Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	bear_v	end_n	truth_n	1,796	5	6.9490	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A42999	Self-contradiction censured, or, A caveat against inconstancy, and the inconsistent contrariety of the same mens pretences, principles, opinions and practices dialogue-wise digested into a deliberative discourse between affection and judgement : and intended to serve as spiritual physick for two great diseases of phanatick spirits, hypocritical deceitfulness, and enthusiastical delusion / by Christopher Harvey ...	Harvey, Christopher, 1597-1663.; Harvey, Christopher, 1597-1663. Aphēniastēs.	1662 (1662)	Wing H1044; ESTC R19273	60,139	192

hath given me occasion to enter into a more serious consideration of mine own wayes and to examine both mine actions and intentions more narrowly then heretofore And now I would gladly make use of this opportunity to advise with you in some particulars of which if my resolution should be only ruled by my self peradventure I might finde cause hereafter to repent me Judgment I am glad that discourse wrought with you so well for the truth is my special aime therein was at your good having for the love I bear you often observed your behaviour and sometimes seen you so carried away with a vehement desire of compassing the ends you aimed at without due consideration of the means whereby you might attain unto them sometimes so transported with a liking of the wayes which you were in without looking to the end whereat they might arrive sometimes so applauding some mens persons and so admiring their graces without taking any notice at all of their infirmities sometimes so detesting some mens particular opinions and practices that you have fallen into a general disliking of their persons and vilifying all though otherwise good that they have had any hand at all in that I have almost been ready to accuse my self of a mistake and to resolve that it was not Affection which I had set mine eyes upon but Affectation But if you be resolved hereafter to use more circumspection I shall be as ready to assist you with the best advice I can as you to desire it Aff. There is nothing whereby you may oblige me more nor can I imagine how I should testifie my thankfulness better then by resolving for the future to follow your directions and for the present freely to unfold my doubts unto you Judg. As for your doubts you shall do well to deal freely in discovering them but for my directions you had better reserve your resolution of following them until you see reason to induce you thereunto For Judgement is in danger sometimes to be blinded as well as Affection is to be ensnared and therefore it is best that we both joyn together to assist one another in using the means whereby we may come to be rightly informed both what we should think and what we should do and wait for a blessing upon our endeavours from him who giveth unto all men liberally and upbraideth not Aff. That blessing I hope he will not withhold having begun already to give it by directing you so rightly your self to single out the main particulars concerning which my purpose was to desire your advise viz. the proposal of the ends which I ought to aim at the choice of the means which I should use to those ends and that esteem I ought to have them in whom I observe to be richly adorned with eminent graces or notoriously overtaken with false opinions or evil practices And as before I apprehended a possibility that hereafter I might be so now by your speech I perceive there is some cause I should suspect that I have been already mistaken in that kinde Judg. Nor do you need to wonder at it and to think it strange since it is no more then humane frailty maketh all men subject to and that which the best sometimes have had too much experience of as I shall shew you by particular examples if you will propound your particular doubts concerning each of them in order SECT II. Of the ends which men do or should propose unto themselves in all their actions Aff. IF you be so pleased then I will begin with that which is the first in all mens intentions the end which they propose unto themselves in all their actions and which for mine own part I conceive is the principal thing to be enquired of This I am resolved should be the advancement of the glory of God and that nothing should be intended at all but that which may be not possibly onely but necessarily also or probably at least subservient thereunto Judg. So far you are right But I doubt all men are not of the same minde for St. Paul in his time found it otherwise Phil. 1.15 16 17. He saith Some indeed preach Christ even of envy and strife and some also of good will The one preach Christ of contention not sincerely supposing to adde affliction to my bonds But the other of love knowing that I am set for the defence of the Gospel And speaking of Timothy Phil. 2.20 21. He saith I have no man like minded who will naturally care for your state For all seek their own not the things which are Jesus Christs Whereby it appeares that St. Paul not onely thought it possible that some men might but likewise found it by experience true that many men did propose unto themselves one end in pretence and another in truth Nay that which is yet more miserable mens own deceitful hearts many times are apt to carry them away with a false perswasion of their own ends and make them think they seek indeed the glory of God when in truth it is but their own repute and credit amongst men Come with me and see my zeal for the Lord saith Jehu to Jehonadab 2 Kings 10.16 Yet Jehu took no heed to walk in the law of the Lord God of Israel with all his heart for he departed not from the sins of Jeroboam which made Israel to sin vers 31. Jehu it seems had more regard to his own royalty then Gods religion notwithstanding his pretended zeal for the Lord. What a fair intent of doing justice unto every man did Absalom profess 2 Sam. 15.4 when his purpose was to steal the hearts of the men of Israel from their own King and his own father David And how did he make the pretended payment of a vow which he had vowed to the Lord in Hebron the colour of his escape from Jerusalem and a cloak to cover his conspiracy So usual a thing it is as Solomon observes Prov. 26.23 25. to finde the potsheard of a wicked heart covered with the silver dross of burning lips and for him that speaketh fair to have seven abominations in his heart SECT III. How to try the truth of our own pretended ends Aff. THat this is too often true I dare not deny but the difficulty is to discover this deceit For counsel in the heart of man is as deep water Prov. 20.5 and though a man of understanding may draw it out yet every man is not alwayes furnished with means sufficient to that purpose Therefore you shall do me a special pleasure if you will give me some rules of direction to guide my self by in the trial both of mine own and other mens pretended ends Judg. For your own as it concerns you most to be well assured of the truth of your intentions so the means are more certain if you will deale sincerely with your self in the use of them The principal is to beg of God that he would discover you unto your self as David doth

God might be careful to maintain good works these things are good and profitable for men But avoid foolish questions and genealogies and contentions and strivings about the Law for they are unprofitable and vain As intimating that the selfe condemnation of hereticks appears in this that the errors in opinion and enormities in action which they purposely maintain and practise are contrary to and inconsistent with the ends which they profess to aime at namely the glory of God in their own and other mens eternal good and spiritual profit that they may be made heires according to the hope of eternal life as he speaks ver 7. so that if you see men avow such actions allow themselves liberty to keep such courses and plead such principles in their defence as are contrary to and inconsistent with the ends which they pretend you have reason to suspect their pretences to be false if when that inconsistent contrariety is plainly discovered and made known unto them they renounce those principles condemn themselves for those practises and apply themselves afterwards unto those other courses which are undoubtedly available unto those ends you have good cause then to conceive that what they professed they purposely intended and that in undertaking those actions and urging those principles to ground them on they did but humanum pati discover that common infirmity which all mankind is subject to errare labi decipi and so deserve rather to be censured of ignorance and misunderstanding then of hypocrisie and dissimulation But if when the inconsistent contrariety of the means they use and the ends they pretend to aim at is evidently demonstrated and laid open before them they either wilfully shut their eyes and will not see it or obstinately persist in their courses notwithstanding you may then conclude with as much certainty as other mens intentions can be known with that those ends which they intend indeed are not the same which they make shew of and profess SECT X. The same illustrated by some Examples Aff. IN this that you have said there seems to be so much evidence of truth that I do not see what can be objected against it Yet I should be better satisfied if you would be pleased to illustrate it a little with some few particular examples Judg. For the first that there is cause to suspect those men of falsehood in their pretences whose courses are inconsistent with the ends which they profess to aim at you may see by St. Paul who blamed St. Peter and withstood him to his face when he saw that he walked not uprightly according to the truth of the Gospel and said unto him If thou being a Jew livest after the manner of the Gentiles and not as do the Jews why compellest thou the Gentiles to live as do the Jews Gal. 2.14 St. Peters behaviour in withdrawing and separating himself from the Gentiles for fear of the Jews was in St. Pauls apprehension inconsistent with that Christian liberty which they both professed to intend the maintenance of against the false brethren unawares brought in who came in privily to spy out their liberty which they had in Christ Jesus that they might bring them into bondage ver 4. Therefore St. Paul saith he was to be blamed as both dissembling himself and giving occasion unto others to dissemble with him If you say that the dissimulation there was not in the end but in the action I grant it true yet withal I may adde that the dissimulation was not of the action but of the end For the action is alwayes more apparent then the end and there is greater cause to suspect that which is secret then that which is open So that St. Paul might well ask St. Peter why he did so and could not be certainly assured that he dealt sincerely in publickly professing the end with himself untill he knew some other seeming reason that misguided him to take such a contrary course of practise as he did For the second St Paul shewed himself indeed to be zealous of the Law even whilst he was a Pharisee in that when he was converted and came to understand that Christ was the end of the Law for righteousness to every one that believeth Rom. 10.4 and that the Law of righteousness was not to be attained unto by the works of the Law but onely by faith Rom 9.30 31 32. he conferred not with flesh and blood which would have perswaded him still to have continued as he had been formerly exceedingly zealous of the traditions of his fathers having profited in the Jews religion above many of his equals in his own nation Gal. 1.14 16. But what things had formerly been gain unto him those he counted loss for Christ c. Phil. 3.7 Not making void the Law through faith but establishing the Law Rom. 3.31 Whereas the Scribes and Pharisees and the rest of the unbelieving Jews rejected or made frustrate and of none effect the Commandment of God that they might keep their own traditions as our Saviour complains Mar. 7.6 c. and taxeth them expresly of hypocrisie therein which could not be ascribed to any falsehood and dissimulation in their actions for what they practised they purposed as well as professed but in their ends which they pretended to be the strict observation of the Commandments of God but meant those doctrines of their own by which they taught men not to obey but to transgress the Commandments of God as there he makes it evident by their false gloss upon the first Commandment and upon others Mat. 5.17 c. By vindicating of the Law from which he made it appear that he came not to destroy but to fulfil it And therefore when the Jews accused St. Paul that he taught all men every where against the people and the Law and the Temple Acts 21.28 he pleads not guilty unto all that they neither found him in the Temple disputing with any man neither raising up the people neither in the Synagogues but he openly confesseth that after the way which they call heresie so worshipped he the God of his fathers believing all things which are written in the Law and the Prophets and having hope towards God which they themselves also allowed that there shall be a resurrection of the dead c. Acts 24.12 c. and Acts 25.8 Neither against the Law of the Jews neither against the Temple nor yet against Cesar have I offended any thing at all And therefore though Tertullus pretend that when they took him they would have judged him according to their Law complain of great violence in the chief Captain Lysias when he took him away out of their hands commanding his accusers to come unto Foelix the governour to be examined Acts 24 6 7 8. Yet he chargeth Annanias the high Priest with injustice that sitting to judge him after the Law he commanded him to be smitten contrary to the Law Acts 23.3 And though he himself appeal unto Cesar and