Selected quad for the lemma: son_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
son_n	father_n	mother_n	sister_n	15,172	5	9.8017	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A65701	A discourse of the love of God shewing that it is well consistent with some love or desire of the creature, and answering all the arguments of Mr. Norris in his sermon on Matth. 22, 37, and of the letters philosohical and divine to the contrary / by Daniel Whitby ...	Whitby, Daniel, 1638-1726.	1697 (1697)	Wing W1724; ESTC R1639	108,266	186

yet it is the Root of many and great Vices it is that which renders it exceeding difficult to obey the Laws of Christ when they once come in Competition with these Beloved's of our Souls for where there is by Nature the closest Union and the most intimate Affection it must be very difficult to burst these Bonds asunder and disingage our Hearts from them Hence that great Duty of Self-denial is still expressed by loving God more than these for He saith Christ that loveth Father and Mother Son or Daughter more than me is not worthy of me And by a comparative hatred of them for He saith Christ that hateth not Father and Mother Wife and Children Brothers and Sisters cannot be my Disciple Moreover doth not Experience convince us that from the excessive love we bear to our Relations beloved Sects and Parties mostly proceeds that Strife Debate and Variance those Quarrels and Contentions that Wrath Hatred Envy Bitterness of Spirit those Schisms Factions and Seditions those Animosities and Heart-burnings those Calumnies Detractions rash Censures which are in the World Is not this one great Root of that Avarice that scraping for the World that hoarding of it up that want of Charity we complain of that Men are very desirous to advance their Families and leave them in great Plenty and Splendor in the World Can it be therefore doubted Whether this love of Benevolence be one great thing forbidden in this Injunction To love the Lord with all our Heart c. or whether it be not inconsistent with it as that love of the Creature of Houses Lands joined with it in the Text which Men do often part with to preserve the Life of these Beloveds But will Good Mr. N. or the Lady hence conclude That the Love of God with all our Hearts is entirely exclusive of all Love of Benevolence to Father or Mother Wife or Children Fourthly That though this Precept thou shalt love thy Neighbour as thy self cannot be reasonably supposed to command us to desire our Neighbour as our Good yet is it not only lawful but very commendable so to do I say the Command to love our Neighbour cannot be a Command to desire him as our Good because the love of my Neighbour is this love of another as such the wishing well and doing good to another without a formal respect to my self whereas loving another as a Good to me is properly Self-love The true reason then why I cannot love my Neighbour in the Sense here required with love of desire as a Good to me is not because he is a Creature for I my self am a Creature and yet may love my self as I have proved with a love of Desire and I may love and desire those temporal good Things God hath promised though they be only Creatures but because whatsoever I thus love must be affected and desired from Self-love and not from love unto another Nevertheless it is very evident that I may and sometimes ought to desire my Neighbour as a Good to me For is there not such a thing as a good Friend a good Companion a good Neighbour a good Counsellor and may not I want and so have reason to desire this Friend Companion Neighbour Counsellor as a Good to me Are not such Persons very needful and beneficial to us in this Life And will not Self-love teach us to desire what is so needful and so beneficial to us May not the Parish of B. desire that Mr. N. may continue their Minister as being a Good to them When Great and Good Men are in danger to be taken from us by Sickness or the Casualties of War how heartily do we pray for the continuance and preservation of their Lives And do we not desire this as a publick Good And when we grieve for them as dead and gone into a State of Happiness can we do this out of Benevolence to them Or do we not so from the Sense of our own Loss of one so good and so desirable to us Did not Ioash weep over Elisha because he was the Charriot of Israel and the Horsemen thereof Did not all Iudah and Ierusalem mourn for Iosiah because they said Under his shadow we shall live among the Heathens Are not Good and Righteous Men the greatest Blessings to a Nation and may we not then desire the continuance and encrease of them as our Good Does not the Psalmist speak of God's Saints and Servants as the Excellent in whom was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 all his desire Does not Mr. N. say There are some things which I love with great Passion such as are Conversation with select Friends Is not Vir desiderii the Scripture Expression for a Person highly beloved And may not Madam B. and Madam I. be to the Lady Mulier desiderii What though they cannot supply our Wants yet if they can supply any of them our want of good Company Instruction Learning Knowledge Health may they not be desired on that account What though they must seek their Felicity abroad and cannot be their own chief Good can this authorize us wholly to withdraw our Hearts from our Neighbour or from a faithful Friend who is better to us than a Brother and never to desire any Conversation with him for our Good 'T is therefore evident from those Considerations That we may not only desire Good to our Neighbour but that we may also desire him as a Good to us Thirdly I add that this Opinion That the Love of God is absolutely exclusive of all love to and all desire of the Creature destroys the whole Foundation of these two great Virtues Justice and Charity For 1. This is the natural Foundation of all Justice Thou shalt do to others as thou wouldst be dealt with If then the love of God obligeth me to have no love and no desire of the Creature it must oblige me to have no desire to preserve my own Life my Health my Goods my Wife my Servant or any other Creature that is mine and then no Obligation can be laid upon me from this Rule of Christ To desire to preserve the Life Health Goods Relations of my Neighbour or any other thing that is his Nor if I suffer them to be impair'd can I have any inward Sense that I do that to others which I would not have done unto my own self 2. All Charity or Love unto my Brother depends upon this Precept Thou shalt love thy Brother as thy self Now if this love to my self doth naturally produce within me a desire of all things that will do me good i. e. a desire of the continuance of my Being and so of all things necessary to my Being a desire of Ease when I lie under Pain of Supplies when under Want of Comfort when I am in Trouble of Pleasure when I may innocently enjoy it In a word a desire of every thing by which I may receive Advantage

to do the thing which will hazard his Favour or provoke his Displeasure and may we not then be faid to love him with an entire and undivided heart Thirdly That we are to love God above all things Intensive that is our desires must be more ardently enclined towards his Favour and the Enjoyment of him we must long thirst and pant more after him rejoice more in his Favour than in any other thing be more concerned to retain it than to secure any worldly Blessing and be more satisfied in it than in Marrow and Fatness and what more can the love of God with all our Souls import For seeing such a prevalence of our Desires towards him and Delight in him will not permit us to desire any thing in opposition to him or against his Will and Pleasure but will constrain us to quit all other Interests that we may happily retain our Interest in him we thus desire and delight in above all other things It follows that by thus loving God with all our Souls our love unto or our desire of the Creature can never be inordinate or irregular and so can never be offensive to God and then it cannot be forbidden by the Command To love the Lord our God with all our Souls In these things seems to be implied or from them certainly will follow that endeavour above all things to please him that industrious care to serve and to obey him that vigorous Imployment of all our other Faculculties in his Service which will demonstrate that we comparatively do not labour for the Meat that perisheth do not permit our Secular Imployments or our pursuit of any temporal Enjoyments to impair our diligence in the securing our eternal Interests and therefore that in the true import of the Phrase we love God with all our might all other Senses of it being inconsistent with that Diligence in our Callings and that Industry in our Civil Affairs which God himself requires from us And Fourthly Hence it follows that we are to love all other things only in way of Relation and Subordination to God for if we do co-ordinately love any other thing we love it equally with God And certainly if God requires us to love him with all our Hearts and all our Souls our love to other things must virtually be comprised in our love to God or be independant on it or subservient to it or else we must deprive him of some portion of the Heart he wholly calls for Moreover God being our ultimate and chiefest Good all other things can only be Good as they conduce to the Enjoyment or Service of him and so are to be loved by him that is we must love them as they relate to him as they enable us to serve him as they are or may be Instrumental to his Glory or to our Enjoyment of him When therefore we desire the Creature only for God's sake viz. that we may have Food and Rayment to sustain that Life we have devoted to his Service Encrease of temporal Enjoyments that we may be more able to feed Christ's hungry and clothe his naked Members or more engaged to serve him with Ioy and Gladness of Heart for the abundance of all things when we desire Marriage or a Wife that we may not burn and Children that as Plato saith we may breed them up in the Fear and Nurture of the Lord and leave behind us a Race of pious Persons who may do him service when we are dead and gone and Honour that we may be more instrumental to promote his Glory and to do Good to others and lastly the Knowledge of the Creature that we may learn to Glorifie the Creator by viewing the Power Wisdom and Goodness he hath discovered in the Creation of them who sees not that this love of the Creature centers in the love of God and tends expresly to his Glory and therefore cannot be forbidden by this Command to love the Lord with all our Hearts and all our Souls And of this Exposition of these Words we cannot reasonably doubt if we consider that our Lord himself doth plainly seem to favour and approve of it making that Service and so that Love which he requires from us to consist in that prevalence of Affection which enables us in any competition betwixt the love of the World and the love of Him to cleave to God and despise the World This evidently is the import of these words No Man can serve two Masters when their Services and Commands do interfere for he will either hate the one and love the other he will cleave to the one and despise the other ye cannot therefore serve God and Mammon Mr. N. indeed saith Here we are plainly told we cannot divide between God and the Creature because we cannot love either of them but upon such a Principle as must utterly exclude the love of the other But 1 st the word Mammon doth not signifie the Creature in general but Riches and Money in particular Now will it follow that because I must not love Money that I may not love my Victuals or that because I may not desire Riches which Agur prayed against I may not desire Food convenient for me which he prayed for 2 dly When our Lord saith No Man can serve two Masters can this be so interpreted as to infer we cannot serve our Master Christ and be Servants to our Masters according to the Flesh in all things not forbidden by him Must I needs hate my Master if I love my Saviour or despise him if I cleave to my Lord Christ Must not then the words be necessarily Interpreted of Masters Co-ordinate or Masters whose Commands and Services do interfere 3 dly What is the Business of a Servant is it not to obey the Pleasure of his Lord and yield himself up entirely in Subjection to his Commands What therefore must it be here to serve God but to give up our selves entirely to his Service and the Obedience of his Will What to serve Mammon but to give up our selves to the pursuit of Riches and to obey the Desires and Cravings of our covetous and worldly Appetites Thus it is certain that we cannot divide betwixt God and the Creature or love the one but from a Principle which excludes the love of the other but a Subordinate Affection to the Creature is no more exclusive of our love to God then is the Service of an Earthly Master exclusive of the Service which we owe to Christ our Master Again Christ places the due love of himself in the prevalence of our Affections to him above other things saying He that loveth Father and Mother Son or Daughter 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 above me is not worthy of me whence it must follow by the Rule of contraries that he who loveth Christ more than Father and Mother Son or Daughter or any worldly Interest whatever must be worthy of him From these two places it is