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	superior_n	1,664	5	10.9934	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A63684	Christ's yoke an easy yoke, and yet the gate to heaven a strait gate in two excellent sermons, well worthy the serious perusal of the strictest professors / by a learned and reverend divine.	Taylor, Jeremy, 1613-1667.; Hove, Frederick Hendrick van, 1628?-1698.	1675 (1675)	Wing T295; ESTC R38275	26,780	106

the Grace of God we pretend the Sin of Adam to countenance our actual sins natural infirmity to excuse our malice either laying Adam in fault for deriving the disability upon us or God for puting us into the necessity But the evils that we feel in this are from the rebellion of the inferior appetite against Reason or against any Religion that puts restraint upon our first desires And therefore in carnal and sensual instances accidentally we find the more natural aversness because God's Laws have put our irrascible and concupiscible faculties in fetters and restraints yet in matters of Duty which are of immaterial and spiritual concernment all our natural reason is a perfect enemy and contradiction to and a Law against Vice It is natural for us to love our Parents and they that do not are unnatural they do violence to those dispositions which God gave us to the constitution of our Nature and for the designs of Vertue and all those tendernesses of affection those bowels and relenting dispositions which are the endearments of Parents and Children are also the bands of Duty Every degree of love makes Duty delectable and therefore either by Nature we are inclined to hate our Parents which is against all Reason and Experience or else we are enclined to do them all that which is the effect of love to such superiors and principles of being and dependency and every prevarication from the Rule Effects and Expresses of Love is a contradiction to Nature and a mortification to which we cannot be invited by any thing from within but by something from without that●s violent and preternatural There are also many other Virtues even in the matter of sensual appetite which none can lose but by altering in some degree the natural disposition and I instance in the matter of carnality and uncleanness to which possibly some natures may think themselves apt and dispos'd but yet God hath put into our mouths a bridle to curb the licentiousness of our speedy appetite putting into our very natures a principle as strong to restrain it as there is in us a disposition apt to invite us and this is also in those who are most apt to the Vice Women and young Persons to whom God hath given a modesty and shame of nature that the entertainment of Lust may become contradictory to our retreating and backward modesty more than they are satisfactory to our too forward appetites It is as great a mortification and violence to Nature to blush as to lose a desire and we find it true when persons are invited to confess their sins or to ask forgiveness publickly a secret smart is not so violent as a publick shame And therefore to do an action which brings shame all along opens the sanctuaries of Nature and makes all her retirements publick and dismantles her inclosure as Lust does and the shame of carnality hath in it more asperity and abuse to Nature than the short minutes of pleasure to which we are invited can repay There are unnatural Lusts Lusts which are such in their very condition and constitution that a Man must turn a Woman and a Woman become a Beast in acting them and all Lusts that are not unnatural in their own complexion are unnatural by a consequent and accidental violence And if Lust hath in it dissonancies to Nature there are but few Apologies left to excuse our Sins upon Natures stock and all that system of principles and reasonable inducements to Virtue which we call the Law of Nature is nothing else but that firm ligature and incorporation of Virtue to our natural principles and dispositions which whoso prevaricates does more against Nature than he that restrains his appetite And besides these particulars there is not in our natural discourses any inclination directly or by intention of it self contrary to the love of God because by God we understand that fountain of being which is infinitely perfect in it self and of great good to us and whatsoever is so apprehended it is as natural for us to love as to love any thing in the world for we can love nothing but what we believe to be good in it self or good to us And beyond this there are in Nature many Principles and Reasons to make an aptness to acknowledge and confess God and by the consent of Nations which they also have learned from the Dictates of their Nature all Men in some manner or other worship God And therefore when this our Nature is determined in its own indefinite principle to the manner of Worship all acts against the Love the Obedience and Worship of God are also against Nature and offer it some rudeness and violence And I shall observe this and refer it to every Man's Reason and Experience that the great difficulties commonly apprehended commence not so much upon the stock of Nature as of Education and evil habits Our Virtues are difficult because we at first get ill habits and these habits must be unrooted before we do well and that 's our trouble But if by the strictness of Discipline and wholsome Education we begin at first in our Duty and practice of vertuous Principles we shall find Vertue made as natural to us while it is customary and habitual as we pretend infirmity to be and propensity to vitious practices And this we are taught by that excellent Hebrew who said Wisdom is easily seen of them that love her and found of such as seek her she preventeth them that desire her in making her self first known unto them Whoso seeketh her early shall have no great travel for he shall find her sitting at his doors Wisd. 6.12 13 14. II. In the strict observance of the Law of Christianity there is less trouble than in the habitual courses of Sin For if we consider the general design of Christianity it propounds to us in this world nothing that is of difficult purchase nothing beyond what God allo●s us by the ordinary and common providence such things which w● are to receive without care and solicitous vexations So that the ends are nothing and the way is easie and this walk●d over with much simplicity and sweetness and those obtained without difficulty He that propounds to live low pious humble and retir'd his main imployment is nothing but sitting quiet and undisturb'd with variety of impertinent affairs But he that loves the World its acquisitions entertains a thousand businesses and every business hath a world of imployment and every imployment is multiplied and made intricate by circumstances and every circumstance is to be disputed and he that disputes ever hath two sides in enmity and opposition and by this time there is a genealogie a long descent and cognation of troubles branch'd into so many particulars that it is troublesome to understand them and much more to run through them The wayes of Virtue are much upon the defensive and the works one uniform and little they are like War within a strong Castle