daughters whereby he came to uncover both their nakednesse and Jacob himself deserved to be reprehended for suffering his daughter Dinah to ramble among the strange young men whereby she caught that clap which caused so much bloud-shed the Apostle therefore saith what son is he whom the father chastneth not Heb. 12.7 8 9. yea and if the son be without chastisement then is he a bastard and no son but if chastned he gives his father reverence and the mother saith S. Paul 1 Tim. 5.10 that hath brought up her children in the faith is well reported of whereas the Prophet tells us that it became a proverb Ezek. 16.44 as is the daughter so is the mother which appeared true in David whose children after himself had committed folly and murder were found loose rebellious and murderers And yet to this admonition lest Parents grow too severe and rigid I must give this caution that Parents be not like Rehoboam to threaten or use scorpions that is whips having sharp thongs like points of thorns or stings of Serpents but ever that they remember the counsell of the Apostle Eph. 6.4 Fathers provoke not your children unto wrath lest that as himself speaks they may be discouraged Col. 3.21 correction with discretion and moderation is the chastisement required in a father to his child for that as S. Gal. 4 ● Paul speaks the heir as long as he is a childe differeth not from a servant And yet the duty of the Parent ends not here but extends it self to a further point that he provide for his child the Apostle is expresse herein when he saith

calling which is agreeable to the first foundation and building up of the world Where at first no sooner was the stage of the world reared but that our first father Adam was set to acting that is to speak plainly Adam was set to dress the garden and not only the children of Adam who were heires of the world spent their time in tilling and sowing the earth or in keeping and feeding sheep but the Patriarchs Abraham Isaac and Jacob though Lords of great possessions and masters of many servants and powerfull to fight with and conquer Kings yet these witness the holy writ lived not as our Gentlemen do but as the Apostle counsells and commands us they lived and exercised themselves in honest callings for they knew that as of idleness comes no goodness so he that lives idly to eate drink and play must be sure as the Apostle speaks that the judgement of God is according to truth Row 2.2.5 against them which commit such things and therefore that they do hereby treasure up unto themselves wrath against the day of wrath and the just judgement of God who will render to every man according to his deeds The Greeks as I am taught have a word which signifies to play the Stork whereby they understand that the love of parents to their children should beget in children a reddition and retribution of their duty to their Parents for it is storied of the Stork that as the old one hath been loving and tender to feed defend and cherish their young so the young will feed defend and carry the old when it is unable to help it self Now Christ himself Mat. 6.26 though in another case bids us behold the fowles of the aire and accordingly the Spirit of God by his pen-men grounds instructions to children in their duty to parents as S. Paul doth when he saith Children obey your Parents in the Lord Ephes 6.1 2. for this is right and again Honour thy father and mother which is the first commandement with promise and he adds a reason to his counsell on the childs behalf That it may be well with thee and that thou mayest live long and happy on the earth The Parents of Tobiah called their son implying what children should be to their parents the light of their eyes to guide and direct them Tob. 5.17.10.5 and the staff of their hand in going in and out to defend them and we have a story of a godly Christian Daughter to this purpose who in part rob'd her child that with the milk of her breasts she might nourish her father imprisoned and almost sterved by the merciless Tyrant Nor doth the Childs duty here end Eph. 6.1 but goes on to what S. Paul taught that children must obey their parents in the Lord that is in all just and lawfull things what ever they command so it be not repugnant to the word or law of the Lord which the same Apostle in an other Epistle commands saying Col. 3.20 Children obey your parents in all things that is as before in the Lord for this is well pleasing to the Lord for obeying them in all things in the Lord in so doing the children obey the Lord which commands this obedience And what the sin or punishment of disobedience is Prov. 30 17. the wise man in part hath told us when he saith The eye that mocketh at his father and despiseth to obey his mother the ravens those birds which of all others are least regarded as I told you by the old ones shall pick out and the Eagles shall devour them but the Apostle saying Obey and honour thy father and mother that thy days may be long and happy on earth implies no less then that he who doth not obey and honour them shall have but few or evill days while they live here besides the evill which shall follow after Our blessed Saviour hath pronounced the same plainly and fully saying God commanded Mat. 15.4 Honour thy father and mother and he that doth contrary let him die the death Prov 30.11 And yet such ungodly children have been found of whom the wiseman speaks there is a generation that curseth their father and such saith the Prophet are those who dishonour their parents Mie 7.6 and such was the accursed Cham Ge. 9.22 who proclaimed the nakedness of his father yea monsters of men have there been whom I am ashamed to name Nero who in an inhuman manner ripped up that womb of his mother where himself lay but I will tell you of the sons of S●nacherth 2 King 15.37 who fearing that their father would kill them in hope to prosper thereby as Abraham did in sacrificing his son slew their father Against which sin of paricide or killing parents the wise law-giver Solon provided no law because he thought no man could be so desperately wicked as to kill and destroy him that under God gave him life yet the Romans in detestation of this so unnaturall a sin decreed a death unheard of untill their times which was that such a parent-slayer should be closed up in a leathern sachell together with a viper art ape and a cock and so to be cast into the river to be gnawed upon to be drowned and to be sterved to death When God promised Abraham to be his exceeding great reward he replyed to Godand said Lord God wherein wilt thou reward me or what wilt thou give me seeing I am childless wherein he implyed all temporall goods and blessings were as nothing to him without an heire and then the word of the Lord came unto him saying thou shalt have an heire come forth of thine own bowells Hezekiah likewise when the Prophet told him he should dye wept that he should dye childless And barrenness or want of children is in holy writ often called a reproach yea and pronounced by God as a punishment but on the contrary a great blessing to have children Insomuch that David repining as it were at the prosperity of the wicked he reckons this as one of their greatest Psal 17 24. That they are full of children and that they leave their substance to their babes and in another psalme Ps 115.14 God will bless them that fear him and will increase them more and more them and their children and again Loe children are an heritage of the Lord Ps 127.3.5 and the fruit of the womb is his reward for they are as arrowes in the band of a mighty man and therefore happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them for they shall be able to speak with their enemies in the gate that is in the gate where the Judges sate where their children shall stand up to plead for their father and in the field they shall be as arrowes to defend him against his enemies It is storied that when Croesus was ready to be slain that his son who till that time was dumbe and never could

himself under the Law and the Gospell Deut. ● 5 Thou love him with all thy heart and with all thy soule with all the strength and faculties thereof For as a great Prince coming to an Inne takes up all the rooms in the house not holding it to stand with his state to have any stranger a sharer with him so is it and much more with God And that again because as S. John saith 1 John 3.20 God is greater then thy heart so that all is too little for him though he hath all And if he will not endure that one Temple shall receive both his Ark and the Idoll Dagon will he be content 1 Sam. 5 in his bed-chamber which is mans heart to endure his enemies the World the flesh and the Devill to have their abode or to lodge there No one saith Christ cannot serve two Masters I am sure not two such that are so contrary and opposite as God is to the Devill the World and the Flesh neither saith S. Paul 1 Cor. 6.14 can light dwell with darknesse nor Christ with Belial The Prophet Elijah saith unto the people 1 Kings 18.21 How long halt ye between two opinions if the Lord be God serve him but if Baal then follow him God will not cannot endure any corrivall much lesse any bedfellow with him in the heart of man Moses tells Pharaoh Exod. ●● that God will not suffer him to leave so much as an hoof behinde in Egypt when he goes to sacrifice to God for the least possession is a kinde of engagement against God The world or the Devill like the counterfeit mother cries divide it let me have a part t is no matter which living or dead so God hath not all to himselt alone whereas the true mother of the living child ● Kin. 3. will admit of no division but she will have all or none and such is Gods desire for if the heart be divided as H●sea speaks of Israel ●os 10. it is as the childe divided which cannot live to the true Parent But O man consider how reasonable and just God is in requiring thy whole soule and how unjust and unreasonable thou art in denying it him entire or dividing it in parts betwixt him and his enemies Consider I say when he created the goodly universe of this world and so gloriously adorned and furnished it not onely with the fruitfull plants and fragrant flowers but with those bright Lamps in Heaven that he made all this and gave it entire to thee alone making thee the sole Lord thereof in respect of any other creatures over all which also he gave thee temporall power and dominion and as though in this he had shewed but half or indeed but the least part of his love consider that God himself gave himself wholly to thee was incarnate suffered died rose and all onely for thee and not for any other And is not this argument sufficient that the least thou canst return in gratitude should be thy heart entire not to be cut into parcels or shreds some whereof to be given to the giver of all and the rest to his and thine own enemies But some perchance may say though this is just and reasonable which is required yet it is most difficult for man clothed with flesh to performe this duty so strictly commanded to love God with all the affections and thoughts of the soul and these ever to be fixed on him and nothing else neither on parents friends or things of this life In answer hereunto I must tell you that God knoweth what we are and whereof we are made and therefore in this strict command or absolute request of all our love he prohibits us neither to love parents children friends no nor the things of this world so we love them with these two rules or cautions 1. That we love neither friends nor things on earth with such a degree of affection as may alienate or divide our fouls from God And therefore God himself hath not onely commanded us to love our neighbours all our neighbours of what rank or distance soever so they be men and to seek in the second place things necessary for the life and well being of our selves and those who depend on us and for whom we are to provide but hath figured the fame in proportioning our heart which though it hath a large and broad superficies upward to look and dilate it self to Heaven yet it hath but a cone or small point downwards to the things beneath The second caution in our love to any thing besides God is that whatever we thus love it must virtually tend and move to the service and glory of God And in this our love resembles the point of the needle in the Sea-mans Card or the Geometricians paire of compasses the former of which though it be ever moving and as it were casting about to severall parts yet it still returns and reteins its whole setled course to the true pole star and the latter though the one foot of the Compasse circuit and surround the circumference or globe of the earth yet the other stands ever firm and constant to the point which point here as that star before in this our application is God So that God who without any shew of covetousnesse in himself or wrong to thee might require all thy substance all thy actions and all thy time wholly to be dedicated and spent on his immediate holy service yet grants rhee the fruits of thy honest labour thy wealth and bids thee give his poore onely th t which thou mayest well spare and of the fruits of thy increase he takes onely a tenth and from thy worldly travails onely a seventh part and that Love which he wholly and entirely calls for is the affection and love of thy heart Shall I summe up all There is none so ungodly in this world but assents to this generall doctrine that God is to be so loved as he requires but all the question and difference lies in the performance and manner of loving for the most wicked in some sort may be said to love God But how and why for it is but with a carnall or worldly minde and to their own end and behoof as by him to enjoy life health wealth pleasure and delight and so they love God for these things that if he would confirm his letters patents unto them that these they might perpetually enjoy they would readily release unto him all the grant and interest made to them in Heaven On the other side the true lovers of God so love the world as that thereby and therewith they may the better serve him and promote his glory without which they desire neither the things of the world nor long to continue in it They love these things so as a man doth his horse his cloak or garment the one to carry him through his journey to his Inne and the other to keep him warm and

2 Cor. ●2 14 The parents ought to lay up for their children which thing if they doe not then saith the same Apostle 1 Tim. 5.8 That man that provides not for his own hath denyed the faith and is worse then an infidell for the heathens and infidels do it yea he is worse then the very beasts all which provide for their young except the Raven which as some write forsake theirs featherlesse and meatlesse leaving them to be nourished either by the dew from heaven from flies in the aire or from small wormes breeding in the nest and this if the Naturalists observation holds heightned the miracle that God wrought when he caused these Ravens such unnaturall birds to their own to feed the Prophet Elijah But to this duty of Parents providing for children I must give a memento or two which may concern the parent and some other that may respect the child to that which concerns the Parent we have a proverb or by-word Happy is that child whose father goes to the Devill and I remember when Rebecca intended in love to Jacob the younger to rob Esau the elder and and the heir of his birth-right Jacob said to his mother by this fraudulent and false way I shall bring a curse upon my self and not a blessing but what is the mothers reply upon me be the curse my son so I make thee great and Lord of all but worthily deserves that Parent the curse and justly is he rewarded with hell who fears neither the curse nor hell so he can make his son rich and great A learned Father of the Church August having reproved the immoderate raking together of riches in many men was answered by these men that all they did was for their children and every man was bound by Gods law to provide for them whereunto be replyed this seems to be the voice of piety but indeed it is the excuse of iniquity and better it were your children should want wine then you water to cool your tongue or better they should want fire here then you should burn in hell hereafter But certainly if Parents were so besotted with their love to their children as to hazard their own everlasting damnation and torture for their children yet did they consider how little benefit these ill gotten goods bring to their children and posterity in the end they would not be so hell-hardy as they are for hear what the Prophet speaks Psal 37.35.36 I have seen and so have we the wicked in great power and spreading himself like a green Baytree yet he passed and loe be was not yea I sought him but he could not be sound and the Aegyptians when they would expresse such a father and his son they portrayed one twisting a rope and an other ravelling it ou● and indeed often it comes so to passe that the house reard by fraud and iniquity becomes like an house that is built of a liquid substance that the sun will consume or if not yet God as the Lord of the earth may take his own if ill gotten from him where he findes it and this without all or any shew of injustice Therefore Fathers that your estates may prove durable to your children and comfortable to your selves get them in the fear of God and by honest and just means and in the distribution of them be just and equall not giving all or the most of all to one for the raising or propagating a name and little to the rest I am not ignorant that diverse people doe it and herein they do right well because herein they seem to imitate the Jews who indeed left those lands in Canaan which came unto them and were divided by lot these for the most part as by prescription or law descended to the elder and again because the elder among them both in sacred and civill affairs and titles had the preheminence before and above the younger But neither before nor after the law given by Moses did this hold as a law that the elder should enjoy all the lands except as before I say that which by Gods immediate prescript was so divided to them by lot For before the law observe the eldest of Jacobs children Reuben Simeon and Levi and of the twelve Joseph and Benjamin the youngest yet Judah the fourth son he hath the dominion and Joseph and Benjamin the greatest part in their fathers blessing but yet so that although be gave them most whom he most aff●cted for the inward endowments and goodnesse of the soul yet he gave them all of his blessing from God liberally and proportionably to their several abilities And did not Isaac the like what did King David a man after Gods own heart who having had six sons elder then Salomon yet intended in their life time and afterward actually setled the crown upon Salomon the younger it hath been so much practised by many that it bath almost become a proverb Who best deserves best have Yet so that all may be as heirs of their Fathers spirituall so of his earthly and temporall blessing and that with some indifferent measure and proportion For although a river cut and divided into many streams runs not so strongly nor makes so great a shew or noise yet thus divided it doeth lesse harm by breaches or overflowings and more good by watering and refreshing the land And I am sure that an house bridge or castle built or setled upon most arches buttresses or piles of stone stands more firmely and for continuance then that which stands but upon one for if this one failes as oft it is seen in the heirs of England all the house falls to decay with him and is gone Now if two strings to the bow holds surest then say I why not to have two three or four rather then to trust all to one but if you shall adde hereunto the heart-burnings contentions troubles and wars not only between Davids children or Isaacs or between the Edomites and Israelites the issue and posterity of Esau and Jacob but of thousands more upon unequall distributions you will soon conclude that it is neither wise good nor safe to give all or most of all to one because he is the elder but either to give the most to the best or proportionally to divide it among all And because the children of great men and gentlemen as well as of others grow from good to bad and from ill to worse therefore it behoves parents as much as in them is and in their life time not to bring up their children to be meer gentlemen that is to hawke hunt or to eate drink and play which was the sin and destruction of the old world and is taxed by the Apostles which is the same in our days but as the Apostle wisely and holily hath given us in charge 1 Cor. 7● 20 Let every man abide in that calling wherein he was called which words imply no lesse then that every man should have a