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
A29033	Some motives and incentives to the love of God pathetically discours'd of, in a letter to a friend / by the Hon[ora]ble R.B., Esq.	Boyle, Robert, 1627-1691.	1659 (1659)	Wing B4032; ESTC R11830	73,891	200

Wildernesse some of the pleasant and delicious Fruits of the blest Land of Promise I said Lindamor that Faith was the grand Condition required in God's free Grant of Eternall Life Not that I would ascribe any thing to a Lazy Speculative Barren Faith in opposition to that lively and active one which is called by the Apostle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Gal. 5.6 Faith operating by Love Jam. 2.26 since I am informed by St. James that the Divorce of Faith and Works is as Destructive to Religion as that of Soul and Body is to Life But that I was willing to mind you that though true Faith which cries like Rachel Give me children or else I die be ever the pregnant Mother of good Works Gen. 30. yet are not those Works the Cause but the Effects and Signes of God's first Love to us however afterwards the Children may Nurse their Parents As though the Needle 's pointing at the Poles be by being an Effect an Argument of its having been Invigorated by the Loadstone or received Influence from some other Magnetick Body yet is not that Respect unto the North the Cause but the Operation of the Iron 's being drawn by the attractive Minerall Thou art good Psal 119.68 and dost good saies the Psalmist to his Maker The Greatnesse of his Goodnesse is that which makes it Ours nor doth He do us good because that We are good but because He is liberally so as the Sun shines on Dunghills not out of any Invitation his beams find there but because it is his Nature to be diffusive of his Light yet with this difference that whereas the Sun's Bounty by being rather an Advantage to us than a Favour deserves our Joy and not our Thanks because his Visits are made designlesly and without any particular intention of addresse by such a bare Necessity of Nature as that which makes Springs flow out into Streams when their Beds are too narrow to contain the renewed water that doth incessantly swell the exuberant Sources God on the contrary for being Necessarily kind is not lesse Freely or Obligeingly so to you or me for though some kind of Communicativenesse be Essentiall to his Goodness yet his Extension of it without Himself and his Vouchsafeing it to this or that particular Person are purely Arbitrary To omit his Love to the numberlesse Elect Angells the strict Relations betwixt the persons of the Blessed Trinity supplying God with internall Objects which imploy'd his Kindnesse before the Creation and Himself being able to allow his Goodnesse the Extent of Infinity for its Diffusion But having glanc'd at this onely by the By we may yet further admiringly observe That whereas men usually give freeliest where they have not given before and make it both the Motive and the Excuse of their desistance from Giving any more That they have Given already Gods bounty hath a very different Method for he uses to give because he Hath given and that he May give Consonantly to which when the revolting Israelites had broken the Contents whilst Moses was bringing them the Tables of the LAVV and had thereby provok'd the Incens'd Given of it to thoughts of a sudden Extirpation of so ingratefull and rebellious a People we may observe That whereas God as unwilling to remember his former Goodnesse to them speaking to Moses calls them Thy People which thou broughtest out of the land of Egypt Exod. 32.7 Moses on the other side to engage God to the new Mercy of a Pardon represents to God his former Mercy to them and calls them God's People which he brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power vers 11. and a mighty hand And so conspicuous in the Eternall Son was this Property of the Mercifull Father that when sick Lazarus's Sisters implored his Rescue for their exspiring Brother the Motive they imploy and which Prospered their addresses was Lord behold not Joh. 11.3 he who loveth thee but he whom thou lovest is sick And as he takes the first Inducements of his Bounty from Himself so do his former Favours both invite and give rates to his succeeding Blessings And there is reason for it for his pure love being all the Merit by which Man can pretend to the Effects of his Bounty it is but just that the degree of his Love should proportion those Favours which 't is our onely Title to and that God's Liberality should as well afford Measures as Motives to it self Nor is Gods love lesse Dis-interess'd § 14 than Free. His grand Designe upon us is but to make us Instruments and partakers of His Glory and to bring us to everlasting Happinesse by a Way that does as well elevate and dignifie our Nature as the Condition reserv'd for us will His Method of saving us if but comply'd with does here as the Apostle speaks Col 1.12 fit us for the Inheritance of the Saints in Light We being made as St. Peter speaks Partakers of the Divine Nature 2 Pet. 1.4 having escap'd the corruption that is in the world through Lust So that these things wherein the noblest of the Philosophers plac'd their Faelicity serve but to Qualifie and Prepare Christians for that Higher Blessednesse that is reserv'd by God for those that love Him and cannot but be heighten'd and endear'd by the Value which Graces and Vertues had given men on Earth for such a Noble and Rationall kind of Happinesse as is apportion'd to them in Heaven What ends can he have upon us whose Goodnesse and his Blessednesse are both Infinite He was unconceivably Happy in his own Self-sufficiency before the Creatures had a Being and sure that felicity that needed not Themselves to be supream needs nothing that they can Do. Nor was it his Indigence that forc't him to make the World thereby to make new Acquisitions but his Goodnesse that prest him to manifest and to impart his Glory and the goods which he so over-flowingly abounds with Witness his Suspension of the World's Creation which certainly had had an earlier Date were the Deity capable of Want and the Creatures of Supplying it St. Paul in his Epistle to Timothy styles God 1 Tim. 1.11 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which we translate The Bessed God but may perhaps more properly be rendred The happy God and else-where in the same Epistle he truly cals him The Happy 1 Tim. 6.15 as well as Onely Potentate God sayes the Apostle That made the World and all Things therein Act. 27.24 25 28. seeing that He is Lord of Heaven and Earth dwelleth not c. As though He needed any thing seeing that He giveth to all Life and Breath and all Things And In Him we live and move and have our being And indeed so coherent in the mind of a mere Man that does but Consider and Understand the Import of his owne Notions is the beliefe of Gods Happinesse to that of His Beeing that I remember the Epicurean

we scruple not to conclude that she thinks the trouble of an Issue an Evill inferiour to Convulsion-fits So when we see our Heavenly Father send Infirmities and Crosses to rescue those he Loves from the Contagion or the Dominion of Sinne we may safely conclude he thinks Affliction a lesse Evill than Guilt since he is too Wise and indulgent a Physitian to Cure with a Remedy worse than the Disease In the 8th of Deuteronomie there is a Caution given the Israelites least Prosperity which is wont to be a kind of Lethe that makes men Forget all but their Enjoyments should make any of them say in his heart Deut. 8.17 18. My power and the might of my hand hath gotten me this Wealth But saith the Text they shall remember the Lord their God for it is he that giveth them power to get wealth It is not the revolting Israelites onely of whose Ignorance of his Bounty God may complain as he did by the Prophet by whom he said I taught Ephraim to go taking them by their armes Hos 11.3 but they knew not that I healed them and there are but too many of whom he might say as he did by the same Prophet For she did not know that I gave her Corn and Wine Hos 1.8 9. and Oyle and multiply'd her Silver and her Gold which they prepar'd for Baal Therefore will I return and take away my Corn in the time thereof and my Wine in the Season thereof and will recover my Wool and my Flax given to cover her Nakednesse And this will make way for the Design I had to recommend the Advantagiousnesse of Gods Love by saying That as for Spirituall Goods he gives us in this life so rich an Earnest of expected Joyes that ev'n the Earnest is a Stock large enough to subsist with Comfort on and really out-values and transcends all those Momentary Pleasures it requires us to forsake to keep up a Title to Eternall ones But to particularize God's mercies to us in This very life would certainly take up a considerable part of it And yet the Love God bears us dyes not with us nor doth as mens Affections either endure a Funerall in our Tombs or survive onely in an uselesse Grief or an Esteem as bootlesse No Gods Love is so far from resembling the usuall sort of friends who when they have accompanied us to the Grave do There leave us that like the Angells that carried Lazarus's Soul to Abrahams bosome Luk. 16.22 its Officiousness begins then most to Appear whe● our dark eyes are Clos'd and is the● Truest to the beloved Soul when sh● Forsakes the Body giving each blesse● Saint cause to say of God what Na●●mi did of Boaz Ruth 2.20 That He hath not le●● off his kindnesse to the Living and to th● Dead 1 John 3.2 Now indeed says our Saviour'● Favorite are we the Sonns of God an● it doth not yet appear what we shall be but we know when he shall appear we sha●● be like him This blest Expectance mus● be now my Theme because the narrow Limits which my Design hath plac't to this Discourse of the Advantages accruing from Gods Love will leave no more room untaken up by Heaven But § 19 Lindamor before I proceed to set forth to you the Greatnesse of the Felicity reserv'd for us in Heaven It will I fear be requisite to mind you of the Lawfullnesse of having an Eye on it For many not-undeservedly applauded Preachers have of late bin pleas'd to teach the people that to Hope for Heaven is a Mercenary Legal and therefore Unfiliall Affection Indeed to hope for Heaven as Wages for Work perform'd or by way of Merit in the proper and strict Acception of that tearm were a Presumption to which none of the Divines we dissent ●rom can be too much an Enemie nor perhaps more so then I am But to take in Gods Blessings among the Motives of Loving God is but to do as he did who said I love the Lord because Psal 116.1 he hath heard my voyce and my Supplications and to look upon the Joyes of Heaven to comfort and support us in the hardships and losses to be undergon in our Journey thitherward is to imitate no worse a man than Moses of whom it is said Hebr. 11.26 that he esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches than the Treasures in Aegypt for he had respect or turned his Eye 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 unto the recompence of the reward It is indeed Lindamor a happy Frame of mind to be able to love God purely for Himself without any Glance at our own Advantages But though I dare not deny that it is possible to attain to so High and disinteress'd a kind of Love yet I think that that Excellency suppos'd to be Vouchsaf'd to some men is not by the Scripture Exacted as a Duty from All men Were all the recompence of Piety of a worldly Nature and to be Here receiv'd the Actions invited to by the Intuition of it might passe for Mercenary But when Heaven is chiefly hoped for as it will admit us unto the Fruition of God himself in Christ and that the Other Joye● expected there are so farre from being of a Sensual or Worldly nature tha● they are known not to be attainable till by Death the Senses and Bodye themselves and all the meerly Anima● Faculties be abolisht for a Heaven s● consider'd I say to forgo readily al● the Pleasures of the Senses and undergo cheerfully all the Hardships and Dangers that are wont to attend a Holy life is Lindamor such a kind o● Mercenarinesse as none but a resigned Noble and believing Soul is likely to be guilty of If I should say that Fear it self and even the feare of Hell may be one Justifiable Motive of Mens Actions though I should propose wha● those I am reasoning with would think a Paradox yet I should perhaps hold forth therein no more than the Scripture does Hebr. 4.1 Let us therefore fear saies the writer to the Hebrews lest a promise being left us of entering into his rest any of you should seem to come short of it And no lesse eminent a Herauld of the Gospell than St. Paul who so successefully maintain'd the Evangelicall against the Legall Spirit thus professeth of himself I keep under my body and bring it into Subjection 1 Cor. 9.27 lest by any means when I have preach'd to others I my self should be a cast-away And 't was not to Slaves or Hirelings that Christ directs this Admonition I say unto you my Friends Luk. 12.4 5. Be not afraid of them that kill the Body and after that have no more that they can doe But I will forwarn you whom you shall fear Fear him which after he hath kill'd hath power to cast into Hell Yea I say unto you a gemination which the present Controversie shews not to have been Causelesse Fear Him Where the paraphrase given of God