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	necessary_a	will_n	2,167	5	7.9150	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A66875	The reasonablenes of scripture-beleif a discourse giving some account of those rational grounds upon which the Bible is received as the word of God / written by Sir Charles Wolseley ...	Wolseley, Charles, Sir, 1630?-1714.	1672 (1672)	Wing W3313; ESTC R235829	198,284	556

the Whole And 't is as true that his Rule no way destroys the freedom of mans will Nor is the world subjected to any such thing as a Stoical Fate from any necessary connection of causes but all the actions of men proceed from the free choice and determinations of their own breasts Every mans own Will being the true cause of his own doings Thus much may serve to silence and shame all the ignorant doubts and profane denials of providence to assure men there is a God that Rule 's in the earth and to justifie the exercise of a supreme ' Dominion over the world Upon the truth of which the validity of all Divine Laws must necessarily depend Such who in the third place admit the being of God of Providence and Religion but reject the Christian-religion and consequently the Bible as not true and close with some other in opposition to it against those the whole of this discourse will chiefly tend If the Divine Authority of the Bible be sufficiently made good and the Scriptures proved in trueth to be what themselves tell us they are Laws sent us from God by which he will Rule and judge the world two things will result from it first All other Religions but the Christian will thereby appear to be false and fictitious Secondly Such who have embraced the Christian Profession will be abundantly confirmed in the verity thereof freed from all such doubts as may arise about it and be ascertained of the truth of those grounds upon which it is established In the prosecution of this matter when we deal with Antiscriptural men such as pay no homage at all to the Bible nor yield any obedience to its Authority two things are to be avoided and ought not to be insisted on in order to their confutation First 'T is not a reasonable step towards it to say the Scriptures are the Principle upon which our Religion is built and therefore ought to be granted to us Because in every particular Science some Principles must be granted as the Substratum without which it cannot be upheld and by a denial of which the being of it is subverted This unwary demand is the ready way to six every man in his own profession whatever it be and to prevent the most important Discourse of Religion amongst all such who have already embraced any Religion for there is no Religion without some prime Principles upon which 't is erected and by the grant of which it will be established And as we are sure 't will be equally expected so there is no better ground upon which it can be denyed Nor no less reason why we should admit the principles of other mens Religion then they grant ours And if so we shall soon come to a full point in all our debates about different Religions To such who have already closed with the Christian-profession this holds good And he that admits not the Scriptures as the first Principle and Rule of all discourse upon any internal point of the Christian-Religion is not to be disputed with Because in disowning that principle he destroys the being of the Religion he is contending about and subverts the whole by the manner of his disputing about a part But when we deal with men out of the Church and Enemies to it and the doubt is about the Scripture it self we cannot otherwise defend it then by admitting it a matter Debateable and indeavouring its justification upon principles common to us both and such rational grounds as carry in them the greatest aptness to convince such opponents 'T is not to be denied but that in all Rational enquiries after truth and all humane-debates there must be some common maxims and principles acknowledged on all sides without which there can be no due measures of any discourse nor any Standard by which a man can proceed either to satisfy himself or convince another and 't will be utterly impossible ever to come to a rational end of any debate whatever For If one thing be to be proved as it must be where things are in controversy by another and every thing may be still denied we must prove in infinitum He that opposeth needs nothing to help him but a bare Negative and he that is to prove will be lost in an endless circle Some principles therefore there are which govern all mens thoughts and discourses as things granted by them and are of absolute necessity to the rational conduct of the World And they are of two sorts First Such as are in themselves so obviously true to our Senses and Reason that they gain an Universal Assent and are approved by the common Vote of Mankind These are such things as no man can be supposed to deny if he would no more then he can deny himself to be Reasonable and do discover to us the truth of the rational faculty by the natural Emanation of which we fix upon many positions as undoubtedly true and beyond all question or dispute and from thence measure out the truth of all other things Therefore Aristotle says that in all acquisition of knowledg there is a proceeding from premisses known and agreed to conclusions that before were not known nor agreed These first principles are secured by the innate rectitude of the rational faculty These prove themselves by their consonancy to the rational Nature and cannot be otherwise proved because they are the ground and foundation of all other proof And of these 't is true what the Schools say A posteriori possunt manifestari non per aliquid prius probari Whatever knowledge we find attained to amongst Mankind 't is deduced from these first principles and is a Science subalternated to them 'T is from hence that all thoughts and debates are steered to some end and guided to some conclusion These principles are not to be confined to any enumeration being of equal extent with the rational capacity it self and are occasionally produced by our reason according to the various objects 't is conversant about Nor can any other Character be given of them but that they are such genuine Issues of Reason as become self-evident Maximes to the universal Reason Secondly There are acquired principles amongst mankind which are taken as granted truths and proceeded upon as such that are not of this first nature These secondary principles lye more remote from the first view of our reason and are discovered by a chain of Inductions and our assent to them proceeds from an Industrious exercise of reason by which we come at length to acknowledg their verity as agreeing to that idaa of truth we find seated in the rational Nature and corresponding to those primary dictates of Reason and equally true with them These things men accidentally make principles to themselves and laying them aside from debate as things granted and agreed to proceed to superstruct other notions and principles upon them such principles as these in the pursuit whereof mankind doth greatly differ and often mistake

of Imposture Nor is it any way reasonable to think That such who designed to Personate the Holy Ghost in writing a Book should chuse to compose it in such a prophetick way and so positively and plainly deliver themselves about so many future events Indeed about most of the great things that have come to pass amongst Man-kind For the first miscarriage in that kind a palpable mistake in any one particular must needs ruine the credit of the Whole No man can believe that God can lie or that an Infinite Knowledge can ever give a wrong Divination about what is to come He therefore that personates the Holy Ghost in such a foreknowledge of things must be sure never to miss or else resolve to take the shame of his own Imposture That in the Heathen-World there have been great pretentions to a fore-knowledge of things is not to be doubted But upon very different terms to what we find of that kind in the Bible First Many things pretended to therein in a prophetical way were such as might humanely be fore-seen and were only the regular Consequents of some natural and then extant though more remote and less visible Causes The first Discoverers of many secret workings in Nature might upon that account have soon arrived to a great prophetical Credit Thales who first amongst the Heathens foresaw an Eclipse of the Sun might easily have passed for an eminent Prophet before the knowledge of its natural cause grew common 2dly The Heathen Predictions were generally clothed with Expressions so enigmatical and so unintelligible as in truth render'd them Problems rather than Prophesies They seemed to be framed more to confound and amuse than to inform or satisfie and to be chiefly calculated to abuse the weaker part of the World who are apt to adore what they least understand and to suppose some extraordinary Matter to be wrapt up in all such clouded Expressions According to that of Lucretius Omnia enim stolidi magis admirantut amantque Inversis quae sub verbis latitantia cernunt Thirdly Their oraculous Divinations of future things were for the most part so delivered that they had divers Aspects carryed in them divers intricate Senses manifold Ambiguities And to secure their Credit were made capable of divers and those contrary Interpretations Which made the Heathens themselves call their great Oracle at Delphos 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Thwarter or Crooked-speaker Fourthly Many of their plainest and most intelligible Predictions have been consequently found to be false and mistaken and others of them have had a direct tendency to a perfect subversion of their own Religion and to establish the truth of the Bible so 't was when the Oracle of Apollo which we find repeated by Porphiry declared that All other Godds were but Airy Spirits and that the God of the Hebrews was alone to be worshipped Which Direction had it been followed had put a final end to all their own Religion So 't was when the Sybills prophesied so fully of the coming of Christ which we find repeated out of their Works in the 4th Eglogue of Virgil. We deny not but that for some secret and to us unknown ends God who as the Heathens generally acknowledge could onely do it for they still ascribed it even Porphiry himself unto their Godds might and did sometimes reveal some future events which no other way could be known as he did the death of Saul and his Son at Endor to the Devil or to others which they might communicate But nothing that ever was extant in that kind can be any way put in ballance with that Prophetick Spirit we find in the Bible 'T is much in this case as 't was in the business of Miracles The Heathen-world were filled with Pretensions both wayes Some of them real and true but most generally fictitious and false And when true both the Miracles and the Prophesies from whence we derive a proof of the Bible have been so differently circumstanced and there is such a superior eminency and lustre in the one as renders the other no Objection at all in this case Here we have clear plain and positive predictions of most of the greatest things that have happened Predictions of such things as could have no dependance upon any natural cause then extant when they were made Such as must needs have their rise from the unbounded Will of God or the free choice of men A multitude of such Predictions with marvalous variety and great exactness and particularity concerning Persons and Things in all Ages and throughout a constant and un-erring Success without a Failure in a Tittle And the accomplishment and truth of the most of them recorded in the general Story of the World Who but God himself can we suppose could pronounce with such a positive certainty upon all future events Not to foretell once or a second time what shall be here or there but to speak with a positive prophetick determination about all the Great Things that were to happen and write of the future state of the World as men write Histories of Ages past And to have things alwayes rightly come to pass Never to mistake Constantly to give right Divination This is singly the property of God Nor can any other be reasonably though the Author of such a Prophetical Book but He that grasps all Ages with an Infinite Knowledge spans all Times and Seasons from whom nothing can be concealed and who with the saine Infinite Eye equally beholds all things past present and to come To conclude this Matter If the supposition of some Revelation in the general be reasonable If it be not fit to believe that God should wholly leave the World to the conduct of Nature which hath been largely made to appear If then we find a Book that is of all others the most Ancient contains the most Primitive notions of things and from which the earlyest Authors as from the great Fountain and Spring-head of all Divine Learning and Knowledge appear to have drawn out much of what they have writ That gives us the most punctual account of the Worlds Original With an exact Historical Narrative of all the great Successive Revolutions of it long before any other Writers were extant with such an adjustment of Times all along that without it no certain Knowledge can be attain'd in Chronology and the study of it would become more intricate than a Labyrinth If we find a Book written by several Men of several Qualities Conditions and Interests in several distant Ages with wonderful variety both for Matter and Manner promoting by an unparallel'd agreement with it self one and the same Design and that the most excellent in the judgment of every mans own Reason that can descend from Heaven or be embraced by men terminating all in the Glory of God and Man's utmost Happiness A Book leading us to the farthest confines of all natural Truths our own Reasons comprehend and approve and revealing such supernatural Truths to