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CHAP. IX. Of rebellious and disobedient Children to their Parents.
AGathias in his Booke of the Persian manners, reporteth this storie, That certaine Philosophers, going into Ae∣gypt, and finding there a promiscuous commixture of fathers and mothers with their daughters and sonnes, and a miserable neglect of children towards their pa∣rents; returned speedily into Greece, and in a certaine Citie there, finding the dead body of a man wanting buriall, they in compassion committed the same into the earth; the next day comming the same way againe, they found the same body digged out of the earth: which whilest they went about to bury the second time, a feare∣full spectrum appeared unto them, and forbad them to doe it, saying, That he was a man unworthy to be buried, because he had committed incest with his mother, and despised and contemned his father. This narration shew∣eth, that the very earth doth execrate and abhorre such unnaturall lust and disobedience.
La••terbius in his Booke of the discipline of children, reports a storie of a certaine young man, who had a father very old, that had bestowed upon him all his substance. This old man, being by the fault of age unmannerly at the table of his sonne, his sonne caused a woodden trough to be made for his father, to eate his meate in like a hogge: which when his sonnes young childe perceived, he asked his father for what use it should serve; his father answered, That it was for his Grandfather to eate his meate in; and (what saith the childe) must I provide the like for you when you are old: Where∣at his father being astonished threw away the trough, and ever after enter∣tained his old father with greater reverence and obedient respect.