By God's commandment our parents are in our charge, for by nature
we are in theirs. Since, as St. Paul saith, it is not the
children's part to provide for the parents but the parents' to
provide for the children. Provide, I mean, conveniently--good
learning or good occupations to get their living by, with truth
and the favour of God--but not to make provision for them of such
manner of living as they should live the worse toward God for. But
rather, if they see by their manner that too much would make them
wicked, the father should then give them a great deal less. But
although nature put not the parents in the children's charge, yet
not only God commandeth but the order of nature compelleth, that
the children should both in reverent behaviour honour their father
and mother, and also in all their necessity maintain them. And
yet, as much as God and nature both bind us to the sustenance of
our father, his need may be so little (though it be somewhat) and
another man's so great, that both nature and God also would that I
should, in such unequal need, relieve that urgent necessity of a
stranger--yea, my foe, and God's enemy too, the very Turk or
Saracen--before a little need, and unlikely to do great harm, in
my father and my mother too. For so ought they both twain
themselves to be well content that I should.
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