Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	action_n	good_a	sin_n	1,408	5	4.8951	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A64472	The new birth, or, Birth from above presented in foure sermons in Margarets Westminister, December 25 and January 15, 1653 and June 11, 1654 / by Edward Tharpe.	Tharpe, Edward.	1655 (1655)	Wing T838A; ESTC R26290	66,373	88

dirt and clay which will quickly fail them and lay their honour in the dust Though they have golden beginnings and prosperous and succesfull proceedings long and strong continuance yet these great bodies are mortall too they goe the same way as small ones doe onely they make a greater noise in their rise and fall They have their beginning and ending their infancy youth and age as those great Monarchies had prefigured in that great Image For God sets them their bounds as he doth to the sea which they cannot pass and saith to them as to that Hitherto shalt thou come and no further here will I stop thy proud waves But in this new Birth this Birth from above of which my Text treats we are begotten from above by a Father to an Inheritance immortall and undefiled which fades not away and to a Kingdom which cannot be shaken as all worldly Kingdomes are 6. In the 12. verse the Apostle shews the happy and blessed Ver. 12. condition of affliction patiently born they terminate and end in happyness In much suff●rance is ease and the Cross leads to the Crown Affliction and Blessedness do often meet in the same person an afflicted man is a blessed man if he despise not the chastening and correction of the Lord but patiently and willingly welcome it with the words of Jerem. It is my sorrow and I will bear it Blessed is the man c. The 13 14 15 16 verses set forth unto us the true Father of a false child The child is sin the father with some is in some controversis For as notorious and common Strumpets doe some times lay their Bastards at the Church door so there are some prophane and Atheistical persons which lay their sin and iniquity at heaven gates and would make God the author of sin Which the Apostle takes away in the four former mentioned verses Let no man when he is tempted say I am tempted of God for God tempts no man to evill neither is tempted But every man is tempted c. God is no wayes to be thought the Parent of such a base brat For as Fulgentius surely Deus non potest esse illius author cujus est ultor God cannot be the author of that which he is the revenger To make a hell and to cast into that hell stands not with the Nature Wisdome and Mercy of God This false and erroneous opinion the Apostle takes away in the 16 verse Erre not dear brethren We should be dear to one another though divided Dear and Brethren in affection though divided in opinion For It is a good and joyfull thing for c. But howsoever Psal 13 3. you erre in other things let not this damnable error so far possess you as to make God the author of sin Mistake not so far as to say Because God concurs in sin the action of sin he hath any hand in the evill of it Nor say If God would not have me sin why doth he not hinder me The action indeed is Gods because in him we live move and have our being But Acts 14. the evill of the action that is Sathans and our own The devill is the father and sin his own no other mother then our own lusts Indeed nothing is so truly ours as our sin which is evident enough by our cockering of it and our indulgence over it and by our lothness to part with it we dandle it and hug it and feed and foster it and cry with the Harlot Ne dividatur Let it not be divided let that live though said she although it be an eye-sore to God and a plague-sore to the soul and if we kill not sin in us then sin in us will kill us Yet many men will part from their souls rather than their sin How comes it else to pass that Hell hath so many souls if their sin was not dearer to them than their souls Man is the active author God the permitter and sufferer of sin God sustaines the motion of the will man he defiles and pollutes the act of willing God conforms and agrees to the action men to the pravity and deformity of the action As darknesse necessarily follows when the Sun withdraws his light and yet the Sun is not the cause of the darknesse but the absence of the light so when God withdraws his grace sin follows but not as an effect the cause but as a consequent to the Antecedent Therefore erre not my dear brethren God is so far from being the author of sin that he is the fountain and August originall of all graces and virtues Verse 17. Every good c. Nostra bona sunt Dei dona Our goods are from his goodness they are the enumerations and rayes of that Sun of Righteousness Then comes in the Text for from whence doth every good and perfect gift proceed but from the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the good will and pleasure of God which ●s the fountain and original of all Graces and goodness This is the Inference and Coherence of the words wherein if I have been too tedious and intrenched upon your patience If I have made too long and large an entry or porch to so small a house pardon my boldness my intent was to bring in my Text in order and method Let us now look into that house we all desire to be of and in Of his own will he begat us with the word of truth that we should be as the first fruits of his creatures With reflection therefore of your eyes to the 5th verse which is more remote especially to the 17th verse which is more near and to which indeed the words of my Text have relation Consider I pray you that of all those gifts and graces which God of his free love hath given to the children of men of all those evidences and testimonies of Gods good will and pleasure of all those divine expr●ssions of his goodness and mercy this of our New Birth or Birth from above is the greatest and chiefest Of our R●generation I say again or second Birth For man in his first birth Man born of a woman hath but a short time to live and Job 14. 1. is full of miserie His life poor man is not short and sweet but short and sharp though he hath want of daies yet he hath store of miseries And miserable he is not onely in regard of the calamities and sorrows he is born to but in regard of the sin and iniquity he is born in For being first ab immundo conceptus semine born of unclean seed and nursed in ● sinfull womb ubi prius incipit macula quam vita where he is stained and polluted before he be conceived or quickned How can that be clean which is born of a Woman I was born in iniquity saith David and in sin hath my mother conceived me As if h● Psalm 51. 5. had said True it is O Lord and I doe freely and