Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	begin_v	great_a	time_n	1,599	5	3.2122	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A30444	A sermon preached before the Queen at White-Hall on the 29th of May, 1694, being the anniversary of King Charles II, his birth and restauration by the Right Reverend Father in God, Gilbert Lord Bishop of Sarum.	Burnet, Gilbert, 1643-1715.	1694 (1694)	Wing B5901; ESTC R4125	16,733	36

lay things together and a small measure of judgment to observe the visible causes and consequences of them will serve turn here some may descend to more particulars than others and may reason more exactly but every man is capable of thought enough upon this head to beget in him a sense of the power and wisdom the justice and goodness of God in the Government of the World A man needs no great stock of knowledge nor much fineness of thought to go far here and as this sort of exercise is within every mans reach so it has not in it that irksomness that hangs often upon other duties such as publick or private worship the sorrowings of repentance or earnestness in prayer this goes more with the grain there is no pain but a very considerable pleasure in it All History especially what is secret and instructing is pleasant but most of all are such Remarks from History as represent the Church and Kingdom to which we belong as the special Subjects of a favourable Providence Partiality and self-love may carry us too far on this head and make us construe things too advantageously of our own side and stretch them too much imagining perhaps that to be the indication of a more particular care which was only the effect of a general Providence but even this bias upon us to carry our Observations further then things will bear makes it out that such Meditations are exercises that give much more pleasure than pain Sometimes I confess a black prospect and a gloomy face of things may be on the other hand as unreasonably aggravated by men of melancholly tempers yet even in that case the remembring past deliverances gives livelier and more promising hopes so that this may be well reckoned the easiest and pleasantest exercise of Religion nor is there any one more useful nothing shews the folly of Man and the wisdom of God more eminently then when we set them together nothing shews the corruptions of the Human Nature and mercies of the Divine more conspicuously nothing mitigates the sharpness of our afflictions nor tempers our mind in prosperity so much as our depending upon Providence and ascribing the good things that happen to its influence and not claiming too great a share in them to our selves nothing tempers the mind so equally in every turn and sta●● of life as the Belief of God's go●erning the World and the turning our thoughts frequently to serious reflections upon it I will not enter here upon that deep but mysterious and often abused Argument of Providence I suppose you do all believe it for indeed if you believe it not you believe nothing in Religion to any purpose without this our Prayers and Praises would come within a very small compass our faith and hope would be much narrower and our love to God would be much blunted if we brought our selves once to think that all things go in a chain that there are no special directions in the conduct of this World but that Chance or Fate dispence every thing either with inexorable sullenness or in a tumultuary levity We must in consequence to such perswasions let our selves loose from all the restraints and all the seriousness of Religion but instead of these how ungrateful soever they may be to undisciplined minds we should have nothing to ballance to fix or to govern us but should be toss'd from wave to wave We should either have the black Cloud of hard fate hang over us or be in the constant fears of the next bad chance which might in a minute throw down all that former good ones had built up A man that does not believe a Providence has no support from a better prospect in his ill circumstances nor are his good ones secured to him by any hope of their continuance whereas he who believes that all things are directed by infinite wisdom and goodness receives the good things that fall to him with a particular tenderness because they seem to be the indications of the love of his heavenly Father towards him and he expects that they shall be continued to him as long as it is fit that he should hold them that is as long as they are real blessing to him and he desires to keep them no longer and on no other terms he does not sink under calamities he considers them as medicinal things sent to reform him or to try his vertues and to make some publick Essay of the force and firmness of his faith and patience To all this that demonstrates how much a happier thing it is for Mankind to be under the belief of Providence then otherwise I will only add one consideration that wise men have observed in many different Ages and Climates of the World and which they have thought no small confirmation of this great Article of Religion that at some times a strange Spirit seems to run through whole Nations an● Communities which can hardly be either resisted or repressed A great Impetus and Fermentation works powerfully for a while and then goes off without any visible cause that appears either for its beginning or for its ending The same occasions that produced such a temper at one time will not have the same effect at another an irresistible courage does sometimes rise in great Bodies as unaccountably as it falls The servour with which the Reformation began was not more extraordinary than the flatness under which it has fallen in this Age and the extraordinary heat and giddiness that spread it self over these Nations in the beginning of the wars was not more amazing than the calm conclusion in which they ended at last which is the blessing that we do now commemorate and on which I do now enter But as the Iews did at the Paschal Solemnity carry back the recapitulation of their deliverance out of Egypt to God's first calling Abraham out of the Land of the Caldeans so that we may make fuller and clearer reflections on the blessings of God to this Church and Nation in the protection and prosperity of the Royal Family and that in the same view we may observe those extraordinary steps of Providence that have appeared both towards the Crown and the Reformation and at once both consider his Wonders and the Iudgments of his Mouth suffer me to begin my Recital of some more Signal Providences as high as the first beginnings of the Reformation Before that time our Princes were but half Kings a Forreign Power ruled over the Consciences of their People The Immunities of Places and Persons were great checks to their Authority The best part of the Soil and much of the Wealth and Treasure of the Kingdom were at the disposal of a Body that claimed to be Independent on the Crown and were subject to a severe Master at whose Mercy our Kings Reigned and governed their Subjects and were frequently put into great Convulsions when they seemed to break in upon an Authority that pretended to be Sacred and on