Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	affection_n	love_n	love_v	1,622	5	6.3349	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A91526	Jewish hypocrisie, a caveat to the present generation. Wherein is shewn both the false and the true way to a nations or persons compleat happiness, from the sickness and recovery of the Jewish state. Unto which is added a discourse upon Micah 6.8. belonging to the same matter. / By Symon Patrick B.D. minister of the word of God at Batersea in Surrey.	Patrick, Simon, 1626-1707.	1660 (1660)	Wing P817; Thomason E1751_1; Thomason E1751_2; ESTC R203168	156,691	423

out of them Alas this is one of the diseases of our Age also wherein many men have affected unintelligible language and believed they were Eagles that were courted to look upon the Sun because they could soar aloft into a cloud of words When they had taken abundance of Prophetical expressions and carelesly jumbled them into a confusion they seemed to themselves like men inspired and that spoke oracles when they did but slaver out their own transcendent non-sense 5. And if these men can but arrive to the confidence of prating saucily to their betters this is reputed a singular gift and they take themselves to be indued with an extraordinary measure of zeal for God and his cause But if they can perk up into the Pulpit and take the boldness to be Preachers and Instructers to others this is an infallible mark and now they cannot doubt but they are full of the Spirit of God This is the thing that tickles them more then all the rest and their forefathers the Scribes and Pharisees never loved more to sit in Moses his chair Mat. 23.2 then their fingers itch to be laying the Law before the Ignorant people 6. But let such men who delight to hear themselves talk consider if they have not lost that Faculty whereby we are men that there may be twenty times more Religion in humble learning then in this bold teaching of others and that there is a thousand times more in hearty doing of what men learn To that let them bend their studies and observe how greedy they are of riches how they scramble for high places how worthy they think themselves of what others enjoy how they love to rule and command over them how impatient they are of contradiction how ambitious to be thought some body in the world how censorious of their neighbours how fiery hot against dissenters how fierce and violent for their Opinion more then for Godliness And then if they believe the Scriptures let them judge whether the leaven of Hypocrisie have not sowred them And let us all remember That true Religion is a transforming sense of God that which changes and alters the temper of mens souls that which seasons and leavens the whole man with Goodness It is not a new Tongue but a new nature It consists not in reformed language but in a reformed life Not in talking concerning God but in an imitation of him and being conformed to him And then a well-seasoned Heart will make all the words savoury and without affectation though with good affection CAP. XIX 1. Of the love the Jews bare to Moses 2. When as they hated that which Moses chiefly aimed at and had only a fancy to him as a gallant person 3. The same love now men think they have to Jesus Christ 4. But no better then the love men have to persons of desert and that do them kindnesses 5. Such men therefore like the Pharisees They love Christ now he is dead and never saw him better then if they had lived with him 1. BUT some may say to me Can you think that such people as you have described have no love to Jesus Christ of whom they speak so much I will give an Answer to this by describing another piece of Jewish Hypocrisie and that was their extraordinary love to Moses Moses What a great and sacred name was that and never out of their mouths It was a wonder the Aegyptian charmers did not put it into their forms of incantation as they did the name of Abraham and others Epiphan Haer. Melchisid seeing they boasted no less of it The Arabians who held him for a God could not give him a greater veneration then his Countreymen did They professed themselves Moses his Disciples and say that they are sure God spake by him but esteem our Saviour a sorry fellow in compare with this great Master John 9.28 29. In Moses they trusted John 5.45 and blasphemy against him they would prosecute with the same revenge that they did blasphemy against God Nay Moses was first in their mouths when they accused St. Steven and they said that he had spoken blasphemous words against Moses and against God Act. 6.11 There is no Question to be made but that they would have spit in that mans face who should have told them that they did not love Moses They would have defied his words and given him the lye a thousand times and you might have as soon perswaded them that there was never such a man as that they did not bear an affection to him And for this very cause it was that they killed our Saviour because they thought he contradicted this grand Teacher of their Religion and imagined they did God high service in so doing 2. And yet if you make a little farther search into the business you shall find that they loved Moses no otherwise then as vulgar people love Queen Elizabeth as a brave man and one who did great things for that Nation and in whose dayes there was a good world If Moses had lived in our Saviours time and told them of their sins as he did they would have loved Moses no more then thieves and traitors loved the Queen who would not let them steal or betray their country If Moses should have risen from the dead and told them that he allowed divorces only because of the hardness of their hearts they would have given him a bill of divorce though so much wedded to him If he had said the Gentiles should be fellow-heirs of their promises they would have looked upon him as an heathen and a publicane And he should not have escaped to have been ranked among the sinners if he had dropped a word against their legal righteousness Nay if he had said to them but one of the Ten commandments Thou shalt not covet those Pharisees would have been ready to cast stones at him for not receiving their glosses whereby that command was evacuated They had an high esteem of him and affection to him as he had been a great Benefactor to their Nation but the best of his Laws his Spirit and qualities they perfectly hated And therefore our Saviour tells them that though they did beautifie the Sepulchres of such righteous persons as their Fathers had slain and thought they should not have done such a thing for all the world yet they had the same murderous affections against those holy men and would have dipt their hands as soon in their blood had they lived in those times For they hated such men then as their Fathers hated heretofore and so all the blood that had been shed in former ages did light upon them because they inherited their Ancestors sins as well as their lands 3. Even so it is now with many in the Christian world The name of Jesus is so dear unto them that they have it in their mouths as much as the Jews had the name of Moses It is so full of honey and sweetness and they

as they did to cause their voice to be heard on high not regarding either their mournful howlings or their clarnorous petitions whereby they thought to stir him up to help them And by the Prophet Jeremiah he tells them cap. 14. 12. that when they fast he will not hear their cry For he that turns away his ear from hearing the Law even his prayer shall be an abomination Prov. 28.9 If men will not hear God he will not hear them yea he cannot give ear unto them For the things that they love and embrace are such necessary causes of the evils under which they groan and so inconsistent with the mercies that they desire that unless God alter the nature of things or change the method of his proceedings in the government of the world he cannot hearken to their petitions Either he must change his mind or they must change theirs or their prayers be unanswered And therefore unless they heartily renounce their sins and throughly discharge their iniquities all their prayers for sending mercies and for removing miseries are a piece of meer non-sense incoherent ignorant stuff which will be returned with such shame upon them as if he had thrown the dung of the sacrifices in the face of those that brought them 4. When men bear a love to those sins the evil consequents of which they desire may be prevented or remedied that they may not ruine them they are as ridiculous and unsuccessful as if a man should beg health while he continues in his riotous and intemperate course of living It is as if we should desire that the effect may cease while the cause remains in act that God would not be angry though we continually provoke him and that he would not hate us though we do not love him Let a man raise his confidence by what arts he pleaseth and speak with a boldness in his prayers as though he would command heaven and have what he would of God yet he cannot have a true faith that he shall be heard unless he utterly abandon in heart and resolution whatsoever is incompatible and cannot stand with the things that he desires We may call our Fasts by the name of dayes of prayer as we commonly do but though we should pray from morning until night though the whole Nation should cry to God that he would bow the heavens and come to save us though it should be with a voice that would rend the clouds and seem to make way for him to come down to our rescue yet if we be in love with our sins the causes of our trouble we have put in such a strong Caveat such a barr to our suits and petitions in the Court of heaven that we can obtain no audience And therefore some Heathens were wiser then these sottish children of Israel as Jer. calls them 4.22 for when Niniveh was afraid of Gods Judgements they not only proclaimed a Fast and cryed mightily to the Lord but they turned every one from their evil way and the violence that was in their hands Jonah 3.5 8. It is a prudent saying of Cyril of Alexandria Fasting is a choice thing 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 prayer is profitable and of great benefit In Isa 58.3 it is to humble our souls in Gods eyes but it is most absurd for those that come in this manner to obtain mercy to provoke the divine Law-giver in another way by not loving to do his commands 5. But so willing are men to deceive themselves that though sometimes they go a little further yet they suffer their prayers to fall short of heaven When men have made their faces sour with fasting they begin sometimes to look angrily upon their sins and to take up some resolutions to be revenged on them And therefore they beg the divine grace to destroy them and beseech him to send his Spirit to purge their souls from them But then as if they had no mind to be heard they resolve to be at no trouble nor pains themselves about this great business They leave all to the care of God whom they would have so far to concern himself in our affairs as not to expect that we should be such creatures as he made us They sit still and wait for an unheard of power from above as if divine Faith were a relyance on God to carry such by force to heaven who have no list to walk in the way thither Such prayers have a perfect likeness to the requests of the man in the Fable to Hercules when his cart stuck fast in the mire who would neither prick forward his Oxen nor lay his own shoulders to the wheels nor unload the waggon but cast all upon the strength of his God expecting that he should come and draw it out And such an answer as was returned to that silly swain will very well befit such petitioners O bone disce pigris non flecti numina votis Praesentesque adhibe quùm facis ipse Deos. Learn Good Sir that God is not moved by lazie desires and sluggish wishes but that thou shalt then find thy God present when thou thy self art busie about thy work It is help that we beg and that supposes we are active though infirm Assistance we crave and that implyes our endeavours though ineffectual unassisted They are in all regards therefore idle prayers which careless sinners put up for divine aid and strength seeing they cannot speak common sense nor know the meaning of their own language They ask succour against their enemies but either they mean nothing or else victory without fighting and if that be it they mean it is as if they asked nothing because there is no such thing to be granted O that all men would at last learn to labour for that after which they seem to long and not make a perpetual trade of praying much and doing little or nothing Let us not meerly run from one Church to another from private Fasts to publick from common to extraordinary devotions for this was the manner of the heathen people who when they could not prevail by their daily sacrifices and prayers betook themselves to more laborious but unsuccessful devices We read of Moab in Isa 16.12 that when he was weary in the high places he came to his sanctuary to pray but he could not prevail i. e. when they had tired themselves with petitions for deliverance after the ordinary form that was used they went to the most holy place in the Land where their great god Chemosh was worshipped and there they doubted not but to speed But as they prevailed not because they did nothing at all but pray no more shall we of whom they are a perfect picture while we have confidence in our repeated prayers without a real reformation This kind of faith which men cherish in themselves is the most horrid infidelity greater then which the worshippers of Chemosh or Baal could not be guilty of For they believe not him at all who