Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	believe_v	ghost_n	holy_a	1,385	5	5.2286	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A61251	A vindication of the divine perfections illustrating the glory of God in them, by reason and revelation: methodically digested into several meditations. By a person of honour.	Stair, James Dalrymple, Viscount of, 1619-1695.	1695 (1695)	Wing S5181; ESTC R221836	207,616	368

to them did not reject the Offer and cleave to their Sins These Men ought to be satisfied that through Christ there is an universal Grace purchased given or offered and refused which sufficiently satisfieth the many Expressions in Scripture of Christ's dying for all Men yea for every Man and for the Sins of the World That pretended insoluble Argument of the Arminians That must be true which every Man is bound to believe but every Man is bound to believe that Christ died for him because God commands him to believe in Christ which therefore obligeth him to believe therefore it is true that Christ died for every Man This Argument hath been a great Bugbear which hath puzled many and there are several Answers made to it and I think there is yet a better Answer than I have hitherto met with that the Fallacy lies in this that there is not a Difference made between a Command and an Invitation or Exhortation to do that to which the Party exhorted is not obliged but whereby a great Benefit may arise upon the Performance Such is the Expression of Christ Come unto me all ye that are weary and heavy laden and I will give you Rest to your Souls which is only an Invitation to enter into the Covenant of Grace For the Nature of all Covenants is that the Engagements of either Party must be voluntary and free yea even in the Covenant of Works as hath been said before albeit Innocence by Obedience to all God's Commands was an indispensible Duty yet Adam's Engagement superadded thereto was voluntary and therefore God will not condemn Sinners because they have not imbraced the Offer of Grace by believing as the Penalty of not believing but will only exclude them from the Benefit of that Covenant because they did not assent unto it and will punish them for the Transgressions of his Laws and therefore it is not true that all Men are obliged to believe for then the Damned and those who have sinned against the Holy Ghost were obliged to believe which were altogether in vain neither being capable of Pardon So that not believing in God through Christ for Salvation is not the Cause efficient but deficient of Damnation It will further appear hereafter how Christ the second Adam hath restored what the first Adam lost in putting every Man in a Capacity to be saved and that no Man should be damned but for his own fault which is the Sentence of the Synod of Dort against the Rigor of which the Arminians do so much inveigh There is no necessity to recur to that Answer that by all Men is meant not singula generum but genera singulorum and by the World the World of the Elect which are not apt to convince these Men that the whole World should only be the World of the Elect or that every Man should be every kind of Men or that this Interpretation will quadrate with that place of Scripture Wilt thou by thy Meat destroy him for whom Christ died And the Wicked that hear and contemn the Gospel are said to trample under foot the Son of God When Christ saith I came not to the World to judg the World but to save the World by the World cannot be meant the World of the Elect for Christ's coming into the World was by conversing with all the World Elect or Reprobate and he came to judg all the World both Elect and Reprobate tho it was not his chief End in coming Therefore the World he came to save must be so also understood of all relating to the World he came into which is solidly and sharply prosecuted by the eminently learned Monsieur Claud in his Posthumous Works upon the Priestly Office of Christ. It cannot be thought that the strongest Asseveration of God As I live I delight not in the Death of a Sinner but rather that he should repent and be saved were only to be restrained to the Elect or genera singulorum or that it is the Will of God that all Men should be saved which is not meant properly of the Will of God which can never be ineffectual but of the Pleasure of God for it is not said actively it is the Will of God to save all Men but that it is the Will of God they should be saved that is it would be pleasing to him if they were all and every one saved by their accepting the Offer of Grace or not rejecting it But that way is only distinguishable from Pelagianism by a Notion not warranted by the Word of God For if the Pelagians have not said I am sure they might say that by the Powers of Nature they meant nothing else but that Power which every Man hath by his Creation and his Birth and might say that those Powers Adam had were by the free Gift of God so that there were no more ground to glory in the one way than in the other I do not doubt but many of these Men abhor Pelagianism which makes me always hope that there may be a Reconciliation between these and other Protestants which are commonly called Reformed If all Mankind had a Power to believe as much as they have a Power to reason or choose What ground is there to distinguish the one Power from the other But if Men cannot believe when they will but when the Spirit of God hath in their Conversion given them new Powers or Faculties or at least sincerely offered them and would put them in their Power if they will not reject them There is a clear and manifest Difference between natural and supernatural Acts or between Nature and Grace that Grace must have a new Power given freely at Conversion whereby the converted are enabled to repent and believe in respect of this Power Christ saith Without me ye can do notbing which is not spoken as to natural Powers and by this Power the Apostle saith I can do all things by him that strengtheneth me for of bim we have both to will and to do That way doth not only derogate from the Grace of God but from the Happiness of Creatures for thereby it is impossible that any Creature can be certain of their continuance in their Integrity or in the Favour of God not only in this Life but even in Heaven For if their free Will can bring them into God's Favour when they please or lose it when they please in this Life as they do acknowledge what have they to secure them against the like in the next Life Will they be more glorious than the Devils were before they fell Yet their free Will carried them from that Estate But if God do confirm the Elect Angels and Saints that they shall never fall certainly it is not only possible but sutable for him so to do towards those that in this Life he receives into his Favour by the Covenant of Grace What then can induce them to deny themselves and all others one of the most glorious Pearls of the

Person Hypostasis or Subsistence of the Divine Nature It is too great Presumption for any in the State of Mortality to determine the manner of the Oneness of the Father Son and Eternal Spirit which is so clearly declared a Mystery near the close of the Canon of Scripture never unfolded after in it The Trinity hath been asserted and owned with the greatest Firmness and Forwardness in the purest State of the antient Christian Church and the least Derogation attempted against it by the Arians hath been condemned with Abhorrence by the most Eminent and Orthodox Fathers and by the Determination and Solemn Confession of Faith by the Council of Nice and it is amongst the most incontestably Catholick Doctrines of the Universal Church owned by all National Societies of Christians in the World above the course of a thousand Years Augustine and some others of the Fathers have attempted to give some Resemblances of the Trinity in Unity though he still acknowledgeth it to be a Mystery they could not fully comprehend So Augustine in his 15th Book of that Treatise he wrote upon the Trinity saith That we have a Representation of the Generation of the Son by the Father in that he is called the Word of God as all Idea's are conceived by Words of the Mind so God's Idea of himself and his Decrees is his Word essential and substantial For all that is in God is God The Son is also the Character of his Person his Image the Brightness of his Glory his Wisdom that was with him from Eternity He says also That the Procession of the Holy Ghost is his Love to Himself by his Idea of Himself with his whole Decrees and that all the Persons of the Trinity are Wise and Powerful by the same Power and Wisdom because they have but one Godhead The Generation of a Son doth not import an Imperfection or Inequality of the Nature of the Son more than of the Father much less doth the Generation of the Eternal Son imply an Inequality of the Son with the Father or a dependance of his Being from the Father as if he needed Preservation like Creatures Yea all the Persons are increated without any Cause and so Self-existent and Coeternal The Errors of Socinians are much more abominable than those of the Arians the Socinians acknowledg nothing of the Son before he was conceived in the Womb of the Virgin The Light of Nature was ever sufficient to confute the Multiplicity of Gods and to convince that there could only be one God Albeit the Multiplicity of Gods did far prevail in the World it was long before it did prevail and not until God had given Men up to their own Ways because of their Wickedness against the clear Light of Nature for they were given up to believe Lies because they did not receive the Truth which by the Light of Nature they knew in Love to live according to it The knowledg of one God was not alone among the Hebrew or Jewish Nation as the Scripture maketh evident in Job and his Friends among whom there was so much clear Knowledg of the Divine Perfections and even of a Saviour and of a Resurrection which are not deducible from any inbred Principle by the Light of Nature and therefore they could not want Revelation yet we have no ground to know any Communication between the Hebrews and them Neither were there a few Persons indued with that Light but a City and Common-wealth having Judges and Counsellors that sate at their Gates Balaam also knew and acknowledged the only true God not by Communication with the Israelites there being a vast distance and no Communication between Aram and Egypt The three Wise Men of the East that were led by a Star to come to Bethlehem when Christ was born could not possibly by Astrology have discovered the Birth of the Mediator and therefore did neither want Revelation nor a miraculous Sign Neither is there any ground to believe that they were Idolaters but that they knew and worshipped the true God and it is highly probable that they were not the only Persons of their Country that did so Yet they did not desire for ought I know to become Proselytes of the Jews Neither is there ground to doubt that Moab or Ammon the Sons of Lot or Ishmael and Abraham's other Sons by Keturah or Esau their nearest Posterity were convinced that there was but one God nor could their Posterity be soon brought to believe a Plurality of Gods So that we have no ground to doubt that the Knowledg of the one God did long and largely propagate it self in the World though through defect of History the Particulars be little known I do not hear of Idolatry before the Flood the cause of it in God's just Judgment is attributed to Mens corrupting of their Ways and the wickedness of their Works After the Flood the Notion of one God did long remain as appears by the common Name of Baal or Lord which was long almost universal and the several Nations that worshipped Baal gave him different Epithets according to their apprehension of his Attributes of which there is frequent mention in the Scripture So the Moabites God was Baal without addition the Sidonians also called their God Baal so did the Canaanites Some Nations called their God Baal Berith that is cursing Baal others Baal Gad Baal Hamon Baal Meon Baal Peor Baal Hanan Baal Hazor Baal Hermon Baal Perazin Baal Zebub the God of Ekron Places also were denominated from Baal as Baal Perazin Baal Shalisha Baal Zebub Baal Zephon and Bell of the Babylonians is but a different Dialect of Baal but that which was the Name of one God with different Epithets did easily come to be apprehended as so many Gods yet the several Nations did not worship many Gods but their own So after the Captivity of the ten Tribes those that were planted in their places being plagued conceived it was by the Anger of the God of that Place and therefore sent for the Jewish Priests to appease him The Greeks were the first that worshipped many Gods and after them the Romans for then the Souls of Men eminent upon Earth were supposed to be cooptated among the Gods in different Orders and as the Nations and Places had Interest in them they had Confidence in them and became forgetful of the true God After arose Images and the relative Honour and Worship attributed to them not only to the Images and Pictures of these Deified Men but also to those Bodies wherein the Gods were supposed to delight and to reside It is not imaginable that so many Men of Discretion and Spirit could with direct Worship adore inanimate Creatures or the meanest Brutes or Plants but that they thought they were delightful to and resided in by Deities and so the Sun the Moon Planets came to be worshipped even by those who did not believe that they had Life or Understanding or were Bodies informed by a Deity but that