Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	blood_n	matter_n	part_n	1,493	5	4.5242	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A42766	A sermon preached before the Honourable House of Commons at their late solemne fast Wednesday, March 27, 1644 by George Gillespie.	Gillespie, George, 1613-1648.	1644 (1644)	Wing G757; ESTC R24966	43,436	52

be destruction Is it a light matter to swear and blaspheme to coine and spread lies to devise calumnies to break Treaties to contrive trecherous plots to exercise so many barbarous cruelties to shed so much blood and as if that were too little to bury men quick Is all this no matter of shame And when they have so often professed to be for the true Protestant Religion shall they not be ashamed to thirst so much after Protestant blood and in that cause desire to associate themselves with all the Papists at home and abroad whose assistance they can have and particularly with those matchlesse monsters they call them Subjects of Ireland who if the computation fail not have shed the blood of some hundred thousands in that Kingdome for our part it seems they are resolved to give the worst name to the best thing which wee can doe and therefore they have not been ashamed to call a Religious and Loyall Covenant a traiterous and damnable Covenant I have no pleasure to take up these and other dunghills the Text hath put this in my mouth which I have said O that they could recover themselves out of g the gall of bitternesse and bond of iniquity O that we could hear that they begin to be ashamed of their abominations h Lord when thy hand is lifted up they will not see but they shall see and be ashamed for their envie at thy people i The Lord shall appear to your joy and they shall be ashamed But now in the second place let me speak to the Kingdom and to you whom it concerneth this day to be humbled both for your own sins and for the sins of the Kingdom which you represent Although your selves whom God hath placed in this honourable station the Kingdom which God hath blessed with many choice blessings be much and worthily honoured among the children of men yet when you have to do with God and with that wherein his great Name and his glory is concerned you must not think of honouring but rather abashing your selves creeping low in the dust Livius k tels us that when M. Claud. Marcellus would have dedicate a Temple to Honour and Vertue the Priests hindered it quod utri Deo res divina fi eret sciri non posset because so it could not be known to which of the two Gods he should offer sacrifice farre be it from any of you to suffer the will of God and your own credit to come in competition together or to put back any point of truth because it may seem peradventure some way to wound your reputation though when all is well examined it shall be found your glory You are now about the casting out of many corruptions in the government of the Church and worship of God Remember therefore it is not enough to cleanse the house of the Lord but you must be humbled for your former defilements wherewith it was polluted It is not enough that England say with Ephraim in l one place What have I to do any more with Idols England must say also with Ephraim in m another place Surely after that I was turned I repented and after that I was instructed I smote upon my thigh I was ashamed and even confounded because I did bear the reproach of my youth Let England sit down in the dust and wallow it selfe in ashes and cry out as n the Lepers did Unclean Unclean and then rise up and cast away the least superstitious Ceremony o as a menstruous cloth and say unto it Get thee hence I know that those who are not convinced of the intrinsecall evill and unlawfulnesse of former corruptions may upon other considerations go along and joyne in this Reformation For according to p Augustines rule men are to let go those ecclesiasticall customes which neither Scriptures nor Councels bind upon us nor yet are universally received by all Churches And according to Ambrose his rule to Valentinian Epist. 31. Nullus pudor est ad meliora transive It is no shame to change that which is not so good for that which is better So doth q Arnobius answer the Pagans who objected the novelty of the Christian Religion you should not look so much saith he quid reliquerimus as quid secuti simus be rather satisfied with the good which we follow then to quarrell why we have changed our former practise He giveth instance that when men found the art of weaving clothes they did no longer clothe themselves in skins and when they learned to build Houses they left off to dwell in rocks and caves All this carrieth reason with it for Optimum est eligendum If all this doe not satisfie it may be r Nazianzens rule move some man when there was a great stirre about his Archbishoprik of Constantinople he yeelded for peace because this storm was raised for his sake he wished to be cast into the Sea He often professeth that he did not affect riches nor dignities but rather to be freed of his Bishoprick We are like to listen long before we heare such expressions either from Arch-bishop or Bishop in England who seem not to care much who sink so that themselves swim above Yet I shall name one rule more which I shall take from the confessions of two English Prelats s One of them hath this Contemplation upon Hezekiahs taking away the brazen Serpent when he perceived it to be superstitiously abused Superstitious use saith he can marre the very institutions of God how much more the most wise and well grounded devices of men t Another of them acknowledgeth that whatsoever is taken up at the iniunction of men and is not of Gods own prescribing when it is drawn to superstition commeth under the case of the Brazen Serpent You may easily make the assumption and then the conclusion concerning those Ceremonies which are not Gods institutions but mens devices and have been grossely and notorlously abused by many to Superstition Now to return to the point in hand if upon all or any of these or the like principles any of this Kingdom shall joyn in the removall of corruptions out of the Church which yet they do not conceive to be in themselves and intrinsecally corruptions in Religion In this case I say as u the Apostle in another place I therein do rejoyce and will rejoyee because every way Reformation is set forward But let such a one look to himselfe how the Doctrine drawn from this Text falleth upon him that he who onely ceaseth to do evill but repenteth not of the evill he who applieth himselfe to reformation but is not ashamed of former defilements is in danger both of Gods displeasure and of miscarrying in his judgement about Reformation It is farre from my meaning to discourage any who are with humble and upright hearts seeking after more light then yet they have I say it only for their