Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	bishop_n	henry_n	king_n	1,385	5	3.9180	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A53163	Moral essays contain'd in several treatises on many important duties. Third volume written in French, by Messieurs du Port Royal ; faithfully rendred into English by a person of quality.; Essais de morale. 3. volume. English	Nicole, Pierre, 1625-1695.; Person of quality.	1680 (1680)	Wing N1137AB; ESTC R41510	145,197	375

great Harm according to the good or bad use is made thereof 'T is one of the great means by which God exercises in the world his Mercy and Justice It hinders on the one part that the Just exalt not themselves nor loose themselves by the sight and knowledge of their proper excellence and it delivers them on the other part from the tentation which might be caused in them by the esteem and admiration of men who should know them It conserves them in the way of Faith in depriving them of the sight of onething which would draw them from it by motives too human For if St. Austin say Aug. de Civir l. 15. c. 4. that God hath not been willing that the renewing which Grace produceth in our Souls should extend it self even to the Body by conferring immortality to it lest the hope we ought to have in him should be too interressed If this same Saint ascertain that it is by the same reason that he permits the just to be afflicted in this world as well as the wicked for fear we should aim in the services which we render to God to exempt our selves from temporal evils We may likewise say That he permits us not to see the excellence of a just Souls beauty and the horrible deformity of a Soul in sin lest it should be through these interessed motives that we should desire justice and have an horror for sin 11. But if this obscurity produce some good in respect of some it may be said that it produces very great evils in respect of others and that 't is the principal cause of wicked mens blindess For 't is that makes worldly people believe that there is nothing in men worthy of esteem but what flatters their senses and contemn most part of honest and good men not seeing in them what they love What is told them of the good of the soul they look upon it as a meer imagination because they neither perceive nor see it Thus they distinguish men only by the outward qualities and by the relation they have to their passions and as virtuous men participate always of the Spirit of the World they participate also a little of this Illusion The too great tyes they have of outward qualities take from them the sentiment of the spiritual misery of many Souls and often also they have not the esteem they ought to have of the real Goods others possesse because they are covered with outward faults of which they are too sensible This is one of the most ordinary means whereby Jesus Chist is scandalized in his members For as the Jews would that their Messias should be environed with rayes of Glory we would also that honest men should have no defect neither inwardly nor outwardly and unless they have this agreeableness which strikes our senses we have a propensity to condemn them as seeing their faults and their miseries but not their Riches and their Goods 12. This scandal increases infinitely when these faults which we observe in them are not simple natural faults but faults of manners and true and absolute faults For if we only need to beg of God to preserve us from the tentation which springs from thence there is danger that these faults which we see in those who pass for pious men do humble and debase them so in our sight that we deprive our selves of the edification which we might draw from all the other virtues which we observe in them Oftentimes these virtues are suspected by us we begin to apprehend that we have been deceived We know not what to stick to and we enter into a certain despair of finding in the world solid virtues 13. This tentation is at the same time very dangerous and very ordinary For it is a hard thing to live long with pious people but we shall find in them many faults not only imaginary but true and real ones Human Wit never hides it self absolutely They suffer themselves to be cheated and beguiled They are carried away by unjust prejudices they are sometimes precipitate in their judgments We see some who are resolved in their thoughts others who are curious and delicate in what concerns them nearly Others who are tender and nice in small inconveniences There are some that their zeal carries to excesses Lastly There are almost none in whom nature shews not her self by many ways But if men thereupon are inclined to condemn them they come to condemn all the world and to pass from aversion for faults to aversion for men according to this saying of an antient person Qui vitia odit homines odit 14. 'T is good therefore to fortify our selves against this tentation by considerations which may be found in Faith Now Faith furnishes us with what may be able to dissipate this tentation if we apply our selves seriously to it For Faith shews us that the faults of the just are profitable to them in divers manners as hath already been said and likewise that oftentimes God permits them more for others than for themselves He darkens their splendor that those who deserve not to enjoy it may be deprived of it He takes from before our eyes their good examples to punish us for not having profited by them he holds back the odor of their Piety because the world hath not received it as it ought 15. We are scandalized then often at certain faults in just men which are not so much for them as for us They hurt them not but they hurt us they are Thorns which are good for them because they warrant their Piety from the danger it would be in of being withered by mens praises but these Thorns wounding us hinder us from approaching and from perceiving the good smell of them And thus there are none but we who loose thereby 16. Just mens faults enter into the order of Providence and often God makes use of them to execute his greatest designs against the wicked Possibly St. Chrysistome might have dealt better with Aroadia and Eudoxia and that if he had done so they had not abandoned him to the fury of Theophilus But because Theophilus and the wicked Bishops of that time deserved to be abandoned to their passions and blinded by a success conform to their designs God did permit this Saint to follow the heat of his zeal 17. There are virtuous men who examining the Life of St. Thomas of Canterbury were perswaded to believe that he might without violating the Laws of the Church have yielded to many things which King Henry the Second desired of him yet the heart of this Holy Bishop being right and the heart of King Henry corrupted the proceedings of this Saint being Humble and Just the Kings proceedings violent and unjust God rather judged of this difference by the purity of the Saints Heart and the wickedness of his adversary than by the bottom of the cause and did not omit to justify him by many miracles when the whole Church was divided