Selected quad for the lemma: duty_n
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A37316
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A Check to debauchery, and other crying sins of these times with several useful rules for the attaining the contrary virtue : to which are annexed some directions and heads for meditation and prayer, taken out of Holy Scripture ... Oct. 26. 92 ...
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L. D.
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1692
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Wing D51; ESTC R23020
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47,625
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written and allowed of by the Ancient Fathers and the whole Church of God in all Ages And then as to the necessity of Prayer if we consider our many wants Temporal and Spiritual to be relieved many sins wherein we still offend God to be pardoned many Temptations and Dangers from which to be preserved many Benefits and Assistances received and all these with a respect also to our Fellow Christians we cannot but acknowledge every moment of our Lives had we no other necessary Duties too little to be spent in this one Great Duty of Continual Prayer 1 Thess 5.17 Our good Lord assist us by his Holy Spirit in the diligent and sincere performance thereof The other Chief Means of our obtaining Divine Assistances against our Lusts is 2ly Frequen Communicating as many good Christians now do and the Primitive Christians did almost every day I do not intend here to treat largely of this Holy Sacrament there being many good Books Written designedly on that Subject but only recommend to the Reader without medling with God's power therein which transcends all Humane Conception and Comprehension the Immense Benefit of this Holy Mystery to each worthy Communicant in reference to his particular Necessities For obtaining Remission of this or that Sin a Remedy of this or that Infirmity a Deliverance from this or that Affliction for receiving a Benefit or giving thanks for a Benefit received for helping our Neighbour for encreasing the Holy Spirit and Love of God in us Because as by one Spirit in Baptism We are made one Mystical Body of Christ 1 Cor. 12.13 so likewise in the Eucharist are we made to drink into the partaking of one Spirit The Blessed Eucharist being as necessary for the continuing and encreasing as Baptism for the first receiving the Holy Spirit Because also this is that particular Nourishment instituted by Christ for the preserving our Body and Soul to Everlasting Life that particular Pledge and Assurance of our Resurrection that true Bread from Heaven which mystically also Incorporates us into Christ and makes us continue and grow up into perfect Members of his Body that so thus partaking of the Nature and Spirit of the Second Adam the Heir of all things we may become with him Sons of God Heirs of Eternal Life as we were by the First Adam of Eternal Death That true Heavenly Bread lastly so Exalting and Assimulating our Nature into Christ when worthily Communicating as to make us one with him as he and the Father are one According to our Saviour's Prayer when he was Instituting this Blessed Sacrament I pray thee Father John 17. that they may be one as we are one O Blessed Union between poor Man and his Maker O happy those Souls who here worthily feed on this Heavenly Bread the only true Nourishment of the Life of Grace enabling them in the Strength thereof to walk even to the Mount of God the Life of Glory The Conclusion THE Summ of this Discourse is The Sins of the Flesh are most dangerous because most natural to us And by reason of their filthiness most loathsome to Almighty God and most severely punished by him For not only those of the greater magnitude Fornication Adultery Incest Sodomy Beastiality are followed with God's most Tremendous Judgments but also we find in Scripture Vncleanness and Laciviousness Gal. 5.19 Eph. 5.3 destinct from the foregoing and of a less denomination every where joyned with such Sins as exclude the Practisers thereof from the Kingdom of Heaven The way to prevent such Sins and to avoid the punishment of them is To mortify our Passions our Memory and Imagination to beware of impure Suggestions cheirsh Holy Inspirations and avoid all the occasions of such Sins to Improve lastly the Grace of God in us by Assiduous Prayer daily Examination of our selves perfect Repentance frequent Communicating and all other holy means pressing still farther to higher and higher Gifts particularly to the attaining that most excellent Gift of Charity which makes us love God above all things and our Neighbour as our selves hate even our own Lives for love of Him who first loved us undergoing the the greatest sufferings with Thankfulness and Complacency performing all our Actions on purpose to please him referring them to his Honour offering them up to his Praise and Glory To whom Father Son and Holy Ghost be all Honour Praise and Glory to all Eternity Amen God is a Spirit and they that worship him must worship him in Spirit and in Truth Joh. 4.24 Grace and Truth i. e. means of Salvation came by Jesus Christ Joh. 1.17 God sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts that they that live should not henceforth live unto themselves but to him who dyed for them Gal. 4.6 2 Cor. 5.15 Wretched is that man who is all for the good things of this Life a good House good Apparel good Provision c. and is content to have a bad Soul Int. Christ Some Short Directions and Heads of Meditation for the Persons Concerned in the Preceeding Discourse CHAP. I. Of Meditation it's Requisites and how it differs from Contemplation MEditation is called the first Essential part of Prayer leading to Contemplation Thanksgiving Petition c. in which all the Principal Faculties of the Soul the Memory Vnderstanding Will and Affections are severally employed The Memory recollects the matter to be Meditated upon and also placeth the Soul in the Divine Presence The Vnderstanding judgeth of the Subject and its Vertues and accordingly proposeth it to the Will The Will excites in us divers Acts and Affections either of Love Affiance Gratitude c. towards God Or of Hatred Compunction desire of doing better c. towards our selves which is indeed the main Scope and end of Meditation Then follows our Praying and representing to Almighty God our Miseries Necessities Temptations which we most earnestly beg him to redress for his own Love and Compassion's sake and the Merits of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ But when the Faculties of the Soul are unactive or slow in their Operations as it often happens they are to be excited by the help of good Books which ought always to be at hand when we Meditate and in all such holy exercise we are to approach the Divine Presence with our greatest Reverence and Humiliation And it is also necessary before every Meditation to make a strict Examen of Conscience 1. What Benefits we have received that day from Almighty God for which we are to return Thanks 2. What Sins we have that day committed running through every hour in thought word and deed for which we are to beg pardon 3. We are to resolve upon an amendment in every particular by the Grace of God After such strict Examination of all our Thoughts Desires Words and Works judging our selves that we be not judged of the Lord and Confessing our Sins in the bitterness of our Soul as the Church requires and taking also
driving out all those mighty Nations from Canaan and destroying them and giving their Land to the Children of Israel for a possession was it not for these abominable sins See the eightenth Chapter of Leviticus Lev. 18. whereafter variety of those sins rehearsed such as are not fit to be named amongst Christians but with horror and detestation of them it follows Verse 27. For all these abominations the Name God himself there gives to these loathsome sins have the Men of the Land done before you and the Land is defiled and therefore in the Verse following this defiled Land is said to have spewed out the Inhabitants thereof who defiled it In like manner the Destruction of the Shechemites the Death of Sampson of Amnon the Judgment of God upon the Three and twenty thousand of the Children of Israel 1 Cor. 10.8 who fell in one Day at Baal-Peor before they entered Canaan were they not for such Sins as these And for the like Sins even for one luxurious adulterous Act was not the whole Tribe of Benjamin cut off Judg. 20. except only Six hundred Men I might here add the remarkable Wars and Slaughters that suddenly followed upon David's Adultery as also the rending of the ten Tribes from Solomon as a Judgment for his being seduced to the Toleration of Idolatry by his exorbitant Lusts and unlawful Marriages and many more the like sad Examples even out of the Annals of our own and other neighbouring Countries And here also I might set down more at large God's particular Denunciations against such Sins by the Mouth of all his Prophets sometimes inflicting his great Judgments Plague Pestilence Famin Sword removing his Candlesticks c. But I think what is already said is enough to shew that these Sins of Uncleanness tho seeming most excusable and natural to Man are most abominable and loathsom in the sight of God Especially since by the new Contract that is made between us and our Lord we are become in a more peculiar manner Eph. 5. the Spouse of Christ and are therefore to keep our selves Chast and Holy We are become likewise by a particular and higher degree of Sanctification the Temples of the Holy Ghost 2 Cor. 6.19 and are therefore not sacrilegiously to violate 'em but to cleanse them from all Filthiness 2 Cor. 7.1 so perfecting that Holiness which becomes God's House for ever Ps 92.5 And this at our utmost Peril For these Temples saith St. Paul whoso defileth 1 Cor. 3.17 him will God eternally destroy And a great Moralist that lived at the same time with Saint Paul and probably also was made a Christian by him with some others of Nero's Houshold says in a manner the same thing according to Lactantius De Div. Instit Lib. 6. C. 25. The most agreeable Temple we can build for God is to consecrate him in our Hearts And therefore to build otherwise would be to ruin our selves to all Eternity which transcendently exceeds all temporal Punishments put together CHAP. IV. Of the Chastity of Marriage and the Purity of a single Life THus far concerning First The Impurity and Filthiness of the Sins of the Flesh with their Oppositeness to the Purity and Holiness of Almighty God and the defilement and dishonour they bring to the Persons that commit them And Secondly the severe Punishments and tremendous Judgments of Almighty God towards such Sins above others But I would not by any means be thought so to have censured in the beginning of this Discourse the present Age as if there were not many amongst the married Persons whom God hath reserved to himself even in our own Nation most inviolably constant to one another and that live strictly within the Bounds and Obligations of that honourable State And some also of the Unmarried that live single out of Choice not Necessity upon the account of Vertue and Religion not Licentiousness and Luxury And many also who after one Marriage abstain from a Second upon the same serious account as did those Widows in the Primitive times of Christianity 1 Tim. 5. who were for that very reason taken into the Charity and Service of the Church MARRIAGE Marriage is Honourable in all and the Bed undefiled with sin Eph. v. 32. So Honourable that St. Paul compares the Union of Man and Wife with that of Christ and his Church But yet doubtless conjugal Chastity hath many Degrees in it and in some is far more pure than in others More pure in those who for better performance of Holy Duties or in Times of Humiliation such as Lent Ember-Weeks c. before receiving the Blessed Sacrament and the like abstain and separate that they may give themselves to Fasting and Prayer So in the Old Testament Exod. 19.15 1 Sam. 21.4 before the descent of the Lord upon Mount Sinai the People were commanded three days Sanctification and not coming at their Wives Women kept from the Young Men for about three days and the Vessels of the Young Men Holy i. e. from their Wives And in times of more earnest Addresses to God this separation from Carnality was continually used amongst the Jews as appears from the Prophet Zechary Zech. 7.3 But Conjugal Chastity is still more pure in those who being separated for a longer time either upon the account of Sickness in one Party or by necessary absence of either of them about Worldly Affairs in Journeys Publick Employments Embassies or being taken Captive by an Enemy and the like yet both continue constant and faithful to one another and this perhaps for many years notwithstanding the many strong Temptations the world presents So in the Case of Divorcement or of a resolved Separation by consent many there are who take from hence an occasion of being more diligent in the Service of God and afterwards perhaps of removing themselves out of all danger of being ensnared and ruined by the Sollicitations of Sense And so likewise after Espousals some there have been tho' not many who according to the Transcendent Example of our Blessed Lady and her Espoused Husband St. Joseph have never proceeded any further but instead of Consummating the Marriage have transferred their Love and Affection to our Lord. So St. Austin treated with his Spouse and after having once vanquished himself and his exorbitantly Incontinent Desires of which himself so much complains and in his Confessions Laments so as to be content even without Marriage it self became a most Holy Bishop and one of the most Glorious Lights in the Church of God that ever the World saw since the times of our Saviour and his Apostles And in our own Nation King Edward commonly called the Saint lived together with his Queen a holy Virginal Life as Surius shews out of a very Ancient Manuscript As did also Henry the First Emperour Bolislaus the modest King of Poland Alphonsus II King of Castile Peter Vrceoli Duke of Venice with may others And St. Austin