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	life_n	soul_n	5,160	5	5.5664	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A25853	The nevv heresie of the Jesuits publickly maintain'd at Paris in the Colledge of Clermont, by conclusions, printed 12 Decemb., 1661, denounced to all the bishops of France / translated out of the French original.; Nouvelle hérésie des Jésuites. English	Arnauld, Antoine, 1612-1694.	1662 (1662)	Wing A3730; ESTC R15927	16,007	24

unto him Confertim autem percussit cum Angelus Domini eo quod non dedisset honorem Deo And yet how much lesse criminal was the flattery of that people then this of the Jesuites theirs might have passed for a sudden transport of joy not regulated by reason and sometimes the Holy Scripture it self gives the Name of God to Supream Judges and Princes But here is given to the Pope deliberately upon a laid Defign and by way of establishing a Dogmatical Assertion of Theologie not an empty and insignificant name but one of the most glorious Attributes of God and most incommunicable to a creature to wit that his Word should have entailed upon it such an infallibility as to deserve that submission of divine Faith which cannot without Idolatry be rendred to any but the first and soveraign Verity For the like cannot be said in this question which those who maintain the Popes infallibility in matters of Faith are wont to answer That in beleeving the decisions of the Pope they do not build their Faith on the word of a man because he doth but propose what hath been formerly revealed by God in Holy Scripture and Tradition and so their faith relies still on the Word of God Nothing I say like this can be applied to the matter in hand in regard whereof the Jesuites pretend That the Pope is as infallible as Jesus Christ and that his decision is an Object of Divine Faith For when the Pope shall propose a fact of the 17 th Age as that certain Heretical Propositions were taught by an Author of those times it cannot be pretended that he proposes a matter revealed in Scripture or Tradition He may well say I judge it to be thus but he cannot say God hath revealed it He may speak as from himself but he cannot say God hath spoken Dominus locutus est And as it is a man that speaks and not God all they who hold that one may beleeve with divine Faith a decision of this nature do most visibly commit the like abominable excess which that blinded people did by crying out with them Voces Dei non hominis And albeit the Popes piety be a sufficient Antidote to preserve him from being poisoned with this sacrilegious opinion nevertheless they who present this poison unto him cannot excuse themselves from being as guilty towards him as were those wretched Sycophants towards their King of whose death they were the cause by their impious flatteries For a man is not then only esteemed a murderer either of the soul or body when effectively he takes away the life of one or the other but also when he lays a cause which of its own nature is sufficient to work the death of either though the effect do not follow So S. Cyprian calls those Christians Parricides who through fear of persecution offered up to the Idols their sucking Infants because although they could not really deprive them of the life of Grace which they had received in Baptism by this Idolatry whereunto they were in no sort consenting as S. Austin remarks they did notwithstanding what lay in them to bereave them of it In illis quidem interfectionem non faciunt sed quantum in ipsis est interfectores fiunt Flatter not your selves saith S. Austin speaking to those who give occasion to others of committing sin upon account that your brother is not dead by the scandal you gave him it is true he is not dead and yet you are murderers Et ille vivit tu homicida es One may say the same to the Jesuites in respect of the Pope whom they go about to poison with so pestiferous an opinion Non sibi blandiantur quia ille non est mortuus ille vivit isti homicidae sunt But it is not the Pope only before whose feet they cast this stumbling block but even the generality of the faithful by perswading them to build their belief on the word of a man and to submit their judgements thereunto as to the first Verity which as hath been shewed cannot be done without a kinde of Idolatry Insomuch that the Jesuites are near upon the same impiety with those Hereticks who would have Divine honours exhibited to the Blessed Virgin for as the true respect and veneration due to her as the most holy of Creatures took not any thing off from the crime of those Hereticks and their followers even so the reverence which all the faithful ought to bear to the Head of the Church will in no sort exempt them from a heavy sin before almighty God if through the deceit of the Jesuites they give unto the words of a man how eminent soever he may be in the Church that soveraign difference of divine Faith which cannot without impiety be given to any thing but the Word of God himself Worldly men make small accompt of these kind of sins because being wholy buried in flesh and blood none but grosse and material Objects make Impression on them Deluded devotes permit themselves to be easily carried away with these excesses because they imagin it to be a part of their false Piety to imbrace blindly whatever contibutes to the honour and advantage of those things and persons for which they ought to have a respect and from this root are sprung all those opinions which they call pious without ever examining whether they be true or false as if a falsity could be the object of piety or that God who is truth could be honoured with the unclean Sacrifice of a Lie But you My Lord know that all those who have been nourished with the true spirit of Christianity make a far different judgement hereof they equally hate a lie to whose advantage soever it redound whether of the Pope or the Blessed Virgin or of Jesus Christ himself which yet would a little startle a man to hear had not St. Austin expresly taught it For this Holy Father fears not to maintain that if a lye or calomny which one makes use of to take away the temporal life of Man be a detestable crime That is yet a far greater which tends to the destruction of his spiritual life as all manner of lyes in matter of Religion even though employed in giving false praises to Jesus Christ For which reason the same Father says that a Christian would commit a notorious folly who would not rather expose himself to all manner of indignities even those that strike the greatest horror into pious Souls then condescend to the insolence of a person that would force him to corrupt the holy Gospel thereby to bestow false praises upon Jesus Christ Since then according to the Judgement of this great Father it would be a crime of abomination to give false honours to Jesus Christ himself who being God is above all our praise and honours how much more abominable is it to give a mortal Man invironed with infirmities as the Scripture sayes the honours that appertain to God alone

But into what a labirinth of errors will not men run headlong if one grant them the freedom to cloak their capricious fancies with the mantle of piety For if opinions must be born with how false soever they be because a false piety judges them pious and if this be a plausible reason to exempt Popes from the common defects of humane nature that one may piously believe that God having entrusted them with the Government of his Church will have a care to preserve them from falling into defects prejudicial to the good thereof as the Jesuits from this ground conceive they have a right to invest the Pope in the same state of infallibility with Jesus Christ even in matters of Fact when they propose them to the whole Church Why may not others lay claim to the same right of attributing to him the same impeccability which Jesus Christ had in all such affairs as concern the Government of the Church and the Functions of his Soveraign Pontificate Why shall this latter opinion be lesse pious than the former doth it not appear more advantageous to the Church that the Head thereof should be in this sort impeccable then that he should be infallible in matters of Fact And have not an infinity of Souls redeem'd with the Sacred Blood of Jesus Christ received damages incomparably greater by the evil Government of some Popes then they can possibly receive by their want of understanding or due attention in the perusal of a particular Author Some one that should have lived in the first ages of the Church catching hold of these seeming conveniences of mans weak understanding would he not have thought himself well grounded to assert That God would never permit the seat of St. Peter to be possest for the space of almost an Age together by persons most unworthy of that dignity As Card. Baronius acknowledges with grief to have hapened during the far greater part of the tenth Age by the power of the Marques of Toscany who tyranising what with arms what with mony over the Clergy and people of Rome caused them to enthrone in St. Peters Chair Men not only vicious in their own persons but also notoriously dammageable to the Church into which they brought most horrible disorders as that in particular of John the Tenth whereof Baronius sadly complains who made an Infant of five years old Archbishop of Rheimes on which the Cardinal makes this reflexion Tantum nefas quo Iura omnia Ecclesiastica sauciantur ejus pontificis authoritate introductum quem infamis faeminae infami operâ in Petri solium intrusisset Would he not have believed that God Almighty would never have suffered the Vicar of Him who made that solemn Protestation that his Kingdom was not of this World to attempt the disposing of Temporal Kingdoms to take them from some and confer them on Others as Julius the second did That of Navarre which to the prejudice of our Kings the Kings of Spain possesse upon me no other title than a pretended guift of the Pope in taking it from its lawful King Would he not have thought that God would never have permitted Schisme to have crept even into the Chair of Unity in such sort that the Church for almost 40 years should not have been able to discern its true from its false Pastour groaning under the oppression of two Mercenaries strugling for the right Title and agreeing only in this joynt design to keep the Church in this dismal division as in effect it happened about the end of the 14 th Age whilst one of these Anti-popes kept his seat at Avignon the other at Rome Would he not have thought that God would never have permitted that he whose principal charge it is to keep all Christians in Unity should by rash and precipitate excommunications be the Cause that whole Kingdoms should fall off from the Communion of the Church whereby an infinite number of Souls should miserably suffer shipwrack against the Rocks of Schisme and Heresie as it happened to the Kingdome of England by the precipitancy of Clement the Seventh as Cardinal Peron most pregnantly represented to Paul the fifth to keep him from falling into a like oversight in the cause of the Venetians adding the example of Leo the Tenth in regard of Germany and remonstrating to him That he ought to consider he was then in the same Crisis and at the same point in which Leo the tenth was the ruine of Catholick Religion in Germany in which Clement the seventh destroyed It in England in which Clement the eighth preserved It in France It is certain that to confine our discourse to what may appear advantageous to the Church and to what we according to our weak understanding would be apt to judge fitting to be done had any of those that appear the wisest among Men been admitted in to the Council of God when he was casting the models of his Church they would all have concurred in this judgement that it would be in no sort expedient to permit those who were to supply his place upon earth to fall into disorders so opposite to the duty of their Charge and so prejudicial to the Souls of Men committed to their conduct But the Counsels of God are intirely different from those of Men and he was pleased out of his inscrutable judgements by the succeeding events quite to confound our pretended wisdome For he permitted all that which we would have conceiv'd he ought to have prevented So that Persons truly pious ought to be convinced by so many deplorable examples of this important verity that God would not have the firm subsistance of his Church depend on the Saintity wisdome or clear-sightednesse of any one single person though he were the Head and Soveraign Pastor of it This is the pious reflection which Cardinal Baronius makes upon the disorders of the 10 th Age To the end sayes he that God might make appear that his Church was not the contrivance of Man but an Institute purely divine it was necessary he should shew that the vices of bad Popes should never be able to destroy It as Kingdomes often are overthrown by the vicious lives of their Kings Vt enim Deus significaret eandem suam Ecclesiam nequaquam humanum esse figmentum sed plane divinum inventum oportuit ostendisse eam nequaquam pravorum Antistititum operá perdi posse ad nihilum redigi sicut de aliis diversarum gentium regnis bene statutis Rebus-publicis fastum constat It is the same case of this kind of Infallibility which by a new and unheard-of error the Jesuits grant to the Pope which God hath permitted to be disproved by so many evident examples that not any Divine can give credit to it without condemning himself of formal Heresie for if all the decisions of Popes touching matters of Fact were as many Articles of Faith there not being one able Divine that doth not impugne some one of them there would not be