Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	authority_n	church_n	faith_n	2,630	5	5.8125	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A51650	Christian conferences demonstrating the truth of the Christian religion and morality / by F. Malebranche. To which is added his Meditations on humility and repentance.	Malebranche, Nicolas, 1638-1715.; Malebranche, Nicolas, 1638-1715. Meditations concerning humility and repentance.	1695 (1695)	Wing M314; ESTC R25492	132,087	237

your Friends condemn If I thought it fitter to convince you by Authority than by Reason I would let you see them but you ought to convince your self by such Proofs as may be acceptable to the Person whom you design to convert The most honest men are not infallible even all those who seem so are not such But however it be it is better to be sensible to light than to the most pious and most sanctified Air because God always enlightens and oftentimes the Way and Air imposes and seduces Arist This is true Theodorus but I fear that your Sentiment is not conformable to that of the holy Fathers Theod. But what occasion have you to fear it Have you ever read any thing contrary to it in the Fathers I see you have been told so gravely and you have believed it in the simplicity of your heart Hath not St. Austin who best understood the corruption of Nature explained the propagation of Original Sin by the example of hereditary Diseases By that of gouty Parents who beget Children subject to the Gout And of the sick Trees which yield a corrupted Seed that produces nothing but bad Trees For he knew that Original Sin can only communicate itself by the body because its principle is in the body and that in some sense it dwells in the body as St. Paul saith As for the other Fathers that lived before St. Austin they never undertook to make a particular discussion of the manner in which the transmission of that Sin could be explained Their Age was neither so incredulous nor malicious as ours and it was not then necessary to give probable explications of our mysteries to make those who called themselves Christians believe them No Aristarchus I could never find that the Fathers were against what I have told you now But I wonder to see that you who formerly used to treat the Churches Authority with so much indifference are now so full of Veneration for the Fathers as to be afraid without cause of dissenting from them by admitting some explications wherein we are not always obliged to follow them provided we keep with them to the Faith and Doctrin of the Church You are too credulous and your apprehensions are not just you do not meditate enough you are like those Children who walk by night without a light that are afraid of all things because they see nothing Whilst you did lead a careless sort of life the air of the Libertines used to persuade you and now you suffer your self to be convinced by the air of piety and gravity of certain persons who have not always as much light and charity as opinion and false zeal You are less in danger of being mistaken but yet you are not in the way of truth You ought to believe what must be believed but you ought to see what may and consequently what must be seen I hope that if you make serious Reflections on the things I have told you without troubling your self with what your Friends think of it your Uncertainties will be cleared and you will no more suffer your self to be scared by a sort of Men who assume an unjust power over the mind of others instead of bringing them to Reason by light and evidence I leave you with Erastus to confer together upon those things I have said to you meditate with him and endeavour either to convince your self or to offer to me that is in a clear and evident manner the Reasons that hinder you from doing it DIALOGUE V. Of the Reparation of Nature by Jesus Christ Arist WE have made many Reflections Erastus and I upon Original Sin and the Contagion that spreads itself in Spirits And have even found that Original Sin is transmitted into Children in some manner as the Sentiments and Passions of passionate men communicate themselves to those that are in their presence For as the union that is between men for the benefit of Society is the cause why a man by the air of his Face stamps on the brain of such as are touched by it the same impressions which the Passion that moves him forms within him See the 7th Chapter of the 2d Book of the Inquiry after Truth so the union of the Mother with her Child being very strict and the Childs wants very great the Child's imagination must needs be sullied by all the impressions and emotions of mind that incline the Mother to sensible things Theod. Thus Aristarchus those that live in the hurry of the world that are held by too many things that never consult their reason but suffer themselves to be convinced moved and run down by every one that hath some strength of imagination and whose air being lively is consequently insectious those civil men of the Town born for Company who are always so ready to receive their Friends Sentiments in a word Aristarchus those Persons that are such as you have been till now for you are the civilest and most complaisant Gentleman I ever knew those Persons I say that are like you have a double portion of Original Sin that which they received from their Mother when they were in her womb and that which they have suckt in by the commerce of the world You are happy Aristarchus in being able to withstand the impression of those two Sins How indebted are you not to inward truth for calling you back so loudly as to be heard by you in spight of the confused noise of your senses and passions You retire sometimes within your self as if your Reason was not corrupted and the concupiscence of original Sin had not been strengthned nor encreased by a concupiscence of thirty years standing You are so much altered to day from what you were yesterday that I believe you will no longer find any considerable difficulty in our following Conferences For all that hindered you from apprehending my sentiments proceeded from the obscurity and disorder wherein the converse of the world had thrown you so that being delivered from that disorder and resolved to retire incessantly within your self you will hearken to the decisions of that truth that presides to all spirits Arist Yes Theodorus I renounce all the impressions that used to prejudice me I plainly see that all manner of union to sensible things estrangeth and removeth us from truth that the union which I had in my Mother's womb made me a Sinner that the union which I have had with my Relations hath only given me a knowledge of the world useful indeed to unite me with it and make my self considerable in it but altogether unprofitable to the inquiry after truth In short that the union which I have had with my Friends and other Men hath filled me with a very great number of most dangerous prejudices which you know better than I. I have hitherto lived by Opinion I desire now to live by Reason I will believe nothing but what Faith and Charity oblige me to believe in all other things I