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	receive_v	truth_n	1,611	5	5.9464	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A49146	Notitia historicorum selectorum, or, Animadversions upon the antient and famous Greek and Latin historians written in French by ... Francis La Mothe le Vayer ... ; translated into English, with some additions by W.D. ...; Des anciens et principaux historiens grecs et latins dont il nous reste quelques ouvrages. English	La Mothe Le Vayer, François de, 1583-1672.; D'Avenant, William, Sir, 1606-1668.	1678 (1678)	Wing L301; ESTC R16783	125,384	274

uttered in his Commendation Although that passage of Josephus concerning Jesus Christ and the primitive times of Christianity was quoted as we have already shown in Eusebius his time and since by Great men it is suspected by many others who think it foisted or thrust into the Text of Josephus by one of those pious frauds which they pretend to have been sometimes used in favour of Religion Baronius who is not of their mind saies that place was found strook out in an Hebrew Manuscript of the Jews in Rome which he delivers not for the proper language of Josephus as it might have been according to Eusebius but onely for a translation from Greek into Hebrew This justifies the Antiquity of the passage and the animosity of the Jews against our belief rather than it fully decides the Question And though the same Cardinal endeavours to shew in another place that which could humanly induce Josephus to give such a glorious Testimony of our Saviour without a Divine impulsion which possibly might force him to it nevertheless he allows this passage as we have it now to be incorrect and that other to be more like truth as it was received in S t Hieromes time where Josephus does not affirm that Jesus was the expected Christ Christus hic erat but onely that he was believed to be so credebatur esse Christus There is cause to wonder how it happened that Photius never remembred so notable a passage in Three different Sections wherein he examins this Author The chief thing is that those Ages are past in which the Authority of Josephus was so important to the establishment of the Church yet they that will make use of it in this either against the Jews or otherwise may well do it after so many Fathers whose opinions it is alwaies allowed to follow But we ought to take heed of the omissions of Josephus which tend to the suppression of many Evangelical truths For though he made no mention of the coming of the Wise men into Judaea no more than the Massacre of the young Innocents spoke of by S t Mathew it does not follow that we should doubt ever so little of that which we read of it in the History of the Gospel Truly it is very strange that Josephus who pardoned Herod nothing who remembred well how that Tyrant had burned or cut the Throats of a great number of young men with their teachers for having beat down the Roman Eagle from the Gate of the Temple of Hierusalem and who has so expressly shown us all the other crimes of the same man namely in that Oration of the Jews spoke at Rome against his memory in the presence of the Emperor that this Josephus I say should not have said the least word of so cruel an action so odious and so noised abroad as the murder of so many poor Infants put to death by the command of Herod must needs have been But his forgetfulness or Jewish malice if he concealed it wittingly cannot prejudice truth nor be alledged against the Authority of our Sacred Texts and that of a Pagan also such as Maerobius which is express for that in the Second Book of his Saturnals where he rehearses Augustus his words to this effect That it was better to be one of Herods Swine than his Child Josephus moreover has writ many things in his Antiquities quite contrary to what Moses has done in which he cannot be followed without impiety As for the rest it cannot be denied that he taught as many fine curiosities of the History of his Country which we should be ignorant of without him who has delivered them very well to us though it has been observed that he did not alwaies agree with his Country-man Philo in his relations That which ought to recommend his History very much unto us is that besides the advantage he had by his extraction since knowledg and the Priesthood were in a strict union amongst the Jews he was so well instructed in learning from his most tender years that at the Age of Fourteen as he writes the chief Prelates and Principal men of Hierusalem asked his Counsel in the greatest difficulties of the Law At Sixteen years old he applied himself to the study of what was particular to each of the Three Sects which were current in his Country the Pharisean the Saducean and the other which was called the Essenian whose professors were very Austere and solitary in their way of life One of them called Banus lived in the Desert as the strictest Hermits of this time his food was of Fruit and Herbs covering himself with nothing but leaves or barks of Trees and washing his Body Night and Day in cold Water against the temptation of the flesh Josephus passed Three years with this Anchorite which ended he betook himself again to a civil life and made publick profession of following the Pharisean Sect which he maintains to be very like unto the Stoick that has been so much valued by the Greeks and Latins It is certain that none but the Pharisees made publick profession of Politicks and partaked in the government of the State so that if a Saducee was compelled to be a Magistrate which he alwaies undertook very unwillingly the People obliged him to yeild to the opinion of the Pharisees and to be guided by their Maxims as may be seen in Josephus where he treats of these Three forementioned Sects and of a Fourth which was a refinement of the Pharisean Thus according to the Principals of his Sect he accepted the chief emploiments amongst the Jews either in Peace or War which gives a marvellous Authority to his History as being ordinarily composed of things which he saw himself and actions wherein he had often the greatest share We must take heed of confounding as Munster has done the false Josephus commonly called Josippus Gorionides who also made or rather falsified a History of the Jewish War with our Historian When this Pseudo-Josephus in his Third Book placed Goths in Spain and in his Fifth made Gallia to be possessed by the French he sufficiently declared his impertinence to have aspired thereby to pass for the true Josephus in whose time there were neither Goths in Spain nor French in Gallia It is filled throughout with the like repugnancies which are so plain that nothing but the credulity of the Jews of these last Ages can endure it whose ingenuity alone consists in cheating themselves Scaliger takes this man for a Circumcised French man who is not a very ancient Author or at least has writ since the Sixth Age of our Salvation But the Invective which I have already used in the Chapter of Xenophon against such Impostours deters me from declaming any more against them REFLECTIONS UPON THE HISTORY OF ARRIAN IN the time of Adrian the Emperor and his two successors Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Arrian the Macedonian began to write his

learned men of his Age to take care of the instruction of Claudius who afterwards was Emperor and in his younger years by the advice of this his Tutor as Suetonius reports he undertook to write the Roman History of which he gave many volumes to the Publick which are lost to us As to the writings of Livy the last and most considerable thereof is the History which reached from the foundation of Rome to the death of Drusus in Germany the fine contexture whereof the agreeable narrations and the pleasing easiness makes him to be compared to Herodotus and placed in the first rank of the Latin Historians It was not at first divided by Decades as we now see it That is a recent distribution or distinction whereof no mention appears in Florus his Abbreviator nor in any of the Ancients and which Politian Petrarch with Petrus Crinitus have already disputed Of the Hundred and Forty or Hundred and Two and Forty Books which it contained there remain not above Five and Thirty nor are they all in an uninterrupted continuation for the whole Second Decade is wanting and we have but the First the Third and the Fourth with half of the Fifth which was found at Wormes by one Simon Gryneus The beginning of the Forty Third book has been also lately recovered by the means of a Manuscript in the Library of the Chapter of Bamberg but this fragment is a little contested Francisous Bartholinus that brought it from Germany into Italy Antonius Quaerengus and Gaspar Lusignanus the Author of the first impression judge it Authentick But Vossius and some others on the contrary pretend that it is a counterfeit piece and can be only imposed on those who have ears like Midas For the remaining Fourteen Decades we must rest satisfied with that Summary or Epitomy which Florus compiled if he was the Author of a work which many persons condemn believing him to have been the cause of the loss of Livys writings a loss that cannot be enough lamented This is the opinion of Bodin who likewise accuses Justin for having done the same prejudice to Trogus Pompeius Xiphilinus and Dion in epitomizing them Casaubon is also of this mind who thinks that the brief collection made by Constantine of a body of History in Fifty Three parts occasioned the neglect of the Authors that composed it which were afterwards lost But if the Three Decades and a half which we have of Livy make us deplore the want of the rest they are yet sufficient to represent him to our esteem most worthy of the Elogies which he received from the Ancients The most celebrated whereof was that yielded to him two hundred years ago by Alphonso King of Arragon when he sent his Embassador to demand of the Citizens of Padua and obtained from them as a pretious relique the bone of that Arm wherewith this their famous Country-man had writ his History causing it to be conveyed to Naples with all sorts of honour as the most estimable present could be made him And it is said that he recovered his health from a languishing indisposition by the delight he had in reading the same History But it is strange to consider with how much passion others went about to defame if they could a person of such rare merit In the Age wherein he lived Asinius Pollio arraigned his Stile which he called Patavinity Augustus taxed him of having favoured Pompey's party but did not therefore diminish his good will towards him And Caligula a while after accused him of negligence on the one side and too excessive redundancy of words on the other taking away his image and writings from all Libraries where he knew they were curiously preserved But the capricious and Tyrannick humour of this Prince was exercised in the same manner towards the works and Statues of Virgil. And he would have suppressed the Verses of Homer pretending that his power ought to be no less than Plato's who had prohibited the reading them in his Imaginary Republick Moreover hating Seneca and all men of eminent Virtue it came into his head to abolish the knowledg of Laws with all those Lawyers whose learned decisions were respected But the humorous conceit of such a Monster cannot prejudice Livy nor those others we named no more than that of Domitian a second prodigy of Nature who put to death through a like animosity Metius Pomposianus because amongst others he delighted to expose some Orations of Kings and Generals collected by him out of Livy's History The Testimony of Augustus is full of moderation he declares that the same History instead of flattering the victorious Party could not condemn that of the good and most honest men in the Common-wealth who had all listed themselves on Pompey's side which rather tends to the commendation of Livy than otherwise But that which Pollio finds fault with in all his observations is a thing which deserves to be a little more reflected on The most common opinion is that this Roman Lord accustomed to the delicacy of the language spoke in the Court of Augustus could not bear with certain Provincial Idioms which Livy as a Paduan used in divers places of his history Pignorius is of another mind and believes that this odious Patavinity had respect only to the Orthography of certain words wherein Livy used one letter for another according to the custome of his Country writing sibe and quase for sibi and quasi which he proves by divers Ancient inscriptions Some think that it consisted meerly in a repetition or rather multiplicity of many Synonymous words in one period contrary to what was practised at Rome where they did not affect such a redundancy which denoted a Forreigner Others report that the Paduans having alwaies been of Pompey's Party which was apparently the justest as we have observed Pollio that was a Caesarian derided Livys Patavinity and accused him of having shown too great an inclination for the unhappy faction of the vanquished which seems so much the likelier by the conformity it has with that opinion of Augustus which we already mentioned There are those who likewise affirm that Livy's partiality for those of Padua appeared manifestly in those books which are lost where he was led by his Subject to an immoderate praise of his Country-men It is the same fault which Polybius imputed to Philinus as a Carthaginian and Fabius as a Roman And many modern Historians have been charged therewith whereof Guicciardin was one who to oblige the Floreutines dwells so long upon the least concerns of their State and amplifies so much their smallest actions that he often becomes troublesome and sometimes ridiculous in many mens judgment The quaint Distich of Actius Syncerus against that of Poggius on the like occasion renders it altogether despicable Dum patriam laudat damnat dum Poggius hostem Nec malus est civis nec bonus historicus They who rather imagine than prove a like passion in