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	parent_n	provide_v	2,735	5	9.0893	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A69538	The last work of a believer his passing prayer recommending his departing spirit to Christ to be received by Him / prepared for the funerals of Mary the widow first of Francis Charlton Esq. and after of Thomas Hanmer, Esq., and partly preached at St. Mary Magdalens Church in Milk-Street, London, and now, at the desire of her daughter, reprinted by Richard Baxter.	Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691.	1682 (1682)	Wing B1298; ESTC R5056	51,178	102

reached to assurance or not she had confident apprehensions of the Love of God and quietly reposed her soul upon his grace Yet not secure through presumption or self esteem but comforting her self in the Lord her God By this means she spent those hours in a chearful performance of her duty which many spend in fruitless self-vexation for the failings of their duty or in meer enquiries Whether they have Grace or not and others spend in wrangling perplexed Controversies about the manner or circumstances of duty And I believe that she had more comfort from God by way of reward upon her sincere obedience while she referred her soul to him and rested on him than many have that more anxiously perplexed themselves about the discerning of their holiness when they should be studying to be more holy that it might discover it self And by this means she was sit for praises and thanksgiving and spent not her life in lamentations and complaints and made not Religion seem terrible to the ignorant that judge of it by the faces and carriage of professors She did not represent it to the world as a morose and melancholy temper but as the rational creatures cheerful obedience to his maker actuated by the sense of the wonderful Love that is manifested in the Redeemer and by the hopes of the purchased and promised felicity in the blessed sight and fruition of God And I conjecture that her forementioned dispositiou to think well of God and of his providences together with her long and manifold experience the great advantage of antient tryed Christians did much conduce to free her from doubtings and disquieting fears about her own sincerity and Salvation And I confess if her life had not been answerable to her peace and confidence I should not have thought the better but the worse of her condition nothing being more lamentable than to make hast to Hell through a wilful confidence that the danger is past and that they are in the way to Heaven as well as the most sanctified 10. Lastly I esteemed it the height of her attainment that she never discovered any inordinate fears of death but a chearful readiness willingness and desire to be dissolved and be with Christ This was her constant temper both in health and sickness as far as I was able to observe She would be frequently expressing how little reason she had to be desirous of longer life and how much reason to be willing to depart Divers times in dangerous sicknesses I have been with her and never discerned any considerable aversness dejectedness or fear Many a time I have thought how great a mercy I should esteem it if I had attained that measure of fearless willingness to lay down this flesh as she had attained Many a one that can make light of wants or threats or scorns or any ordinary troubles cannot submit so quietly and willingly to death Many a one that can go through the labours of Religion and contemn opposition and easily give all they have to the poor and bear imprisonments banishment or contempt can never overcome the fears of Death so far even the Father of lies spake truth Joh. 2. 4. Skin for Skin yea all that a man hath will he give for his Life I took it therefore for a high attainment and extraordinary mercy to our deceased friend that the King of Terrours was not terrible to her Though I doubt not but somewhat of aversness and fear is so radicated in natures self-preserving principle as that it is almost inseparable yet in her I never discerned any troublesome appearances of it When I first came to her in the beginning of her last sickness she suddenly passed the sentence of death upon her self without any shew of fear or trouble when to us the disease appeared not to be great But when the disease encreased her pains were so little and the effect of the Fever was so much in her head that after this she seemed not to esteem it mortal being not sensible of her case and danger And so as she lived without the fears of death she seemed to us to die without them God by the nature of her disease removing death as out of her sight when fhe came to that weakness in which else the encounter was like to have been sharper than ever it was before And thus in one of the weaker sex God hath shewed us that it is possible to live in holy confidence and peace and quietness of mind without distressing griefs or fears even in the midst of a troublesom world and of vexatious businesses and with the afflictions of her dearest Relations almost continually before her And that our quiet or disquiet our peace or trouble dependeth more upon our inward strength and temper then upon our outward state occasions or provocations And that it is more in our hands than of any or all our friends and enemies whether we shall have a comfortable or uncomfortable life What remaineth now but that all we that furvive especially you that are her Children do follow her as she followed Christ Though the Word of God be your sufficient Rule and the Example of Christ be your perfect pattern yet as the Instructions so the Example of a parent must be a weighty motive to quicken and engage you to your duty and will else be a great aggravation of your sin A holy Child of unholy parents doth no more than his necessary duty because whatever parents are he hath an holy God But an unholy Child of holy parents is unexcusable in sin and deplorably miserable as forsaking the Doctrine and pattern both of their Creator and their Progenitors whom Nature engageth them to observe And it will be an aggravation of their deserved misery to have their Parents witness against them that they taught them and they would not learn and went before them in a holy life but they would not follow them Prov. 1. 8. My Son hear the instruction of thy Father and forsake not the law of thy Mother for they shall be an Ornament of Grace unto thy head and chains about thy neck Read and consider Prov. 30. 17. and 15. 20. and 23. 22 25. sins against Parents have a special curse affixed to them in this life as the case of Cham sheweth And the due obsevrance and honouring of Parents hath a special Promise of Temporal Blessings as the fifth Commandment sheweth Ephes 6. 1 2 3. Children obey your Parents in the Lord for it is right Honour thy Father and Mother which is the first Commandment with promise that it may be well with thee and thou mayest live long on the earth The Histories of all Ages are so full of the instances of Gods judgements in this life upon five sorts of sinners as may do much to convince an Atheist of the Government and special Providence of God that is upon Persecutors Murderers Sacrilegious False-witnesses especially by Perjury and Abusers and Dishonourers of Parents And the great

study and you will see what souls they are that Christ will then Receive and what he will reject You may see also what you must now be and do if you will be then Received If you are not regenerate by the Spirit of God though you may be Sacramentally regenerate in Baptism If you are not justified by Christ though you may be absolved by a Minister If If you seek not Heaven with higher estimation and resolutions that any felicity on earth and take not God for your satisfying portion though you be never so Religious in subserviency to a fleshly worldly happiness If you Receive not Christ as your only Saviour and set him not in the Throne and Government of your hearts and lives though you may go with men for currant Christians If you hate not sin if you love not the holy image and children of God and use them not accordingly If you crucifie not the flesh and die not to the world and deny not your selves and live not unto God as making it your chief business and happiness to please him I say if this be not your case as sure as you are men if you died this hour in this condition Christ will not own you but turn you off with a Depart ye cursed You may as well think of reconciling light and darkness or persuade a man to live on the food of beasts or the stomach to welcome deadly poyson as to think that Christ will receive an ungodly earthly guilty soul Deceive not your selves sinners If God could have entertained the ungodly and Heaven could hold unholy souls answer me then these two or three Questions 1. What need Christ then to have shed his blood or become a sacrifice for sin if he could have received the ungodly he might have done it upon cheaper rates This feigneth him to have died to no purpose but to bring the unsanctified to heaven that might have been as well entertained there without his sufferings 2. To what use doth Christ send the Holy-Ghost to sanctifie his Elect Or send his Word and Ministers to promote it if they may come to heaven unsanctified 3. If the ungodly go to Heaven what use is Hell for There is no Hell if this be true But you will quickly find that to be too good news to the ungodly to be true II. In Luk. 16. Christ teacheth us our duty by the parable of the Steward that asketh himself before-hand What he shall do when he must be no longer Steward and contriveth it so that others may receive him when he is cast off And he applieth it to us hat must now so provide that when we fail we may be received into the everlasting habitations This is the work that we have all to mind We always knew that this world would fail us O how uncertain is your tenure of the dwellings that you now possess Are you provided certainly provided whither to go and who shall Receive you when your Stewardship is ended and you must needs go hence O think of these considerations that should move you presently to provide 1. Your Cottages of earth are ready to drop down and it is a stormy time there are many sicknesses abroad One blast may quickly lay them in the dust and them the flesh that had so much care and was thought worthy to be preferred before the soul must be laid and left to rot in darkness to avoid the annoyance of the living And when you may justly look every hour when you are turned out of these dwellings that you are in is it not time to be provided of some other 2. Consider if Christ should not receive thy spirit how unspeakably deplorable thy case will be I think there is no man in all this Assembly so mad that would take all the world now to have his soul refused then by Christ that would professedly make and subscribe such a bargain And yet alas how many are they that will be hired for a smaller price even for the pleasure of a sin to do that which Chirst himself hath told them will cause him to Refuse them O Sirs for ought you know before to morrow or within this week you may be put to know these things by tryal and your Souls may be refused or received And wo to you that ever you were Men if Christ receive you not Consider 1. If Chirst receive thee not thou hast no Friend left then to receive thee Thy House and Land an Riches and Reputation are all left behind none of them will go with thee or if they did they could afford thee no relief Thy Bosom-friends thy powerful Defenders are all left behind or if they go before or with thee they can do nothing there that could do so much for thee here No Minister so holy no Friend so kind no Patron so powerful that can give thee any entertainment if Christ refuse to entertain thee Look to the right hand or the left there will be none to help thee or care for thy forsaken Soul Then thou wilt find that one Christ had been a better Friend than all the Great ones upon Earth 2. If Christ then receive not thy departed Soul the Devils will receive it I am loth to speak so terrible a word but that it must be spoken if you will be awaked to prevent it He that deceived thee will then plead Conquest and claim thee as his due that he may torment thee And if the Devil say This Soul is mine and Christ do not rescue and justifie thee but say so too no heart is able to conceive the horrour that will then overwhelm thee Doth not the reading of the Sentence make thee tremble Matth. 25. 41. Depart from me ye cursed into everlasting fire prepared for the Devil and his Angels This is that dreadful delivering up to Satan when the Soul is excommunicated from the City of God O therefore if thou be yet unreconciled to God agree with him quickly while thou art here in the way lest he deliver thee to this terrible Jaylor and Executioner and thou be cast into the prison of the bottomless pit Verily I say unto thee thou shalt by no means come out thence till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing Mat. 5. 25 26. 3. The greatness of the change will increase the amazement and misery of thy Spirit if Christ receive it not To leave a World that thou wast acquainted with a World that pleased thee and entertained thee a World where thou hadst long thy business and delight and where wretched man thou hadst made thy chief provision and laid up thy treasure this will be a sad part of the Change To enter into a World where thou art a stranger and much worse and see the company and the things that before thou never sawest and to find things go there so contrary to thy expectation to be turned with Dives from thy sumptuous Dwelling Attendance and Fare into a place of easeless torment this will