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	use_v	1,722	5	5.9300	4	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

Honour that is due to Parents when they are dead is to give just honour to their Names and to obey their Precepts and imitate their good examples It is the high commendation of the Rechabites that they strictly kept the ●recepts of their Father even in a thing indifferent a mode of living not to drink wine or build houses but dwell in tents an God annexeth this notable blessing Thus saith the Lord of hosts the God of Israel because ye have obeyed the commandemtent of Jonadab your Father and kept all his Precepts and done according to all that he hath commanded you Therefore thus siath the Lord of Hosts the God of Israel Jonadab the Son of Rechab shall not mant to stand before me for ever Jer. 36. 6 7. 18. 19. But especially in the great duties of Religion where Parents do but deliver the mind of God and use their authority to procure obedience to Divine authority and where the matter it self is necessary to our Salvation the obligation to obedience and imitation is most indispensable and disobedience is an aggravated iniquity and the notorious brand of infelicity and Prognostick of ensuiing woe The ungodly Children of godly Parents being the most deplorable unhappy unexcusable persons in the World if they hold on There is yet another Doctrine that I should speak to Doct. 7. PRayer in general and this prayer in particular that Christ will Receive our dep●rting souls is a most suitable conclusion of all the action of Christians life Prayer is the breath of a Christians life it is his work and highest converse and therefore fittest to be the concluding action of his life that it may reach the end at which he aimed We have need of Prayer all our lives because we have need of God and need of his manifold and continued Grace But in our last extreamity we have a special need Though sloath is apt to seize upon us while prosperity hindreth the sense of our necessities and health perswadeth us that Time is not near its journies end yet it is high time to pray with doubled fervour and importunity when we see that we are near our last when we find that we have no more time to pray but must now speak our last for our immortal Souls and must at once say all that we have to say and shall never have a hearing more O then to be unable to pray or to be faithless and heartless and hopeless in our prayers would be a calamity beyond expression Yet I know for ordinary observation tells it us that many truly gracious persons may accidentally be undisposed and disabled to pray when they are near to death If the Disease be such as doth disturb the Brain or take them up with violence of pain or overwhelm the mind by perturbation of the passions or abuse the imagination or notably waste and debilitate the spirits it cannot be expected that a body thus disabled should serve the Soul in this or any other duty But still the praying Habit doth remain though a distempered body do forbid the exercise The Habitual desires of the Soul are there and it is those that are the soul of Prayer But this should move us to pray while we have time and while our Bodies have strength and our spirits have vigour and alacrity to serve us seeing we are so uncertain of bodily disposition and capacity so near our end O pray and pray with all your hearts before any Fever or Deliration overthrow your understandings or your memories before your thoughts are all commanded to attend your pains and before your decayed spirits fail you and deny their necessary service to your suits and before the apprehensions of your speedy approach to the presence of the most Holy God and your entrance upon an endless state do amaze confound and overwhelm your Souls with fear and perturbation O Christians what folly what sin and shame is it to us that now while we have time to pray and leave to pray and helps to pray and have no such disturbing hindrances we should yet want hearts and have no mind no life and fervour for so great a work O pray now lest you are unable to pray then And if you are then hindred but by such bodily undisposedness God will understand your habitual desires and your groans and take it as if you had actually prayed Pray now that so you may be acquainted with the God that then you must fly unto for mercy and may not be strangers to him or unto Prayer and that he may not find then that your prayers are but the expressions of your fears and not of your Love and are constrained and not voluntary motions unto God Pray now in preparation to your dying prayers O what a terrible thing it is to be to learn to pray in that hour of extreamity and to have then no principle to pray by but natural self-love which every Thief hath at the gallows To be then without the Spirit of prayer when without it there cannot an acceptable word or groan be uttered and when the rejection of our suits and person will be the prologue to the final judicial rejection and will be a distress so grievous as presumptuous Souls will not believe till sad experience become their Tutor Can you imagine that you shall then at last be taught the art of acceptable Prayer meerly by horrour and the natural sense of pain and danger as Sea-men in a storm or a Malefactor by the rack when in your health and leasure you will not be perswaded to the daily use of serious Prayer but number your selves with the families that are under the wrath of the Almighty being such as call not on his name Jer. 10. 25. Psalm 79. 6. Indeed there are many prayers must go before or else this Prayer Lord Jesus receive my spirit will be in vain when you would be loth to find it so You must first pray for renewing Sanctifying grace for the death of sin and the Pardon of sin for a holy life and a Heavenly mind for obedience patience and perseverance and if you obtain not these there is no hope that Jesus Christ should receive your Spirits that never received his sanctifying spirit How sad is it to observe that those that have most need of Prayer have least mind to Pray as being least sensible of their needs Yea that those that are the next step to the state of Devils and have as much need of Prayer as any miserable souls on earth do yet deride it and hate those that seriously and fervently perform it a man of prayer being the most common objct of their malicious reproach and scorn O miserable Cainites that hate their brethren for offering more acceptable sacrifice then their own little do they know how much of the very Satanical nature is in that malice and in those reproachful scorns and little do they know how near they are to the curse and desparation of Cain and