Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	bad_a	good_a	see_v	1,466	5	3.4614	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A56594	Advice to a friend	Patrick, Simon, 1626-1707.	1673 (1673)	Wing P738; ESTC R10347	111,738	356

of men What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits towards me I will delight my self in thy Commandments which I have loved My Hands also will I lift up to thy Commandments which I have loved and I will meditate in thy Statutes O how I love thy Law it shall be my Meditation every day How sweet are thy words unto my taste yea sweeter than Honey to my mouth Through thy Precepts I get understanding therefore I hate every false way Do I not hate them O Lord that hate thee and am I not grieved with those that rise up against thee I hate them with perfect hatred I count them mine enemies Search me O God and know my heart try me and know my thoughts And see if there be any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting Teach me thy way O Lord I will walk in thy truth unite my heart to fear thy Name So will I praise thee O Lord my God with all my heart and I will glorifie thy Name for evermore Amen IX AND that you may be the more humbly confident both of Gods continued goodness and your own fidelity and the more fit likewise for pious Meditations labour I intreat you as much as ever you can to maintain a constant chearfulness of spirit and lightsomness of heart Without this it will be always night with you or but a cold Winters day and as you will have no list either for meditation or any other employment so you will be apt to live in perpetual suspicion of God and of your Friends and of your self Melancholy is a dull lumpish humour which makes us of a frozen disposition and a Leaden temper It inclines us not only to think worse of our selves than we are but to do worse than otherwise we should It represents those things as exceeding difficult which may be done with ease and those as impossible which have in them any considerable difficulty It benums and stupifies our Souls and will let us feel nothing but it self It quite dispirits us and will not suffer us to do any thing because it imagines we cannot stir It shows us to our selves in an ugly Glass and then no wonder we look amiss upon all things else Some things it makes to appear bigger than they are and then all the rest appear less And having conceived them otherways than they are it nourishes the conceit till we believe it real As under the weight of some sluggish matter in the blood a man sometimes fancies his Arms are as big as Posts and then his Hands seem as heavy as a Pig of Lead and he thinks he is unable to lift them up to his Head so it is with our minds when they are oppressed with the burden of a sad and melancholy humour It makes all our duty seem very great and our strength to be none at all All impediments it renders as big as Mountains but our selves not of force enough to remove a straw It first binds up all the powers of the Soul and then will not let them be unloosed It makes us very fearful of that which it perswades us we cannot avoid And it afflicts us for that which yet it makes us fancy we cannot do In an heat it pushes us forward but suddenly it cools and says we cannot go If it catch fire it makes us wild and when it hath spent that flame it leaves us sots and fools It pricks us forward sometimes to an enterprize but it self is the shackles and fetters that will not let us move This heaviness you must take heed of and give no indulgence to it For it is the worm of the mind as one of the Antients expresses it which eateth up its Parent that brought it forth Contrary to the nature of other births it pleases us much when we bring it forth but proves a miserable torment to us as soon as it is born Melancholy musings I mean are at first a very delightful entertainment to the mind but they grow in a little time to be a very troublesome brood They are a dangerous maze in which a Man may easily lose himself and from whence he cannot without much difficulty get forth Honey is not sweet to a feaverish man nor are the sweetest truths acceptable to the sad Clogs are not a greater impediment to the Feet than this humour to the motions of the Soul The eyes are not more darkned with some kind of fumes and vapours than the understanding is with its black imaginations The Ayr is not more poysoned when it is charged with a thick and stinking mist than the mind is offensive to it self and others when it is buried in its Clouds And as the Sun when it looks through a Fog seems as if it were all bloody So do the fairest objects even God himself appear in a dismal and horrid shape when these sullen exhalations gather about us Labour then continually to disperse them and blow them away by such means as you find by experience to be most available to that purpose For chearfulness causes the Soul to breath in a pure Air and to dwell in a wholsome and sweet inclosure It makes our work seem easie and difficulties seem little and God seem good and so our strength seem great and irresistable It inlightens the mind it incourages the heart it adds wings to the affections and therefore he that forbids it to our Souls keeps out the welcomest Guest and the best Friend that Nature hath It misbeseems none but the wicked in whom it is commonly a light mirth and a foolish jollity As you see fine ornaments and curious dresses set off an handsome Face though they render those who are ugly more ill-favoured So doth chearfulness exceedingly become good Souls though in bad men it be most ridiculous For which cause it is neither unmeet to use any helps that Nature affords us to acquire it nor to call in the assistance of innocent arts and pretty inventions to invite it to keep us company Socrates blushed not to be found at Boyes-play with his Children The wise and solemn Cato sometimes stooped to be a little frollick The great Scipio thought it not unbecoming his triumphal body as Seneca calls it to use grave dances and trip about a Room in decent measures Some devout men indeed have pronounced of such like pastimes as Physicians do of Mushromes that the best ordered are worth nothing but they did not mean sure to decry all those pleasures which of themselves are indifferent and which the intention alone can render good as well as evil You ought not to refuse any ingenious or harmless recreations which you find will cherish or refresh your spirit though by Souls of a dark complexion they be deemed fooleries It is too great a burden to impose on your self such restraints as not to dare so much as laugh for fear of giving occasion of suspicion to the weak or of slander to the wicked But since

able than we are And particularly I would advise you on such occasions to lift up your Soul frequently to God in earnest desires beseeching Him to preserve you from cheating your self and that he would help you to discern clearly when it is the flattery and when it is the meer weakness of Flesh and Blood that hinders you from doing as you were wont When you cast a glance I say towards Heaven and send up a sigh thither now and then as you are able let this be one of your desires that God would be so gracious as to give you to feel plainly when meer necessity requires your attendance on your Body and when it calls for more than it needs For he loves that in every thing we should make known our requests to Him and will certainly some way or other satisfie your mind in such concernments And when you have used the best judgment you have and can procure together with your Prayers about them then I hope you will be chearful and let your thoughts trouble you no more Or if a thought should happen to start up and strike your mind telling you that you are lazy yet believe I beseech you your more deliberate and not these suddain conclusions There is one case I know of this kind wherein though it be certain that it is impossible for us to do as we were wont and that we are not hindred by any fault in our will but by the meer indisposition of nature yet it may be hard sometime to avoid dejected and complaining thoughts upon this account It is in sickness when the Mind necessarily languishes with the Body You may chance then to imagine that some sin or other is the cause of this Correction and so you have drawn this disability upon your self for which you cannot now be humbled as you desire But I hope My Friend that you take such an exact view of your life that sickness will not let you see any fault that was not visible to you before And I know you to be wiser than to torment your self with a fancy that there is some sin lurking in you though you cannot find it out But if any thing should discover it self to you which was not so evident before let me beseech you not to pass any hard censure upon your self But to remember that this hath been bewailed whensoever you lamented the general infirmity of your nature and that now perhaps it is represented to you more ugly than it doth deserve or if it be not yet it is sufficient only to beg of God to accept your hearty confession and your promise of amendment when you are able and to desire your spiritual guide to be the witness of your sincere resolution and to give you absolution and his blessing and so rest satisfied But there may be another reason likewise assigned of our heaviness at certain seasons which I have no● yet named and that is the withholding in a great measure of tha● strength and power which was upon us from the Holy-Ghost to raise and elevate us to an high pitch of love activity and joy in well doing For as the help of that doth lift us up above our selves so when it much abates we are apt to fall as much below our selves and to be surprised with sadness and dejection of spirit to see our selves so strangely changed And this may be denyed us for several causes either because we have not improved it so well as we might or because our Lord sees that our Nature cannot bear always such extraordinary motions or that he may make us more sensible of his favours and raise their price and value in our esteem or that he may try our strength as a Mother le ts go her hold of the Child to make it feel its Feet or that he may thereby bow our wills more absolutely to his and break our self-love which desires nothing but pleasure or that he may prove whether we will love him for himself and not for the delicate entertainments which he gives us or for some such cause unknown to you and me and every body else And shall we not yield submission quietly to a thing for which there may be so many reasons and those not at all to our prejudice but to our profit Let me say a few words concerning the two last things mentioned and show you that if our Patience be exercised upon those accounts it will prove very beneficial to our Souls I cannot say as some have done that we ought not to desire goodness for our own good but meerly because it is pleasing to God No this seems to me a very absurd doctrine and utterly impossible that we should separate these two Piety and our own good We cannot so much as desire to be good but we shall feel a satisfaction in it For the very Name of good carries a respect in it to something in us to which it is agreeable and convenient We do not mean when we bid you love God for himself that you should not therein love your self and seek your own contentment for you cannot chuse but be pleased in the love of God and vertue But this I may affirm with safety that there may be sometimes too much of self-love in our vehement desires after the extraordinary pleasures and joyes of piety and that if we could be content after we used due diligence with our driness and barrenness of spirit with our dulness and want of vigour nay with our frailties and faults too meerly out of submission to God and because he thinks not fit to give us the pleasure of being wholly without them it would be highly acceptable to him and no less advantageous to us If in all things I mean we could rest satisfied that God's will is done though ours be denyed if we could forbear to prosecute our own will even in those matters and desire him to give us as much Life and Spirit and chearfulness and joy as he pleases we should be so far from offending him that he would take it for a very grateful piece of service to him This is not to teach any remisness in your desires and endeavours but it supposes you do your best and only advises you that if notwithstanding you cannot be as you would you do not let your spirit fall into any impatience or fretfulness For this is to prefer God's pleasure above your own It is a subjection of your will to his in those points wherein you are most desirous to have it gratified It is an unusual instance of resignation to him which declares there is nothing so dear to you but you are willing to quit it so you may but do well and be accepted with Him And here remember these two things First that our solid comfort doth not depend upon doing every thing so readily easily and delightfully as we would but in accomplishing Gods will however it be done And 2dly That Humility Patience and Submission to God