Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	absolute_a	act_n	act_v	19	3	6.8206	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A56381	An account of the nature and extent of the divine dominion & goodnesse especially as they refer to the Origenian hypothesis concerning the preexistence of souls together with a special account of the vanity and groundlesness of the hypothesis it self : being a second letter written to his much honoured friend and kinsman, Mr. Nath. Bisbie / by Sam. Parker ...	Parker, Samuel, 1640-1688.	1666 (1666)	Wing P454; ESTC R22702	53,301	116

AN ACCOUNT OF THE NATURE and EXTENT OF THE DIVINE DOMINION GOODNESSE Especially as they refer to the ORIGENIAN HYPOTHESIS Concerning the Preexistence of Souls TOGETHER With a special Account of the vanity and groundlesness of the Hypothesis it self Being a second Letter Written to his much Honoured Friend and Kinsman Mr. Nath. Bisbie By SAM PARKER A. M. C. T. And Fellow of the Royal Society OXFORD Printed by W. Hall for R. Davis 1666. Imprimatur ROBERTUS SAY VICE-CANCELLARIUS OXON SIR I Have now satisfied and perhaps surpriz'd you too for I question not but these Papers will more prevent then answer your expectations For when you remitted me to my own leasure to satisfie your demands the true import of a Friends desires I am confident you believed I would as well use as acknowledge your Favour and I really thought my next to you should have been a Letter of thanks for your forbearance and not a final discharge of my Obligations But being shortly to bid adieu to my Retirements here and fearing I shall no where else enjoy so much Privacie and Leasure I could not satisfie my self till I had gratified your expectations and put my selfe past all hazard of disobeying your Commands For methinks Sir nothing concerns me so much as those designes that aspire to serve my dearest But my Business is not to complement and I foresee how exceedingly I shall be straightned in time and therefore I must without the Ceremony of any farther Preface immediately apply my self to the serious discharge of my Taske which I shall following the method your injunctions have prescribed me perform in three parts 1. By giving you an account of the true Nature and Extent of Gods Dominion 2. By laying down a right Notion of his Goodness 3. By proving the Groundlesness and Vanity of the Origenian Hypothesis concerning the Preexistence of Souls Of each in their order OF THE NATURE and EXTENT OF Gods Dominion BY Gods Dominion I mean that Sovereigne Right and Authority residing in Him in reference to his Creatures or that Power and Prerogative which he has to dispose of them according to his own good-will and pleasure and this is indifferently expressed by these three terms of Ius Potestas and Dominium The minute and precise differences whereof seems to lye herein that Ius nakedly signifies a right or freedom to act whereas the two latter imply together with this a power or strength of acting And then that Power which God hath in himself antecedently to the Existence of any Created Being is in rigidness and propriety of speech call'd Potestas but that which he has and exercises since the Creation Dominium But not to insist upon such Niceties they all promiscuously import Dominion and Sovereignty Of which many definitions have been attempted but none of them seem to me more accurate and comprehensive then Mr. Hobs's when he defines it to be Libertas propriis facultatibus secundum rectam rationem utendi Though what Exercises of Power are consistent with right Reason and what not I shall discourse anon But if you fancy short definitions 't is the lawful use of Power and so implies two things first it supposes a power or strength to Act and then it imports the legitimate extent and use of it Now as for the Extent of this Power 't is Infinite and Unconfined as well as all the rest of the Divine Perfections and therefore it warrants God to do any thing that will comply with the Reputation of his other Attributes Whence 't is that the Beings and Subsistencies of all things are entirely at his disposal It was at his choice whether he would ever or never create any thing and it is still in his Power either to continue the frame of things in the same state they are in or to erect a new one and that better or worse then the present and any thing else that is not inconsistent with the perfection of his Nature and Attributes But for a fuller Evidence hereof it is necessary to observe that there is a twofold acceptation of Right either more loose when it signifies a License Freedom to do any thing or more restrained when it signifies an Obligation to do any thing The difference between them is this that the former signifies Liberty and the latter Duty that is extended to any thing that is not unlawful this only extends to things due and requir'd by Justice and Equity For instance there is a Right to demand Debts and a Right to pay them the former may be done because no equity forbids it but the latter must be done because Justice requires it Upon this account to give you this Notion by the way every man is bound to make good his Promises though not his Threatnings and Punishments because promises make us Debtors but in reference to threatned Penalties we are Creditors for the Offendor owes the punishment to the person Offended But though every man be bound to pay his Debts yet he is not bound to demand them for he has a Right to Relax as well as Challenge his due The Rewards therefore consequent upon promises being Debts due from me I am bound by the first sort of Right to pay them but the Penalties consequent upon Threatnings being Debts owing to me I am permitted by the second sort of Right either to demand or remit them And thus there is a twofold Right in God the one whereof referres to his Sovereignty which is nothing but an absolute Liberty to act or not to act as Himself shall see cause the other to his Justice and Holiness whereby God is obliged to act suitably to the Essential Rules of Justice and Equity For the Divine Justice is exercised only about things Good and Just but his Dominion about all things that are not Evil or Unjust things therefore being the Objects of Gods Dominion not because they are Just but because they are not Unjust it is extended to every thing that is not contrary to Justice i. e. to every thing that is not Evil. But I shall wave all general considerations and onely consider the Extent of the Divine Prerogative in reference to Mankind not onely because 't is most pertinent to our present designe but also because what I shall discourse concerning the Extent and Latitude of Gods Power over Men may by Analogy of Reason be applied to all other Creatures endued with Sense and Perception Now in Treating of this matter proposed I shall onely consider 1. What God can do 2. What he can not do 1. First Then God has Power to take back from us all or part of what he has given us i. e. He can either utterly destroy our Beings or take from us so many Comforts of life and inflict upon us so many Calamities as shall leave us in a condition only preferable to that of Non-Existence for all that we have to render our conditions more valuable then not Being is the free Product of the

more eligible then Vice and Misery and therefore if men are able to discern and choose that which is best their Happiness and Misery depend upon their own wills and their Portion whether good or bad is the result of their own choice and certainly they that can be vertuous and happy if they will are in a fair capacity of being so From hence it follows that the mind and rational part of man is Superior and Predominant not only endued with Power but also invested with Authority to Govern the inferiour and brutish part which is of a slavish and servile nature and made to obey Reason is uppermost and has the bridle in its own hands and is strong enough to manage the wildest and most untractable Passions There 's no appetite within us uncontroulable no inclinations so strong and fatal which reason cannot master natural Propensities can only tempt but not command our Souls they may encline but cannot force them and our minds are never vanquished but when they betray themselves Briefly none of the charms of Concupiscence are so powerful and irresistible but that Wisdom and Discretion can easily dissolve and disenchant them The Truth and Reality whereof I thus Argue Either the rational Part of man is able to command the lower Appetites or 't is not if it is then is he sufficiently able to live well and happily because Vertue and Happiness are obtain'd by living up to Reason and being conducted by its Laws and measures and therefore if our superiour Powers are able to give check and controule to our brutish Lusts and Passions 't is in our own Power to attain to vertue happiness But if the Superior part be not strong enough to Govern the Inferiour it destroys the very Being and Existence of Good and Evil and renders mankind utterly uncapable of Goodnesse and Morality For 1. our Irrational faculties are unanimously acknowledged to be uncapable of Moral goodness because they are acted purely by a necessity of Nature and their Exertions like the Appetites of Brutes and the Motions of Artificial Engines result meerly from the Mechanical Powers of Matter And hence 't is that our Imperate Actions i.e. those that do not issue immediately from the Will it self but are exerted at its command by some of the inferiour faculties that owe it subjection are devoid of all moral Capacities as considered abstractedly in themselves or as proceeding from their immediate Cause and without respect to the wills Authority because when so considered they are not free and voluntary and therefore their being Morally good or evil is entirely derived from the Will because they act only in obedience to its Commands Nor 2. would our Rational faculties in this case be capable of Morality as being fatally determined by the stronger and irresistible motions of Lust and Passion But the Actions that proceed meerly from force and forreign Violence are of all others least capable of being moral because they do not only not issue from a free and self-determining Principle which is the greatest and most necessary foundation of all Morality but also because they are not at all determined from their own Principle but are forced thence barely by the Power of an exterior Agent Besides this the moral Goodness our Superior faculties are capable of would consist in their Commanding and Governing the Inferiour but if they are not able to master and rule them they cannot be supposed to be enjoyn'd to governe them because nothing can be obliged to impossibilities and therefore if our Superior Powers are commanded to govern the Inferiour they must have strength enough to do it Wherefore howsoever fatal and boisterous our Bruitist propensions are if there be any such thing as Religion and Moral goodness in the world they must be subject to the command and discipline of our Superior and Governing faculties From all which 't is evident by a plain and undeniable deduction that mankind notwithstanding the force of their brutish Inclinations is placed in a fair capacity of living well happily which utterly destroys all the forementioned Arguments alleadged from this Phaenomenon of Providence on the behalf of Preexistence As for the other part of their Argument taken from the customary Vices and Impieties of the World viz. seeing that Custome and Education have a great influence upon the manners of men to make them good or bad as also that the greatest part of the world has been always over-run with all manner of lust and barbarity for God to send an Immaculate Soul into an habitation into such parts of the Earth where reigns nothing but Vice and Wickedness by which she cannot fail without a Miracle to be over-born is to betray his own ofspring unto unavoidable Misery 'T is an objection sets too mean a value upon humane Nature and supposes mankind no better then Mushrooms as if all men were but so many Engines moved by the wheels of Custome and had not faculties within them able to discern of the good and evil of Customes as well as of other things I confess custome has acquired great Power and Authority over the life of Man because the lives of most men are disposed of by chance and casual Principles they pursue those things with which custome presents their Fancies without ever deliberating of their Goodness and Decency You know who has Pictured mankind comming into the World upon Hobby-horses and truly Sir the Emblem would perhaps have been as true if he had represented most of them going out so Seneca long since complain'd that the World was not govern'd so much by Reason as by Custome Men accounting that most Honest which is most in Practise and Error when it becomes Publick becomes Truth Custome is almost every where so confident as to out-face Reason and charge it of singularity as indeed the Wisest men are the greatest Rebels to her Usurped Empire whilst she rides upon the shoulders of the People who are almost universally not only her Slaves but her Idolaters For the rude and vulgar sort of people every where judge of things barely by their conformity to the Modes and Fashions of their own Country and esteem all forreign Customes and Usages inept and barbarous purely for their disagreement with their own Domestick manners and therefore I account the Boors of Attica and the common people of Greece in its most refined age not less barbarous then the wild and unpolish'd Scythian because they were equally Idiotical and lived by no other Rule then Prescription preferring the Customes of Greece as the Standard of Decency and judging of the goodness of things by their Correspondence with the Manners and Fashions of their own Country and condemning all strange and forreign usages of barbarity because they agreed not with the Municipial laws and customes of the Town they lived in But the plain and evident Reason of all this is because the Idiotical sort of Mankind are Fools and live below the dignity of their Natures For certainly