Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	body_n	great_a	soul_n	2,575	5	4.9117	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A38021	The plague of the heart its [brace] nature and quality, original and causes, signs and symptoms, prevention and cure : with directions for our behaviour under the present judgement and plague of the Almighty / by John Edwards ...	Edwards, John, 1637-1716.	1665 (1665)	Wing E209; ESTC R41111	40,611	53

strength and by the malice of that evil Spirit it makes fresh assaults upon us and we are brought into it's subjection more then ever Lastly That which brings up the rear in the Body of sin is the decay of strength weakness universall languor and a sudden approach of death For as in the disease now reigning the spirits are seized upon their strength and vigour is exhausted and so consequently the motions and functions of the body are hindered and destroyed nature is debilitated and the strength failes so doth the Infected Sinner grow sicker and weaker fainter and feebler every day disabled to perform any offices of Christianity And the case being thus death is making it 's fatall approaches as we see in Infected Persons when the poyson hath fully seized on the throne of life and it's retinue the vitall spirits nothing but death is exspected the throbbs at the heart and the faint and uneven pulses are but as so many sad tolles of the Passing-Bell so may you even Ring out for the sinner after so many sad Symptoms that I have named it is no wonder that he dyeth and that being dead in sin he also dyeth eternally The disease then being in it self mortall let us learn from the Causes and Symptoms what may be the most effectuall way to prevent it and preserve our selves from it In order then to Prevention and a happy Cure Labour to know the disease 't is true here as in other distempers the perfect knowledge of them is half the cure Do therefore what thou canst to see the odiousness of sin in it self and how loathsome it makes us in the eyes of God who is of purer eyes then to behold iniquity All the laws of old about uncleaness as I have told you before were designed on purpose to express the pollution of sin for there is nothing but this can defile us nothing but this can separate us from the favour of God The Poets indeed present some of their Gods obscene and debauched lustfull and impure but our God as he is purity it self so nothing can make him abhorre a creature but what is contrary to it 'T is sin therefore and that onely which stains and defiles us which slurrs and debases us in the midst of all our riches and honours Again In order to the Cure know that the Spirituall Plague is the worst sort of Plagues all the Plagues inflicted on Pharaoh were nothing in comparison of his hardness of heart all the boyls and blains the froggs and lice and swarms of flies were not half so dangerous and destructive as the Plague of his heart For consider with me that 1. This seizes on the best part the soul of man which was made for God and bears his Superscription 2. This being a Spirituall Plague is therefore Invisible and hard to be discerned this rather then the other may be called the Pestilence that walketh in darkness it destroys silently and this M●rthering-piece as they say of a piece charged with white Powder goeth off without a Report Some sins there are which like Plants and Herbs have no visible motion in their growth they advance by degrees softly and insensibly though it must be confessed there are others which are so plain and palpable written in so large a Character that he that runs may read them Some persons indeed there are that are so fouly Infected that every one may see that their spot is not the spot of Gods Children But there are others that are not so much as suspected and they may pass for Clear-Corps let the spiritual Searchers be never so inquisitive The Prophet Ieremy gives the reason The heart is deceitfull above all things and desperately wicked who can know it The scene of vice is the Heart which is remote and therefore to be vitious and to be known to be so are two things Thus though in the late Philosophers sense The mind be more knowable then the body yet the diseases of the forner are harder to be discovered then those of the latter 3. As it destroys more silently so more suddenly then and Bodily Plague it hides it's fatall shafts for a while but then it surprises the poor sinner unawares and wounds him without hope of cure 4. It sticks closer and stays longer this is that which doth so easily beset us this is in the Apostles language Sin that dwels in us which is hereditary and inseparable and as I have told you already is like that fretting leprosie which could not be removed without demolishing of the house it self 'T is sad to consider how inveterate this Plague grows by custome and frequent practice Can the Aethiopian change his skin or the Leopard his spots then may ye also do good that are accustomed to do evill 5. It spreads further it diffuseth it's poyson on all our duties actions and performances the poyson is in the very fountain and so derives it's hurtfull nature to the streams or like polluted vessels we taint all that is poured into us We are all as an unclean thing and all our righteousness is as filthy raggs Our most solemn attendances on God in his Ordinances our praying hearing reading and conversing as well as all our actions in our particular callings are more or less touched with this Infection Therefore 6. It destroys greater numbers not unfitly is sin compared to leaven a little whereof leavens the whole lump Which I take to be the meaning of those words of the Preacher One sinner destroyeth much good he is able to infect whole Families and Towns if he be not carefully shut up the Bodily Plague may kill it 's thousands but this it 's ten thousands You have a Bill brought in every fortnight to tell you how many dye of the former but alas how many souls every week perish by the latter If you had the totall of those who are infected and dye of the Plague of sin not one Parish would be found clear no not one house which had not cause to put up a more pathetick Prayer then Lord have mercy on us More souls perish then bodies The Bill of Mortality runs high Broad is the way that leadeth to destruction and many there be which go in thereat That was a great Increase in the days of Noah When all flesh had corrupted it's way upon earth 7. This is the cause o● all other Plagues the forbidden fruit as if it had been strangely impoysoned shattered the goodly frame of our first Parents bodies and their posterity in all succeeding ages have fared abundantly the worse for that sinfull surfeit But besides this they are indamaged on another account their own actuall sins and the enormities of their lives have some of them in their own nature bred distempers in their bodies and all of them have moved God to punish them with severall sorts of diseases with the dreadfull Pestilence in a more signall manner and with the direfull Plagues

the Plague of Sin Afflictions are designed by God for our amendment Let that designe take effect upon us let those terrible Thunder-claps clear and purifie the air As Naturalists observe that one poison is an Antidote against another So let this grievous P●stilence which is now upon the Land and upon this Town drive out the Plague of the Heart Ringing of Bells they say is some ways serviceable to remove the Infection Oh! let every sad toll for our deceased Brethren put us in minde of our Mortality and promote the death of sin in us Lastly Keep a diet in order to the preserving of thy self from the Souls Plague Too high and plentifull a feeding increaseth any disease in us see that thou be moderate in the use of the creatures Take heed to thy self least at any time thy heart b● overcharged with surfetting and drunkeness and cares of this life Indulge not an intemperate course of living for death is in the pot which is set on by luxury and wantoness If thou callest thy self a Christian be content to be di●ted kept in and confined by the stricter rules of the Gospel And now what ever effect those usuall Medicines and Receipts may have for the curing of the Bodily Plague I am sure these that I have named are approved by Christ and his Apostles that great Colledge of Physitians you may take them safely and with confidence of success and I pray God give a blessing unto them And thus having insisted on the Metaphor in the Text I shall now treat more at large and descend to some plain Dir●ctions for our better behaviour in these sad times both in reference to the present visitation of the Plague and the sad concomitants of it poverty and necessity And the first Direction is this Be sensible of Gods Judgments now upon you and tremble at them Know therefore and see that it is an evill thing and bitter that you have forsaken the Lord your God This was the use which that Holy man made of Gods dismall providences My flesh trembleth for fear of thee and I am affraid of thy judgments And again Thou even thou art to be feared Who knows but that these present calamities are prologues and presages of far worser Certain it is that this is the duty incumbent on us at present to serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear seeing our God is a consuming fire Here then you are to be called upon to acknowledge that it is Gods Hand that is now heavy upon you Sh●ll there be any evill in a City and the Lord hath not done it No surely there is no evill in the great City of this Nation no evill or Plague in the Countrey but God must be acknowledged the author and disposer of it This is the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that divine superintendency in all our calamities which Hippocrates speaks of and frankly acknowledgeth in all diseases And Christians should much more allow of it looking beyond second causes to the first and chief of all Say not then that the influence of the starrs and heavenly bodies or the late glaring Comets which appeared were the causes of the burning feavers and malignant distempers and even of this fatall Pestilence which sweeps so many into their graves blame not this or that Indeed as Philosophers and Naturalists you are permitted to search into the secondary and physicall causes of this dreadfull distemper but as Christians and those that live by higher principles you are first to look up unto God and then down into your selves and there behold the Hand of the Lord stretched out against you God is the great Soveraign of the world the wise disposer of the Universe who doth what seemeth good unto him both in heaven and in earth If he shall please to correct and chastise us all naturall causes shall give way to his providence which can find us out though we labour to run never so far from it The Plague can climbe over walls never so high and strongly built it can come in at the windows though they are made never so fast it can make it's passage through the doors of the house though they are never so closely lockt and bolted Labour then to be convinced of this that there is a God that judgeth in the earth that you are in his hands and that whatever you suffer is by his disposall I even I am he and there is no God besides I kill and I make alive I wound and I heal neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand The Lord killeth and maketh alive he bringeth down to the grave and bringeth up And it is clear from Davids Choice that the Pestilence is more remarkably the Hand of God Let me fall now into the Hand of the Lord saith he and by Davids Seer it is stiled the sword of the Lord. The present Arrows of the Almighty are not like that with which Ahab was wounded which the Story tells us one shot at a venture No chance and fortune have nothing to do here Apollo was fitly feigned by the Poet to have sent the Pestilence into the Graecian Army no less then a God in their Divinity could do it But I pass to The second Direction Be more sensible of your sins then of the punishments that are upon you be more fearfull of the Plague of the Heart then of the present contagion that raigns in your streets be much more troubled in your souls to have committed a sin against God then to have it punished by him and for the future choose rather to undergo any suffering from men then to dishonour God Avoid that which grieves the Holy Spirit rather then what troubles and afflicts thy outward man How timorous are we and dejected at the thoughts of the Plagues approaching near us We have much more reason to be fearfull of sin which is the sting of all judgments We are apt to sit down and bemoan our selves after this manner Alas our condition is very sad the place we live in is Infected we see whole Families drop away here Parents are bereaved of their Children there the Children survive their Parents but alas are left shiftless to the wide world Many houses are shut up and onely sickness and death are Tenants there Neighbours are affraid of one another and it is not Trading but poverty and want which bring them to the sight of one another How many are buried as it were while they live and when they are dead they can hardly finde any one to befriend ●●em with a Grave What cryings and complainings are there in our streets and if Gods Hand should continue on us longer it will be hard to tell whether scarcity or the Sickness be the worst Plagues After this sort do we bemoan our selves under Gods judgments but where is the man among us that cryes out of his sins his sins Where is the spiritual mourner that lays