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	outward_a	parent_n	1,416	5	9.4826	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A30736	A Serious advice to the citizens of London by some ministers of the Gospel in the said city upon occasion of the horrid murder and dreadful death of Nathaniel Butler, an high malefactor.	Calamy, Edmund, 1600-1666.	1657 (1657)	Wing B6286; ESTC R209007	10,096	23

we had rather awaken then censure Was not that a brave resolution of Ioshua I and my house will serve the Lord Josh. 24. 15. Gen 18. 9. Can you have a better Evidence of sincerity towards God then a faithful comming up to relative and family-Family-duties Do not parents that send up their children to you put a great trust into your hands Are not their children dearer to them then all their outward comforts and shall they miscarry under you for want of care Will not their blood be required at your hands if they perish through your neglect will it not be sad to have children and servanns to rise up in judgment against you and to bring in evidence at the great tribunall of Christ Lord my Father never minded me Lord my master never regarded me I might sin he never reproved me I might go to hell it was all one to him will not this be sad will not this be sweet to you when you come to die to be able to say Lord I have walked in my house with a perfect heart Psal. 101. 2. Have you no love to religion to propagate it and to provide for it's flourishing when you are dead and gone Doth not your neglect of family-duties make all the endeavours of our godly magistrates and of godly ministers to be ineffectual and frustraineous God hath put it into their hearts to do good but t is but little they can do in publick because you are so remiss in private And t is the desire of our souls to beat down sin but we groan under the sense of sad disappointment and this is one reason of it what we do at the Church is undone by you again in your Families No setting on the word no praying over the word c. Oh that these things might be as so many spurs in your sides to quicken you to family-duties Set up prayer in your Families There 's a curse pronouned upon the Families that do not call upon God The Lord be mercisul to the thousands of Families in the City where there is scarce a prayer by the master of the family from yeer to yeer How can such hope for the blessing of God to be upon them who though he gives mercy freely yet he will be sought unto for it Ezek. 36. 37. How can such look for Gods bounty who deny him his worship Doth not prayer procure all your Family-comforts and sanctifie all your family-comforts Morning and Evening call upon God and call in your servants let them not want the benefit of prayer 't wil be poor to feed their bodyes and to starve their souls If you eate together by all means pray together Catechize your children and servants instruct them in the fundamentals of religion would you keep them from error in the Head from loosness in the life make conscience of this duty How excellent how necessary how profitable is this ordinance and yet how sadly is it neglected we may in a great measure blame you for the many Hereticks and erroneous persons with whom we swarm in these dayes Read and open the Scrptures to them but do this with all humility and sobriety or else there will be danger These are the Magazine the Treasury of all knowledge able to make you and yours wise to Salvation Let the word of Christ dwell richly in you and in all that belong to you See that they frequent the publick Ordinances let them follow you to the house of God not out of state but in love to their soules and when they are there see they keep there that they do not run out again to Ale-houses and Taverns as too many do to our grief and your shame be it spoken when a publick Ordinance is ended call them to an account see what they remember wherein they profit how they relish the word this is to do good indeed to their soules Keep them to strict observance of the Lords-day you will not let them trifle away your days then you 'l hold them to their work Oh! let them not trifle away the Lords day Why do your children and servants stand gazeing at your doors upon the Sabbath Call them in put them upon reading wholsom books and other exercises which are proper to the day be not partakers of their sin What ever liberty you grant them at other times hold them to a close sanctification of the Sabbath And spend this day with them in prayer repetition singing of Psalms This is to make your Families as so many little Churches of Jesus Christ How little conscience do the generality of you make of Sabbath-duty we might sadly bemoan this before the Lord For your selves you can make that day which is a day for Physick for the soul to be the Day for Physick for the Body you cannot spare time all the weeke long you 'l take it upon the Lords day And for your children and servants let them walk in the Field play in the streets sleep in their beds or drink in Taverns 't is all one to you Will God beare this from you Certainly this will be bitterness in the end Do not indulge your servants in idleness that is the bane of youth the Devils in-let to all temptations An idle person is like tinder that will take every sparke that falls upon it let them be out of imployment 't is a thousand to one but presently they are in some sin And yet those that know how to use their Liberty let them have it sometimes for lawful recreations but this we leave to your prudence In the pursuit of your own pleasures and conveniences have a care of your Families Many of you go to your Country houses we condemne you not for it but what becomes of your servants As Eliab said to David with whom have you left those few sheep in the wildrnesse Whilst you are in your pleasant gardens gratifying your selves in your creature-enjoyments who takes care of them that are left behind to pray with them to instruct them to see they sanctifie the Sabbath the health of some Masters bodies is the ruine of their servants souls Set them in all things a good example if they see you can strain in defrauding others they 'l easily come to strain in the defrauding of you let them see you fear to sin and that will be an awe upon their spirits against sin Take your Apprentices out of religious Families in the Country Many of you are punished with vexatious servants you may thank your selves for it you take your Apprentices by the pound not by good education who will give most not who will deserve most and you smart for it afterwards But how do these Heads swell upon our hands though we do but name them These are some of the things which we should present to the serious consideration of you who are Governours of Families and the Lord make them useful to you In particular it is of great use to prevent much wickedness to look

reason have you to admire the patience of God to this City T is a wonder London is not made as Sodom that desolation doth not seize upon your houses that you are not all swept away with the Bee●ome of suddain destruction that you are not hung upon the Gibbet as Spectacles of Gods vengeance to all the Nations round about What so much provocation and yet the City to stand Oh the Patience and Long-suffering of God! Doubtless if God had not a Romnant amongst you who seek him daily and fear his Name you had been laid desolate long before now Isa. 9. We need not from hence to stir you up to submit to Government and to bless God that you live in a place where Laws are Executed What a Chaos what a Wilderness of wild Beasts should we be if Malefactors were not punished What Confusion Cruelty Barbarousness would overspread all if by wholsome Laws and the care of good Magistrates in the Execution of them we had not some Boundaries set to the Lusts of men whether would the heart of man run if there were not some reins upon it T is sad the Law of God will not keep men from sin but seeing it will not t is mercy we have the Laws of Man Many are afraid of the Gallowes which have no sense of Hell This great Sinner is represented to you as an eminent instance of the Grace of God and so we hope he was T is very necessary therefore we should here insert a Caveat against the abusing of this Grace of God How apt are we with the Spider to such Poyson where with the Bee we should suck Honey How many will be apt from hence to encourage themselves in sin and to say Let us sin that Grace may abound Rom. 6 1. Or let us sin for Grace will abound Man is not more prone to any thing then to catch at eminent Acts of Grace and to make that Fewel to his Lust which God intended only to be Food to his Faith And never was there any age wherein there was more of this Spirit of Presumption then this wherein we live insomuch that upon this very account some of us were very inclinable to think That 't was better to have the story of this man suppressed then published But since providence hath so ordered it that it doth see the Light we cannot but annex to it an Antidote against presuming Sinners do not pervert this Grace of God God lets you have it to keep you off from the rock of despair not that you should run upon the rock of presumption Deut. 29. 19 20. If you sin you may have mercy but if you presume to sin can you then expect mercy Grace rejected may yet save you though that will cost you dear but oh tremble to abuse the grace of God to incourage you in sins God sometimes gives some rare instances of his grace to notorious sinners that none may de pair but he is very choice in these that none may presume T is true upon repentance the greatest sinner shall find mercy but how do you know that God will give you repentance How many are in the same condemnation that this offender was that die without any such work upon them we affectionately beseech you and warn you not to turn this grace of God into wantonnesse These things we hint in general More particularly we shall address our selves to you in the several capacities wherein you stand You the Right honourable Magistrates of the City with all submission and yet with all holdness we exhort you to do your duty T is nor enough for you to punish sin when 't is before you but you are to endevour the preventing of it you see what is the sad fruit of Ale-houses Whore-houses and such places we hope your zeal will yet continue nay be heightned in the suppressing of them Down with them Down with them spare them not they are the Divels Shops and let him have no Free-Trade amongst us If you will none shall have so many Customers as he How many Labourers drink that away at these houses which should maintain their wives and children with bread How are the youth of this City debauched at them where they have their Gaming Cheating Whoring and what not Oh let your Reformation be severe and throughout in this particular But herein blessed be God we have great cause as wel to commend as quicken the zeal of many We heartily wish that those who have power in the Suburbs of the City would be as active in the restraining of sin as you are that those places and persons which you will not indure in the City the naming of which would foul our pen might not be held up and harboured there otherwise it will be small advantage to smother Whores out of one Hive when they have another ready to receive them We hear and fear t is too true that Priests and Jesuites those Romish Locusts do swarm amongst us in the City and Suburbs We beseech you for the sake of Jesus Christ and for love to the Gospel to put forth your power to the utmost for the discovering suppressing of them And the rather because they and their party are so bold as to intrude themselves upon prisoners condemned to die to pervert them from the true Religion for this attempt they were bold to make upon N. B. before he was executed We should also speak to our selves and to our reverend Brethren in the Ministry Doth not this providence speak something to us Should we not from hence be stirred up in our several congregations more vigorusly to reprove sin and to deter men from sin Whither will sinners go if we let them alone Let our preaching be lively quick powerful by Gods blessing it may be a means to prevent these abominable practises However let 's do this and then let our hearers do what they will their blood shall be required at their own hands Ezech. 3. 18 19. We shall be free from it Let us beat down drunkenness Adultery c. and such scandalous sins and while we labour to preach down unbelief let us take heed that presumption and gross sins do not break in upon us with a mighty breach Should we enlarge upon these things we should be tedious Our principal intendment was to speak a word to you the people and Citizens of the place which we shall dispatch with all plainness and brevity And here we will only take the liberty of advising you in the Notion of Governours and Governed You that are Governours we mean Governours of families give us leave to set in with this providence and to stir you up to make more conscience of the Family-duties and engagements that lie upon you in reference to your children and Servants Probably if things be not mis-represented had there been a consciencious discharge of these duties in the Family where this young man lived he had never come to this sad end But