Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	actual_a	effect_n	sin_n	1,714	5	6.4016	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A58817	A sermon preached before the Right Honourable the Lord Mayor, aldermen, and citizens of London at the church of St. Mary le Bow, September the second, 1686 : being the anniversary fast for the dreadful fire in the year 1666 / by John Scott ...	Scott, John, 1639-1695.	1686 (1686)	Wing S2071; ESTC R34059	13,048	34

are inflicted on us by God as the condign Punishments of our Rebellions against him and these are such as proceed not from any necessary causality in the sinful actions themselves but are wholly owing to the Providence of Heaven which either inflicts them immediately upon us or else disposes second Causes contrary to their natural tendency to come to the production of them such were the Drowning of the World the Burning of Sodom and Gomorrha the Judgement of Corah Dathan and Abiram and sundry other such like mentioned in the Scripture And though in sundry of those Judgements which God inflicts upon sinful men his hand doth not so visibly appear as it did in those yet sundry of them are impressed with such visible Characters of the Divine Displeasure that we have all the reason in the World to conclude them to be the immediate effects of it As when we see some great and unexpected Calamity befal a Sinner in the very commission of a wicked Action or when he is punished in kind and the Judgement inflicted on him bears an exact correspondence with his Sin or when upon the commission of some notorious Villany some strange and extraordinary evil befals him in these and such like cases although it 's possible they may be the effects of some casual concurrence of second Causes yet there being such plain indications of designed Punishment in them it would be very unreasonable to attribute them to a mere blind and undesigning Chance And therefore although on the one hand it argues an uncharitable and superstitious mind to attribute every calamity of our Brother to the Righteous Judgement and Displeasure of God yet on the other hand it 's no less an argument of a stupid wretchless Soul to attribute those Evils to chance on which there are such apparent symptoms of the Divine Displeasure And though there is no doubt but many of those evil Events that befal us do merely result from the established course and order of necessary Causes yet there is no man that owns either a Providence or the truth of Scripture but must readily acknowledge that in this established course of things God very often interposes and for the rewarding of good and punishing of bad men so varies the courses of these secondary Causes as to produce good and evil by them contrary to their natural series and tendencies For should he have limited himself to the Laws of Nature and resolved to keep things on for ever in one fatal unvariable course of motion he must have tyed up his hands from rewarding and punishing which are the principal acts of his governing Providence and consequently all his promises and threats of temporal Blessings and Judgments must have been perfectly null and insignificant This therefore must be acknowledged by all that have any sense of God and Religion That many of those Evils under which we suffer are the just Judgments of God in retribution for our Folly and Wickedness But I see I must hasten 3. And lastly many of those Evils and Calamities we indure are inflicted as necessary Antidotes against Sin For certainly considering the degenerate state of Humane Nature the perverseness and disingenuity of the generality of mankind Afflictions and Calamities are as necessary to keep us within the bounds of Sobriety as Chains and Whips are to tame Madmen And should the great Governour of the World still indulge to us our wills and accommodate all Events to our desires we should grow so extravagantly insolent that 't would be impossible to keep us within any bounds or compass and therefore in charity to us he is many times forced to cross us and to inflict less Evils on us to prevent greater He sees that if he should gratifie our fond Desires 't would be a cruel kindness to us and hurt us more than ever it would benefit us 't would damp our Piety or carnalize our Spirits swell our Pride or pamper our Luxury give such a loose to our extravagant Passions as would in the end render us far more miserable than the want of what we desire can do And therefore in mere pity to us instead of giving us the good we ask for he sometimes inflicts the contrary evil and as Physicians sometimes prick a Vein in the Arm to prevent the suffocation of the Heart so God many times afflicts us to preserve us diseases our Bodies to Antidote or Cure our Souls So that though those Evils which God inflicts upon us are not always intended for Punishments of our Sin but sometimes for Preservatives against it yet in this case as well as the other 't is Sin that is the cause of it 't is this that makes the evil necessary and obliges God in mercy to inflict it upon us He knows the Sin will injure us much more than the evil he prescribes to prevent it and therefore being much more sollicitous for our safety than our ease he chooses rather to make us smart than to suffer us to perish But if it were not for Sin which is the worst of Diseases he would have no need to Antidote us with Affliction nor doth he so much delight to grieve the Children of Men as to afflict them for Afflictions sake So that were it not for our Sin either actual or in prospect we may be sure he would neither punish nor afflict us Thus Sin you see is the common Cause of Evil the fruitful Womb of all kinds of Mischief for I doubt not but to one of these three Heads most of the Miseries of Mankind may be reduced that they are either the natural Effects the just Punishments or the necessary Preservatives of Sin Hence therefore let us learn under all our Calamities to acknowledge our Sins to be the cause of them to trace up our Evils to their Fountain head which we shall find is in our own Bosoms From hence spring all those wasting Wars those sweeping Plagues those devouring Fires that make such devastations in the World from hence are laid those trains of Wild Fire that slaughter our Friends blow up our Houses and scatter so many Ruines round about us O! would to God we would once be sensible of it that we would every one smite upon his own Thigh and cry out Lord what have I done what sparks have I added to the common flame what guilts have I contributed towards the filling up the measure of England's Iniquities But alas hitherto we have generally taken a quite contrary course to this When God's Judgements are upon us we confess that Sin is the cause of them indeed but not ours by any means 'T is the Sin of the City crys the Country 't is the Sin of the Court crys the City 't is the Sin of this Party crys one 't is the Sin of t'other Party crys another Thus the Judgements of God are sent from Tithing to Tithing and no Body will own them though they call us all Fathers Well Sirs we shall one Day find God