Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	aaron_n	moses_n	reveal_v	77	3	10.4765	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A43998	Leviathan, or, The matter, forme, and power of a common wealth, ecclesiasticall and civil by Thomas Hobbes ...; Leviathan	Hobbes, Thomas, 1588-1679.	1651 (1651)	Wing H2246; ESTC R17253	438,804	412

people were obliged to take him for Gods Lieutenant longer than they beleeved that God spake unto him And therefore his authority notwithstanding the Covenant they made with God depended yet merely upon the opinion they had of his Sanctity and of the reality of his Conferences with God and the verity of his Miracles which opinion coming to change they were no more obliged to take any thing for the law of God which he propounded to them in Gods name We are therefore to consider what other ground there was of their obligation to obey him For it could not be the commandement of God that could oblige them because God spake not to them immediately but by the mediation of Moses himself And our Saviour saith of himself If I bear witnesse of my self my witnesse is not true much lesse if Moses bear witnesse of himselfe especially in a claim of Kingly power over Gods people ought his testimony to be received His authority therefore as the authority of all other Princes must be grounded on the Consent of the People and their Promise to obey him And so it was For the people Exod. 20. 18. when they saw the Thunderings and the Lightnings and the noyse of the Trumpet and the monntaine smoaking removed and stood a far off And they said unto Moses speak thou with us and we will hear but let not God speak with us lest we die Here was their promise of obedience and by this it was they obliged themselves to obey whatsoever he should deliver unto them for the Commandement of God And notwithstanding the Covenant constituteth a Sacerdotall Kingdome that is to say a Kingdome hereditary to Aaron yet that is to be understood of the succession after Moses should bee dead For whosoever ordereth and establisheth the Policy as first founder of a Common-wealth be it Monarchy Aristocracy or Democracy must needs have Soveraign Power over the people all the while he is doing of it And that Moses had that power all his own time is evidently affirmed in the Scripture First in the text last before cited because the people promised obedience not to Aaron but to him Secōdly Exod. 24. 1 2. And God said unto Moses Come up unto the Lord thou and Aaron Nadab and Abihu and seventy of the Elders of Israel And Moses alone shall come neer the Lord but they shall not come nigh neither shall the people goe up with him By which it is plain that Moses who was alone called up to God and not Aaron nor the other Priests nor the Seventy Elders nor the People who were forbidden to come up was alone he that represented to the Israelites the Person of God that is to say was their sole Soveraign under God And though afterwards it be said verse 9. Then went up Moses and Aaron Nadab and Abihu and seventy of the Elders of Israel and they saw the God of Israel and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of a saphire stone c. yet this was not till after Moses had been with God before and had brought to the people the words which God had said to him He onely went for the bnsinesse of the people the others as the Nobles of his retinue were admitted for honour to that speciall grace which was not allowed to the people which was as in the verse after appeareth to see God and live God laid not his hand upon them they saw God and did eat and drink that is did live but did not carry any commandement from him to the people Again it is every where said The Lord spake unto Moses as in all other occasions of Government so also in the ordering of the Ceremonies of Religion contained in the 25 26 27 28 29 30 and 31 Chapters of Exodus and throughout Leviticus to Aaron seldome The Calfe that Aaron made Moses threw into the fire Lastly the question of the Authority of Aaron by occasion of his and Miriams mutiny agaiust Moses was Numbers 12. judged by God himself for Moses So also in the question between Moses and the People who had the Right of Governing the People when Corah Dathan and Abiram and two hundred and fifty Princes of the Assembly gathered themselves together Numb 16. 3. against Moses and against Aaron and said unto them Ye take too much upon you seeing all the congregation are Holy every one of them and the Lord is amongst them why lift you up your selves above the congregation of the Lord God caused the Earth to swallow Corah Dathan and Abiram with their wives and children alive and consumed those two hundred and fifty Princes with fire Therefore neither Aaron nor the People nor any Aristocracy of the chief Princes of the People but Moses alone had next under God the Soveraignty over the Israelites And that not onely in causes of Civill Policy but also of Religion For Moses onely spake with God and therefore onely could tell the People what it was that God required at their hands No man upon pain of death might be so presumptuous as to approach the Mountain where God talked with Moses Thou shalt set bounds saith the Lord Exod. 19. 12. to the people round about and say Take heed to your selves that you goe not up into the Mount or touch the border of it whosoever toucheth the Mount shall surely be put to death And again verse 21. Goe down charge the people lest they break through unto the Lord to gaze Out of which we may conclude that whosoever in a Christian Common-wealth holdeth the place of Moses is the sole Messenger of God and Interpreter of his Commandements And according hereunto no man ought in the interpretation of the Scripture to proceed further then the bounds which are set by their severall Soveraigns For the Scriptures since God now speaketh in them are the Mount Sinai the bounds whereof are the Laws of them that represent Gods Person on Earth To look upon them and therein to behold the wondrous works of God and learn to fear him is allowed but to interpret them that is to pry into what God saith to him whom he appointeth to govern under him and make themselves Judges whether he govern as God commandeth him or not is to transgresse the bounds God hath set us and to gaze upon God irreverently There was no Prophet in the time of Moses nor pretender to the Spirit of God but such as Moses had approved and Authorized For there were in his time but Seventy men that are said to Prophecy by the Spirit of God and these were of all Moses his election concerning whom God said to Moses Numb 11. 16. Gather to mee Seventy of the Elders of Israel whom thou knowest to be the Elders of the People To these God imparted his Spirit but it was not a different Spirit from that of Moses for it is said verse 25. God came down in a cloud and took of the Spirit that was upon Moses

the Falling Sicknesse or that spoke any thing which they for want of understanding thought absurd As also of an Unclean person in a notorious degree they used to say he had an Unclean Spirit of a Dumbe man that he had a Dumbe Devill and of Iohn Baptist Math. 11. 18. for the singularity of his fasting that he had a Devill and of our Saviour because he said hee that keepeth his sayings should not see Death in aeternum Now we know thou hast a Devill Abraham is dead and the Prophets are dead And again because he said Iohn 7. 20. They went about to kill him the people answered Thou hast a Devill who goeth about to kill thee Whereby it is manifest that the Jewes had the same opinions concerning Phantasmes namely that they were not Phantasmes that is Idols of the braine but things reall and independent on the Fancy Which doctrine if it be not true why may some say did not our Saviour contradict it and teach the contrary nay why does he use on diverse occasions such forms of speech as seem to confirm it To this I answer that first where Christ saith A spirit hath not flesh and bone though hee shew that there be Spirits yet hee denies not that they are Bodies And where St. Paul saies We shall rise spirituall Bodies he acknowledgeth the nature of Spirits but that they are Bodily Spirits which is not difficult to understand For Air and many other things are Bodies though not Flesh and Bone or any other grosse body to bee discerned by the eye But when our Saviour speaketh to the Devill and commandeth him to go out of a man if by the Devill be meant a Disease as Phrenesy or Lunacy or a corporeal Spirit is not the speech improper can Diseases heare or can there be a corporeall Spirit in a Body of Flesh and Bone full already of vitall and animall Spirits Are there not therefore Spirits that neither have Bodies nor are meer Imaginations To the first I answer that the addressing of our Saviours command to the Madnesse or Lunacy he cureth is no more improper than was his rebuking of the Fever or of the Wind and Sea for neither do these hear Or than was the command of God to the Light to the Firmament to the Sunne and Starres when he commanded them to bee for they could not heare before they had a beeing But those speeches are not improper because they signifie the power of Gods Word no more therefore is it improper to command Madnesse or Lunacy under the appellation of Devils by which they were then commonly understood to depart out of a mans body To the second concerning their being Incorporeall I have not yet observed any place of Scripture from whence it can be gathered that any man was ever possessed with any other Corporeall Spirit but that of his owne by which his body is naturally moved Our Saviour immediately after the Holy Ghost descended upon him in the form of a Dove is said by St. Matthew Chapt. 4. 1. to have been led up by the Spirit into the Wildernesse and the same is recited Luke 4. 1. in these words Iesus being full of the Holy Ghost was led in the Spirit into the Wildernesse Whereby it is evident that by Spirit there is meant the Holy Ghost This cannot be interpreted for a Possession For Christ and the Holy Ghost are but one and the same substance which is no possession of one substance or body by another And whereas in the verses following he is said to have been taken up by the Devill into the Holy City and set upon a pinnacle of the Temple shall we conclude thence that hee was possessed of the Devill or carryed thither by violence And again carryed thence by the Devill into an exceeding high mountain who shewed him thence all the Kingdomes of the world Wherein wee are not to beleeve he was either possessed or forced by the Devill nor that any Mountaine is high enough according to the literall sense to shew him one whole Hemisphere What then can be the meaning of this place other than that he went of himself into the Wildernesse and that this carrying of him up and down from the Wildernesse to the City and from thence into a Mountain was a Vision Conformable whereunto is also the phrase of St. Luke that hee was led into the Wildernesse not by but in the Spirit whereas concerning His being Taken up into the Mountaine and unto the Pinnacle of the Temple hee speaketh as St. Matthew doth Which suiteth with the nature of a Vision Again where St. Luke sayes of Judas Iscariot that Satan entred into him and thereupon that he went and communed with the Chief Priests and Captaines how he might betray Christ unto them it may be answered that by the Entring of Satan that is the Enemy into him is meant the hostile and traiterours intention of selling his Lord and Master For as by the Holy Ghost is frequently in Scripture understood the Graces and good Inclinations given by the Holy Ghost so by the Entring of Satan may bee understood the wicked Cogitations and Designes of the Adversaries of Christ and his Disciples For as it is hard to say that the Devill was entred into Judas before he had any such hostile designe so it is impertinent to say he was first Christs Enemy in his heart and that the Devill entred into him afterwards Therefore the Entring of Satan and his Wicked Purpose was one and the same thing But if there be no Immateriall Spirit nor any Possession of mens bodies by any Spirit Corporeall it may again be asked why our Saviour and his Apostles did not teach the People so and in such cleer words as they might no more doubt thereof But such questions as these are more curious than necessary for a Christian mans Salvation Men may as well aske why Christ that could have given to all men Faith Piety and all manner of morall Vertues gave it to some onely and not to all and why he left the search of naturall Causes and Sciences to the naturall Reason and Industry of men and did not reveal it to all or any man supernaturally and many other such questions Of which neverthelesse there may be alledged probable and pious reasons For as God when he brought the Israelites into the Land of Promise did not secure them therein by subduing all the Nations round about them but left many of them as thornes in their sides to awaken from time to time their Piety and Industry so our Saviour in conducting us toward his heavenly Kingdome did not destroy all the difficulties of Naturall Questions but left them to exercise our Industry and Reason the Scope of his preaching being onely to shew us this plain and direct way to Salvation namely the beleef of this Article that he was the Christ the Son of the living God sent into the world to sacrifice himselfe for our Sins and