Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n
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A47236
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The royal sufferer A manual of meditations and devotions. Written for the use of a royal, tho' afflicted family. By T- K- D.D.
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Ken, Thomas, 1637-1711.
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1699
(1699)
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Wing K278; ESTC R221355
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65,492
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190
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The Royal Sufferer A MANUAL OF MEDITATIONS AND DEVOTIONS Written for the Use of a Royal tho' Afflicted FAMILY By T K D. D. Printed in the Year 1699. TO THE KING Great Sir PErmit me I beseech You to lay at Your Royal Feet this small Manual which has no other design but the Supporting of Your Sacred Majesty and Your Faithful Friends and Adherents under those Calamities which Your Majesty has born with so much Magnanimity Patience and Christian Resolution that it shews You to be the Heir not only of Your Royal Father's Crown but of his Afflictions and Sufferings Exerting the like Constancy and Courage under them as that Blessed Martyr did 'T is true indeed Your Royal Father was a Protestant and Liv'd and Dy'd in and for that Profession and I cou'd heartily wish that Your Majesty was so too For then we might quickly hope to see an end of our present Miseries in a short time But tho' so great a Blessing be deny'd us yet shall my Loyalty and Duty approve it self the same as if You were 〈◊〉 for I cannot conceive what ever some may think that Your Majesty's being of another Perswasion than my self can discharge me from my Allegiance to You. And I hope Your Majesty will not the less regard what I have here Written because I profess my self as I always did to be a Member and an Vnworthy Son of the Church of England For as it has always been my Iudgement that he that Believes Lives and Prays according to the Rules that Christ has given us is a True Christian and a happy Man so I believe that the next way to Heaven is not to look after Controversie but Conscience and to spend our Zeal and Time not in being Contentious but Religious And therefore wheresoever I live in the Christian World whither East or West it is not my being a good Scholar that will make me happy but a good Christian not a Learned Disputant for Christ but a Devout Servant to him Nor the being of such or such a Party or side in the Church but a True Member of his Body AND if Your Majesty wou'd Vouchsafe to bear with me a little I cou'd easily demonstrate this to be the most Safe Way For if I am Regenerated by the holy Spirit and made a Christian by true Baptism believing the Scriptures can it with any Colour of Reason be Suppos'd that I shall suffer Damnation for not equally Believing Traditions And if I make Conscience to serve and Worship GOD can it be thought I shall Perish for not Worshiping Images If I pray to GOD as our Blessed Saviour hath taught me saying Our Father c. Who can think I should incur the Sentence of Damnation for not Invocating Saints and Angels And if I receive the holy Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ in both kindes according to Christ's Institution as even the Roman Church Confesses who can believe I shall be damned because the Cup is taken away by a Council THESE things I urge with all humility only to let Your Majesty see what reason I have to believe the Protestant Religion to be the most Safe Way And if through the Divine Blessing they should be made Efficacious to cause Your Majesty to Return to and Embrace the Religion professed even to Death by Your Royal Father for whom I am sure You have so justly a great Veneration it wou'd be the Ioy and Rejoycing of all Your People and wou'd open a Door of hope to 'em even in this Valley of Achor But if for our Sins we shall still be depriv'd of so great a Blessing it is yet our Duty to submit to the Soveraign Will of our Almighty Maker and to continue our Loyalty to Your Majesty praying That the Divine Goodness would graciously support You under those great and many Troubles wherewith it has pleased Him to Exercise You here and at last to Translate You to a brighter Crown even a Crown of Immarcessible Glory Which is the Daily and Earnest Prayer of Your Majesties most Loyal Faithful and Obedient Subject and Servant T. K. INTRODUCTION HAVING with grief of Heart observed that Uninterrupted Series of Afflictions that has now for some Years attended one of the most Royal Families in Europe to which I have the Honour to be particularly related and thereby am involved in their common Fate my self having run the same Risque with that of my Royal Master and suffered the loss of all as well as He I have thought it my Duty by the Ensuing Meditations to cast my Mite into the Royal Treasury and by considering the Vicissitude and Uncertainty of all Sublunary States and Things to offer some Support under that weight of Sorrow which a Mind less Magnanimous than that of our Great Master would have sunk under long ago AND since the Holy Scriptures do inform us that Afflictions rise not out of the Ground neither does Trouble spring out of the Dust it will not be unnecessary to inquire into the Cause from whence our great and sore Calamities arise for as in the Case of a Diseased Body to know the Cause from whence the Morbifick Affect proceeds is accounted half the Cure so if by a thorow search we can come to know the Cause why it has pleas'd the Soveraign Majesty of Heaven to Bring and to Continue these Calamiries upon us it may accompany'd with the Divine Blessing go a great way towards the Removal of them There being nothing more certain than that the way to have our Offended Maker Reconcil'd unto us is To Search our Hearts and try our Ways and to turn unto Him against whom we have sinned and so may we hope He will have Mercy upon us and say to the Proud Waves of Affliction that have so long been rolling over our heads Thus far have ye gone but ye shall proceed no further and here shall your proud Waves be stopped For the same GOD that puts a stop to the Raging of the Sea can soon put a Period to the Madness of the People and bring back our Captivity as the Streams in the South NOW since the Loss of what we formerly Enjoy'd is that which makes us the most Uneasie and gives us the greatest Disquiet I will first Endeavour to remove it by giving you a Scheme of the Vanity and Emptiness of all those things and consequently that it is not worth our while to afflict our selves for the Loss of that which is so Fading and Transitory in its own Nature and when Enjoy'd in its greatest Advantages adds so very little to our happiness Which things are properly reducible to three Heads viz. Honours Riches and Pleasures which I shall distinctly consider in Meditations upon each And that what I write may be the more effectual to the End for which it is written I shall Address my self to the Divine Majesty for a Blessing thereupon A PRAYER O Most Gracious and Blessed GOD who art the Source and Fountain of
our selves more Our Strength is to sit still and to wait for the Salvation of God For when he works there 's none can let it and till he does arise and work all we can do will be in vain And this many have found to their cost Let us learn to be wise by other mens harms There are many Devices in the heart of Man but the Counsel of the Lord that shall stand And whoever goes about to resist it will find him self sadly deceiv'd I will always maintain my Loyalty to the King and quietly submit to the Power that Protects me That so I may keep a Conscience void of offence both towards God and towards Man And it is the grief of my heart to see any otherwise minded For if we must not Speak wickedly for God nor Talk deceitfully for him much less must we Act wickedly for him And yet I would be found doing too I mean I would be found in the daily Exercise of Faith and Repentance and endeavour to get a broken and a contrite Heart for my past Sins because God has assur'd me that with such Sacrifices he is well pleased The Soul's Expostulation AND now O my Soul consider with thy self If Sin be the procuring Cause of all thy Troubles hast thou not greater Reason to be troubled for thy Sins than for thy Sufferings Afflictions may make thee better but Sin always makes thee worse It may be necessary sometimes to chuse Sorrow but it never can be so to chuse Sin 'T is God alone is that Wise Alchymist that can Extract Good from Evil and make even the Sins of his People turn to his Glory Thus through the working of God's Grace thy Pride may tend to humble thee and a due sence of thy Passion may produce Patience But this is alone the Effect of God's Grace for the Nature of Sin is only Evil. What reason then O my Soul hast thou to bless God who has made thy Outward Losses prove thy Inward Gain by taking thee off from the Pursuit of Sin and Training thee up in the School of Affliction Sure O my Soul it concerns thee to see what good Lessons thou hast learn'd there for if thou art not the better for 't thou wilt certainly be the worse Affliction is a Furnace and if thou comest not forth purified like Gold thy dross will appear the more But if thou canst say with David It has been good for me that I have been afflicted thou hast great cause to bless God for it If these Trials have done thee good what hast thou to complain of And if by the light of Affliction thou hast seen the greatness of thy Sin and that sight of Sin has humbled thee and brought thee to Repentance thou art hereby become a greater Gainer than all the outward Prosperity in the World could make thee For there is no Comparison between Temporal Losses and Spiritual Gains For all the things that are seen are but Temporal but the things that are not seen are Eternal How blessed a thing is it O my Soul to be afflicted Seeing these light Afflictions that are but for a moment work out for thee a far more Exceeding and Eternal Weight of Glory T his O my Soul is enough not only to make them rejoyce but even glory in Tribulations since they have so blessed an effect See then O my Soul that thy Tribulation worketh Patience and Patience Experience and Experience Hope even that Hope which maketh not ashamed and so shalt thou have rejoycing in thy self and not in another A PRAYER O Almighty and merciful Lord God who madest all things for thy own Glory and canst Over-rule all Events so as to bring glory to thy Name and good to thy People out of the darkest of thy Dispensations towards them Grant I beseech Thee that these Afflictions with which thou hast been pleased to Exercise me may by thy gracious Ordination bring forth the Peaceable fruits of Righteousness unto me that I may be Enabled to say It is good for me that I have been Afflicted And suffer me not O Lord neither to despise thy chastening by going on in those Ways of Sin and Rebellion against thee which have brought thy Iudgments down upon this Nation nor to defer my Repentance for those Iniquities which I have been guilty of And since thou hast declared in thy Word That he which hideth his Sins shall not prosper but that those who confess 'em and forsake 'em shall find Mercy Help me I humbly beseech thee with all thy People to make our Confession unto thee and to acknowledge that we have sinned and have committed Iniquity and have rebelled by departing from thy Precepts and thy Iudgments neither have we hearken'd to thy Servants the Ministers which spoke in thy Name to our Kings our Princes and our Fathers and to all the People of the Land And therefore O Lord Righteousness belongs unto thee but unto us Confusion of face as at this day to our King our Princes and our Iudges because we have sinned against thee And have added this Evil unto all the rest that yet we have not made our Prayer before the Lord our God that we might turn from our Iniquities and understand thy Truth O Lord our God we pray thee hear encline thine Ear and open thine Eyes and behold our low Estate For we do not present these our Supplications before thee for our Righteousness sake but for thy great Mercies through Iesus Christ our Lord and only Saviour Our Father c. Meditation V. Of the Benefit and Advantage of Afflictions WE have in the former Meditation Enquir'd into the Nature of Afflictions they are Evils in themselves not joyous but grievous and into the Causes of them which generally is Sin and what some of those Sins are we have also examin'd and found our selves to be concern'd in them which calls for our hearty Sorrow and Repentance But as a wife Physician will so temper Poyson as not only to allay its Venom but turn it into an Antidote so does the great Physician of our Souls do with Afflictions making them work together for our Good and bring forth for us the Peaceable Fruits of Righteousness And here I will a little Meditate upon the reasons why it pleases God to Afflict his Children and what the Benefits are that we reap thereby 1. Because we might shew our Conformity to our Blessed Redeemer who first Suffered and then Entered into his Glory In like manner we are told that if we suffer with him we shall also reign with him And the greater Tryals we endure here the brighter will our Crown of Glory shine hereafter The Author to the Hebrews having given a large account of the sufferings of the People of God in former Ages and of their not accepting Deliverance gives this as the reason that they expected a better Resurrection Agreeable to which our Lord tells us That those that are persecuted here for Righteousness sake