Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	adam_n	nature_n	sin_n	2,126	5	5.5892	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A63684	Christ's yoke an easy yoke, and yet the gate to heaven a strait gate in two excellent sermons, well worthy the serious perusal of the strictest professors / by a learned and reverend divine.	Taylor, Jeremy, 1613-1667.; Hove, Frederick Hendrick van, 1628?-1698.	1675 (1675)	Wing T295; ESTC R38275	26,780	106

Woman taken in Adltery or have been discontented at the Doctors of the Law for being strict and severe exactors of the Law of God at the people's hands or check'd them for observing the innocent customs of their Nation and Tradition of their fore-Fathers Since all these acts were Pious or Just or Charitable or Religious or Prosecutions of some part or other of their Duty The several reasons of these reprehensions our Blessed Saviour subjoyns at the end of every of them respectively They wanted a circumstance or a good manner their actions were better than their intentions and sometimes their malice was greatest in their very acts of Charity And when they gave God thanks they did despite to their Brother something or other did envenom the face of these acts of Piety Their heart was not upright or their Religion was imperfect their Piety wanted some integral part or had an evil Eye A word a thought a secret purpose a less holy intention any indirect circumstance or obliquity in an accident makes our Piety become impious and deprives us of our reward Here therefore we had need to Watch to Strive to Pray to Contend and to do all diligence that can be express'd by all the Synonyma's of care and industry 2. We had need to Strive because though Vertues be nice and curious yet vitia sunt in facili et propinquo Sin lies at the door and is thrust upon us by the violence of Adversaries or by the subtilty and insinuation of its own nature which we are to understand to the following sence For when we are born of Christian Parents we are born in puris naturalibus we have at first no more promptness to commit some sort of Sins than to commit some good acts We are as apt to learn to love God as to love our Parents if we be taught it For though Original Sin hath lost to us all those supernaural assistances which were at first put into our Nature per modum gratiae yet it is but by accident that we are more prone to Sin than we are to Virtue For after this it happened that God giving us Laws made his restraints and prohibitions in materia voluptatis sensualis he by his Laws hath enjoyn'd us to deny our natural Appetites in many things Now this being become the matter of Divine Laws that we should in many parts and degrees abstain from what pleases our sense by this supervening accident it happens that we are very hardly wean'd from Sin but most easily tempted to a Vice our Nature is not contrary to Virtue but the instances of some Vertues are made to come cross our Nature But in things intellectual and immaterial we are indeed indifferent to Virtue and Vice I say where neither one nor the other satisfies the sensual part In the Old Law when it was a duty to Swear by the God of Israel in common Causes Men were indifferent to that and to swear by the Queen of Heaven they had no more natural inclination to the one than to the other except where something sensual became the argument to determine them And in sensual things if God had commanded Polygamy or promiscuous concubinate and indifferent unlimited Lust Men had been more apt to obey that Commandment than to disobey it But then the restraint lying upon our natural appetites and we being by ill Education determin'd upon and almost engag'd to Vitious Actions we suffer under the inconveniences of idle Education and in the mean time rail upon Adam and Original Sin It is indifferent to us to love our Fathers and to love strangers And if from our Infancy we be told concerning a stranger that he is our Father we frame our affections to Nature and our Nature to Custom and Education and are as apt to love him who is not and yet is said to be as him who is said not to be and yet indeed is our natural Father The purpose of this Discourse is this that we may consider how Sin creeps upon us in our Education so tacitely and undiscernably that we mistake the cause of it and yet so effectually and prevalently that we guess it to be our very Nature and charge it upon Adam when every one of us is the Adam the Man of Sin and the Parent of our own Iniquities We are taught to be revengeful even in our Cradles and taught to strike our neighbours as a means to still our frowardness and satisfie our wranglings Our Nurses teach us to know the greatness of our birth or the riches of our inheritance or they learn us to be proud or to be impatient before we learn to know God or to say our Prayers After we are grown up to more years we have Tutors of impiety that are stronger to perswade and more diligent to insinuate and we are more receptive of every vicious impression And not to reckon all the inconveniencies of evil company indulgence of Parents publick and authoriz'd customs of Sin and all the mischiefs and dangers of publick Society and private retirements when we have learn'd to discern good from evil and when we are prompted to do a good or engaged to it by some happy circumstance or occasion our good is so seldom and so little and there are so many ways of spoyling it that there are not more ways to make an Army miscarry in a Battle than there are to make us perish even in our good actions Every Enemy that is without every weakness and imperfection we have within every temptation every vitious circumstance every action of our life mingled with interest and design is as a particular argument to engage our earnestness and zeal in this Duty ut contendamus acriter that we strive and make it our business to enter into the Strait Gate For since the Writers of Moral Institutions and Cases of Conscience have made no such abbreviatures of the Duty of a Christian but that I think there are amongst them all without hyperbole five thousand Cases of Conscience besides the ordinary plain Duty of a Christian and there may be five thousand times five thousand and the wit of Man can no more comprize all Cases which are or may be within their Books than they can at once describe an infinity or set down the biggest number that can be it will follow that it is a nice thing to be a Christian and all the striving we can use will be little enough towards the doing of our duty And now if you enquire what is meant by striving in this place and what is the full intention of this Precept I Answer it is an infinite or indefinite term and signifies no determinate degree of labour and endeavour but even as much as we can supposing our weaknesses our hindrances and avocations that is to make it the business of our Lives the care of our Thoughts our study and the greatest imployment of the whole Man to serve God Holy Scripture gives us general notions and