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	evil_a	parent_n	1,086	5	8.7852	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A26888	The certainty of the worlds of spirits and, consequently, of the immortality of souls of the malice and misery of the devils and the damned : and of the blessedness of the justified, fully evinced by the unquestionable histories of apparitions, operations, witchcrafts, voices &c. / written, as an addition to many other treatises for the conviction of Sadduces and infidels, by Richard Baxter.	Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691.	1691 (1691)	Wing B1214; ESTC R13061	111,630	274

THE CERTAINTY OF THE WORLDS of SPIRITS And Consequently Of the Immortality of Souls Of the Malice and Misery of the Devils and the Damned And of the Blessedness of the Justified Fully evinced by the unquestionable Hist●ries of Apparitions Operations Witchcrafts Voices c. Written as an Addition to many other Treatises for the Conviction of Sadduces and Infidels By RICHARD BAXTER Eph 6.12 We wrestle not against Flesh and Blood but against Principalities against Powers against the Rulers of the Darkness of this World against spiritual Wickednesses in high Places in Celestials Matth 8. 31 32. The Devils besought him saying If thou cast us out suffer us to go away into the Herd of Swine And he said Go. Luk. 10. 18 20. I beheld Satan as Lightning fall from Heaven But in this rejoyce not that the Spirits are subject to you But rather rejoyce because your Names are written in Heaven Heb. 2. 14. Are they not all the Angels ministring Spirits sent forth to minister for them who shall be Heirs of Salvation LONDON Printed for T. Parkhurst at the Bible and Three Crowns in Cheapside and I. Salisbury at the Rising Sun near the Royal Exchange in Cornhill 1601. THE PREFACE It seemeth hard to unruly Minds that God should keep Intellectual Souls so strange to the unseen World of Spirits that we know so little of them and that our Knowledge of them is no more by the way of ●ente But there is in it much of Gods ●rbitrary Soveraign Power and much of his Wisdom and much of his Justice and also of his Love 1. It pleased him to make Variety of Creatures What harmony would there be without Variety were there nothing but Unity there would be nothing but God And various Creatures must have a various Scituation Reception and Operations The Fishes must not dwell in our Cities nor be acquainted with our Affairs 2. We here dwell in Flesh in Bodies organized for the Souls Receptions and Perceptions and Operations And the Wisdom of God doth suitably dispose of his Communications and give us that measure of Light which is agreeable to our State The Sun must not shine on the Infant in the Womb nor must he there see our Buildings and Tradings and Business in the World 3. We have Light here that is proportionable to our work and interest So much as is necessary to our knowing of our selves and our God and Governour and our Duty and all those hopes that are our necessary Motives thereto Men that will but observe the Operations of their Souls may competently know what a Soul or Spirit is And Men that will but open their Eyes and considerately look about them may as certainly know that there is a God as they can know that there is any Being And Men that cannot but difference Moral Good and Evil and that know the Duty of Children to Parents Subjects to Rulers and Neighbours to Neighbours may know their Duty to God and that the performance of it shall not be in vain And if Men will not know all this which they may know it is just with God to leave them to their chosen darkness and not to know that which further might be known It is a dismal case to havea Soul that will not know it self to be what it is till utter Misery convince him 4. And the God of Love maketh Advantage of our not-seeing the World of Spirits for our Exercise of our higher Intellectual Faculties by a Life of Faith And Intuition a Nobler sort than our present Eye-sight will be seasonable and soon enough when ripeness hath made us ready for it We shall not need all the Organical parts of the Eye which Galen admiringly describeth for our Glorious sight And to see Devils and other Spirits ordinari●y would not be enough to bring our Atheists to the saving Knowledge of God without which all other Knowledge is vain They that doubt of a God the most perfect eternal infinite Being while they see the Sun and Moon and Stars the Sea and Land would not know him by seeing Created ●pir●ts As to the Originals of this Collection it had its rise from my own and other Mens need When God fir●● a●akened me to think with preparing seriousness of my Condition after Death I had not any observed Doubts of the Reality of Spirits or the Immortality of the Soul or of the Truth of the Gospel But all my doubts were about my own Renovation and Title to that Blessed Life But when God had given me peace of Conscience Satan Assaulted me with those worse Temptations Yet through Gods Grace they never prevailed against my Faith Nor did he ever raise in me the least doubt of the Being and ●erfection of God nor of my Duty to Love Honour Obey and Trust him For I still saw that to be an Atheist was to be ●●ad But I fou●d tha● my Fai●h of Supernat●ral Revela●ion ●●st be more than a Believing Man and that if it had ●ot a firm Foundation and rooting even sure Evidence of Verity Surely Apprehended it was not like to do those great works that Faith had to do and to overcome the World the Flesh and the Devil and to make my Death to be safe and comfortable Therefore I found that all confirming helps were useful and among those of the lower sort Apparitions and other sensible Manifestations of the certain existence of Spirits of themselves Invisible was a means that might do much with such as are prone to judge by Sense The uses hereof I mention before the Book that the Reader may know that I write it for Practice and not to please Men with the Strangeness and Novelty of useless Stories It is no small number of Writers on such Subjects that I have read it 's near threescore years time from the fi●st occasion And finding that almost all the Ath●ists Sadduces and Infidels did seem to profess that were they but sure of the Reality of the Apparitions and Operations of Spirits it would cure them I thought this the most suitable help for them that have sinned themselves into an incapacity of more Rational and Excellent Arguments And I have long feared lest secr●t unobserved defectiveness in their Belief of the Immortality of the Soul ●nd the truth of the Scripture is the great cause of all Mens other defects There lieth usually the unsoundness of Woridly Hypocrites where it is prev●iling and thence is the weakness of Gra●e in the best though it prevail not against their Sincerity By which Motives I did though it displeased some make it the Second Fart of my Book called the Saints Rest And aft●rward● provoked by Clement Writer I did it mu●h more fully in a Book called the Unreasonableness of Infidelity And after that provoked by the Copy of a paper dispersed in Oxford said to be Dr. Walkers questioning the certainty of our Religion and seeing no answer to it come from the Univ●rsity Men I wrote yet more Methodically of all in