Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	author_n	evil_a	sin_n	1,431	5	5.2703	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A27595	A discourse of the judgments of God composed for the present times against atheism and prophaneness.	Beverley, Thomas.	1668 (1668)	Wing B2137; ESTC R14172	93,326	282

pure and those we have also of our own Souls whose due perfection and accomplishment is a participation of the divine Nature or likeness and therefore from the correlation between God and the Soul flows that pertinacious exaction of the Soul from it self that it be good and holy that it may have peace with God But because the Soul finds so much disorder and contrariety in it self to that awful Law so many transgressions against it that cannot be undone it can have no rest here but needs something that may countervail that guilt within it There can be none so convenient so great and potent as the pardoning mercy of God in Jesus Christ who by his obedience to death in our Nature carries up the supreme forgiveness of God Yet this not exhausting that Principle and perswasion of the Soul that it must be inwardly good it is most necessary the Doctrine of pardon by a Saviour should be filled with a spirit and influence of Holiness that this grace may not seem prostituted as an indulgence to sin Thus the foundations of our peace stand upon the free Grace of God and sincerity of Holiness as an evidence we are within the compass of that Grace To assure which the very same Spirit of Holiness alone able to diffuse the comforts of this peace comes in and anoints the Soul with the Joy of it till it enters into the full possessions of Salvation which is the final acquittal from evil Evil may in the mean time be used for chastisement and higher inticement to Holiness but loses its sting when that Justice that armed it is satisfied Thus a man acting upon the Principles of his own mind when he finds himself oppressed with evil is led into the Doctrine of Christianity for observing the hand-writing upon himself he reads God the Author of affliction hence flows the sense of sin since God afflicts not without cause sense of sin and the displeasure of God upon it makes it necessary to inquire after the Doctrine of pardon and repentance These are no where in their Oriency but in the Gospel of Jesus Christ The Doctrine of pardon and peace carry a man into expectations of good from God This being not found here the Soul is sent to the promises of Eternal life made known and brought to light by Christ These give joy in tribulations and hope of the Glory of God This crowns the Soul and sets it triumphant over all evil in the world Less then this can give us no true sense or construction of the great miseries of our condition nor with reason cluck us out of them into so much as the discourse of lasting rest and safety The Soul of man so busie as it is first to inquire the reasons of its unhappiness then to find the remedies of it hath great advantage of accepting that truth which tells it all that is within it concerning these things and explains them so far that it finds it self at the very utmost ends of these wonders and to have as much made known of them as is to be known Thus out of the eater comes forth meat and sweetness out of evil considered by the mind of man either acting its own reason and securing it self the best it can against what it cannot remove or turning it self upon those Principles ingraffed within it that lead it to the source and Antidotes of misery Both which convey it to the Discipline of Jesus Christ as the true relief of humane condition and its infelicity CHAP. XIII Of the more direct operations of Judgments towards Reformation wherein first of the efficacy they have in confining Sensuality and setting free Conscience and its proper Motions LEt us now approach the considerations of the more immediate powers of Judgment 1. They give a notable rebuke and abatement to sense and the sensual temper Judgments trouble all the air sensuality hath to breathe in and make it dark they pour out their vial upon its Sun and a night ensues so that it every where meets terrour and disappointment which bring it low and enfeeble it Now this is that sensuality that over-grows at once the proper motions of a Soul and Conscience and that spiritual world with which the converses of a spirit most properly lye When this is wind-bound and brought to an ebb either through the hand of God upon the body the primary seat of it or those external objects that feed and minister to it immediately the mind that lay in a swoon and oppressed emerges and rises up It hath its opportunity and uses its freedom through the great clefts and rents the strokes of God make in this vail and cloud the Soul espies the spiritual world the shadow of the material one removing off by reason of these commotions caused by Judgments The great accounts of mans sin and impenitency lye in the deep plunges and immersions of his Soul into sense and sensual things wherein he grows immoderate above the beasts through the vigours of an immaterial and immortal Spirit dissevered from its true objects and natural motions and carried down this stream From whence retaining all its own force but misguided it grows extreamly foul while it at once neglects heavenly and spiritual things for which it was made boldly transgresses all rules of goodness and cuts its way through every thing to its impure satisfactions The light that is true and pure is kept from all approach to it and its own native exercise is suppressed whence it comes to pass that God and Eternal things are covered from it and as it were wholly blotted out it lives in the unclean pleasures of the body which have all the influence and sway upon it But awakened by the Judgments of God the Soul inquires after its own world and meets it every where God having graciously disseminated it into every thing within it and without it even as the open eye in the day time greets the light where ever it goes That great deal of sensual noise and business being made to cease the false light being put out and the windows out of which lust looks dammed up the Soul hath nothing else to do it finds leisure then to do like it self and is even provoked to it by its own force carrying it always upon action and when it is taken off from that to which it is only inclaved it returns upon its proper motion when the noises of Chariots and their jumping wheels the sounds of musick the light of candles as in the overthrow of Cities are removed in that stilness Conscience is heard in that silence of foolish fires purer rays shine upon the Soul For the beams of truth and the distinct voice of it fall every where were there but an eye and ear to receive and take them in On the other side the capacities of the Soul are always fitted to them and were they not importuned and incumbred by other things they would be continually opening to and earnestly expecting

with it self in its ordinary agencies or the interpositions of one thing with another so that the efficiencies of it are remitted or intended to the detriment of some others and which are to a considerable degree of satisfaction known to those that industriously search Nature Yet in truth these evils we call natural are rather the errours and defects the cruelties and unkindnesses of it then the true intentions and just motions of it if it be that universal mother and soft bosom of all things And therefore it is worthy inquiry how it comes to be an adversary to it self for it would have minded in all things the perfection of it self in the whole and every particular if there had not been a feud raised by the Author of it in revenge of sin and enmity infused into one thing against another It will be hard to give any account of these destructive acts of Nature so easie to our thoughts as this of God displeased with sins and punishing transgressors by them That which may give some relief to the enemies of Providence herein viz. That the good of the Universe is secured by the disadvantage of particulars on which occasion we see in all things Nature yields ground from it self shall be considered in a distinct place Answ 3 To him that believes Scripture it is undoubted the Judgments of God have often set Nature into a higher Orbe of motion then its own at other times stupified it taken it off its wheels and laid it lower then it self He hath turned and even chased it hither and thither out of its own path and as it were amazed it with its unlikeness to it self and how often he doth so still though not in such an eminency we may without discredit to the knowingness of any Age call in question whether there be so much either natural or political knowledge as is necessary to make a certain state of the case Famines and Pestilences wholly out of the road of Nature a Deluge of water and storm of Fire that if it had been left to it self had been utterly unknown Invasions Captivations and Slaughters that had not God animated had lain still to this day These things are indeed preserved in Sacred Records as is most reasonable and the memory of them laid up in the Temple yet the power that patrated them is not without witness in common story Object 2 It is observed these calamities befalling Nations light so indifferently upon all times and places that they seem not at all to chuse them or to have any conduct particularly to them and therefore they are a meer chance that happeneth to all alike or Nature turning it self about in its own circle else the worst times and places would be singled out Answ 1 It hath been already noted that the greatest ruines and vastations have by the observation of those that have delivered over the memory of them to after-times been assigned to the wickedness and impieties then raging who have therefore concluded the Justice of God prepared those destructions for them as so corrupted and guilty But in Scripture it is so evident that we never read of any Judgment foretold or in the execution but the sins that demerited are signified with it In that progress or general visitation Amos foretold it is still inserted For three transgressions and four Answ 2 Besides the sins that are in the way of every observation in those times or Nations upon which Judgments come it is easily acknowledgable that many sins are of a more secret and retired nature as being concealed in those deep vaults that wickedness seeks for it self Achans wedge troubled that time as well with the unknownness of the cause of such an overthrow as with the thing it self These retirements of sin all-seeing Justice espies Many that are not own'd for evil through darkness and errour of conscience as the Heathen Idolatries Persecutions the Jews Crucifixion of Christ which he that understands his own Holiness Laws and sins committed against them so exactly cannot pass by Lastly sins that are out-dated to any but the Eternal Righteousness to which all things are present and therefore it requires that which is past to us and entails the punishment with the guilt of former times upon impenitent posterity The Famine in Davids time revenged the cruelties of Saul dead and did not remove till the sin spread upon the whole by connivence was gathered into his Family and punished there By which we may understand God sees the secret veins of guilt upon which his Righteousness falls which only he knows before whom Hell is naked and destruction hath no covering Answ 3 If any would in the general challenge God of injustice and male-administration or no administration because he doth not always remark the worst times but transfers his Judgments out of those in which the sins were committed into others which they think is to misplace them or lastly because secret and particular sins draw misery on the Publick which they conceive distant from that so even Righteousness of God who will not set the Childrens teeth on edge because the Fathers have eaten sowre Grapes nor strike an innocent person because a guilty one whose offence too he knows not stands by him let them consider There are no times places or persons so innocent as to make them an argument For there are several ways by which sins derive and propagate themselves and so justifie the translation of punishments which supposed as it must be the Dominion the great Ruler of the world hath before him vindicates him from imputations of wrong even while he laughs at the tryal of the seeming or comparative innocent or without any reason accountable to us singles out this or that Age of a world always guilty and liable to his Justice and makes it chronicular and exemplary for the punishments of sin upon it Is it fit to say to a King Thou art wicked or to Princes Ye are ungodly how much less to him that accepteth not their persons though never so great but striketh them openly in the sight of others Ignorant people afford a blindfold compassion to all they find in the hand of humane Justice and those that appear wiser are touched with the same weakness if their crimes are not as plain as they would have them not considering those reasons Justice and Government together inforce upon the powers that have so adjudged them and are therefore bold to reproach them with want of righteousness and mercy greater folly and presumption do they betray who impeach him whose goodness and mercy being equal with his strength and Soveraignty are all infinite yet not to be measured by Rules proper to finity even as his Eternity can be comprehended by no standards of time to whom a thousand years of so great account with us are but as one day and lastly that light he dwells in so inaccessible that searching all things it oppresses audacious inquiries into it self From whence