Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	according_a	grace_n	work_n	1,598	5	6.0605	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A62870	Præcursor, or, A forerunner to a large review of the dispute concerning infant-baptism wherein many things both doctrinall and personal are cleared, about which Mr. Richard Baxter, in a book mock-titled Plain Scripture-proof of infants church-membership and baptism hath darkned the truth / by John Tomes.	Tombes, John, 1603?-1676.	1652 (1652)	Wing T1812; ESTC R27540	101,567	110

more was said then It is a meere Calumny that he saith I chose out the weakest arguments or urged some that were strong in a way of my own and then triumphed and answered as weakely in my Sermons To my best understanding I chose out the best arguments I found in Mr. M. Mr. G. Dr. H. M. Drew Mr. Blake Mr. Cobbet and some others and that for the most partin their own words which that I might not mistake I read in the pulpit therefore what ever my answers were I am sure it is an untruth that I chose out the weakest arguments and urged some that were strong in a way of my own When I threatned Mr. B. with the danger he went in or opposing me unlesse it were from God for opposing truth I know not and therefore take this supposed threatning of mine to be either his or his tale-tellers fiction SECT XVII The grosse absurdities to which Mr. B. vaunted I was driven in the dispute were not so as he imagined PAge 207. He makes a catalogue of my absurdities at the dispute to which being the chief thing he charged me with in the Epistle to the people of Kederminster I answer The first and second will be shewed to be no absurdities in examining the first part of his book chap. 6. The third is no absurdity understanding it of visible membership by profession of their own in which notion I said in the dispute I understood visible Church-membership as commonly Protestant Divines do Upon what occasion the fourth and many other of them were spoken by me if they were spoken by me I cannot remember nor what limitations or explications I then used but this I conceive was my meaning that infants of the Jewes were not visible Church-members in the wildernesse in that manner they were when they had circumcision that is by their visible particular note or mark and yet then they were visible in the lump the whole congregation being then Gods visible Church in which sense they were then visible and so the women too who were not circumcised And when I said no infant can be said to be a visible Church-member without some act of his own I meant it of visibility according to the note of visibility in the Christian Church Which things being rightly understood there was neither absurdity nor contradiction in my speeches nor any thing against conscience nor deserving such derision as was in Mr. B. and his collegues though perhaps through distraction of thoughts chiefely occasioned by Mr. Bs. concealing the notion in which he used the terme visible which I often in vain assayed to understand from him or forgetfulnesse or scantnesse of words I did not expresse my self clearly This is answer sufficient about the fourth fifth sixth seventh eighth nineth sixteenth pretended absurdities The tenth a candid man would have conceived rather to have been lapsum linguae a flip of speech then errorem mentis a fault of mind and that however a mistake might slip from me a thing very incident to the most learned in the heat of dispute yea sometimes in preaching conference and writing yet I meant visibility to be the adjunct and the persons visible to be the subject The eleventh twelfth thirteenth I conceive no absurdities the Church-visibility of infants then being from that imperfect Church-frame which was to continue onely till Christ came and was clogged with many burdens which by Christs coming all were mercifully freed from as to go up to Jerusalem thrice a year c. without any losse of mercy to infants though it were for a time a mercy to them which will be morefully cleared God assisting in answering Mr. Bs. argument p. 1. chap. 6. The fourteenth is no absurdity as I then to my best remembrance expressed it though Mr. Bs. juvenility thought fit to make sport with it that the elect people of the Jews were natural not as Mr. B. sets it down naturally that is according to nature in that they were descended from Abraham the roote of the Church of believers by natural generation and so natural branches yet not by nature that is natural abilities or works of their own but by grace as the efficient cause Rom 11. ver 5 6. To conceive it the olive there notes a race of men who were the Church of believers which because after Abraham the roote it was first in the Jewish Nation is called their own olive ver 24. Of which Abraham is ver 16 18. made the roote bearing two sorts of branches some ingraffed who were the Gentile believers some natural the Jewes and he is a roote under a double habitude one as a natural Father and another as Father of believers Both sorts of branches are by the Apostle made to stand in Abraham the roote as branches of the Church of believers or the invisible the one natural in that they were not proselyted or ingraffed but came of Abraham by natural generation the other proselyted or ingraffed by believing 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 besides the natural way of descent from Abraham yet both united in Abraham the common roote of believers and in the olive-tree the Church of believers as particular branches thereof yet neither by nature that is by vertue of natural generation as the Apostle determines Rom. 9. 8. but by election of grace Rom. 11. 5 6. And whereas Mr. B. tells me Rom. 11. 24. sayes both he is mistaken For 1. it is not said that any was a branch of the roote Abraham by nature but that the ingraffed branches were antecedently to their ingraffing in the olive wild by nature nor is it said of the branches from the roote that are called natural that they were branches in the true olive by nature as Mr. B. would have it to prove them of the visible Church by nature but that they were branches of that olive or race of men who were not wilde by nature that is Gentiles bringing no fruit to God but of that olive which was descended from Abraham by natural generation which was the Church of God till broken off 2. Whereas the translation turnes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ver 21 24. by natural and once ver 24. by nature yet it is the same terme 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in all 3. It is not true that the Jewes in the translation of ver 24. are said to be branches by nature And for the fifteenth absurdity it is no absurdity they are called natural onely in respect of their descent as men from Abraham but not as branches in the olive-tree And this is clear For the ingraffed branches can be said to be no otherwise 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 besides nature but in that they were not descended from Abraham by natural generation and therefore on the contrary the Jews are natural branches not as believers but as men descended from Abraham by natural generaration The seventeenth absurdity is a relation of a speech of mine that Mr. B. cannot finde one Author expounding 1