Sermons on the Card, and Other DiscoursesLatimer, Hugh
Religion
Sermons on the Card, and Other Discourses
Latimer, Hugh
Church of England -- Sermons; Sermons, English -- 16th century
The second manner of killing is silence. By silence also is a great
number of christian men slain; which is on this fashion: although that
the father and mother, master and dame, of themselves be well disposed to
live according to the law of God, yet they may kill their children and
servants in suffering them to do evil before their own faces, and do not
use due correction according unto their offences. The master seeth his
servant or apprentice take more of his neighbour than the king's laws, or
the order of his faculty, doth admit him; or that he suffereth him to
take more of his neighbour than he himself would be content to pay, if he
were in like condition: thus doing, I say, such men kill willingly their
children and servants, and shall go to hell for so doing; but also their
fathers and mothers, masters and dames, shall bear them company for so
suffering them.
Wherefore I exhort all true christian men and women to give good example
unto your children and servants, and suffer not them by silence to
offend. Every man must be in his own house, according to St. Augustine's
mind, a bishop, not alonely giving good ensample, but teaching according
to it, rebuking and punishing vice; not suffering your children and
servants to forget the laws of God. You ought to see them have their
belief, to know the commandments of God, to keep their holy-days, not to
lose their time in idleness: if they do so, you shall all suffer pain for
it, if God be true of his saying, as there is no doubt thereof. And so
you may perceive that there be many a one that breaketh this card, "Thou
shalt not kill," and playeth therewith oftentime at the blind trump,
whereby they be no winners, but great losers. But who be those now-a-
days that can clear themselves of these manifest murders used to their
children and servants? I think not the contrary, but that many have
these two ways slain their own children unto their damnation; unless the
great mercy of God were ready to help them when they repent there-for.
Wherefore, considering that we be so prone and ready to continue in sin,
let us cast down ourselves with Mary Magdalene; and the more we bow down
with her toward Christ's feet, the more we shall be afraid to rise again
in sin; and the more we know and submit ourselves, the more we shall be
forgiven; and the less we know and submit ourselves, the less we shall be
forgiven; as appeareth by this example following:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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