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	motion_n	natural_a	2,016	5	6.5181	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A65590	The enthusiasm of the church of Rome demonstrated in some observations upon the life of Ignatius Loyola.	Wharton, Henry, 1664-1695.	1688 (1688)	Wing W1562; ESTC R29269	103,143	170

goodly Story is like to be marred by the Imprudence of the Relators The Devil it seems owed them a turn and revenged himself upon their Memory For the same Historians relate that the Devil far from being afraid at their Names their Pictures or their Letters sometimes seized upon their very Bodies and handled them very roughly Thus St. Francis being once perswaded to betray his Humility so far as to accept a Lodging in a Cardinals Palace was at night most unmercifully beaten by the Devils and left for dead Ignatius was often most cruelly scourged by the Devil more especially one Night at Rome when the Devil catch't him by the Throat and squeezed him so hard that the Saint straining himself to call upon the Name of Jesus continued hoarse many days after However these Bastinadoes might for a while mortify the Saints and intirely blast the repute of their arbitrary command over the Devils yet at least they conferred this benefit upon them that hereby they more nearly resembled the ancient Heroes of the Legend among whom the Great St. Antony underwent the same fate For unadvisedly peeping into the hole of a Rock and discovering there a whole nest of Devils the Devils sallied out upon him and beat him so unmercifully that his Servant carried him away for dead Not only in this respect were the Writers of his Life injurious to the Memory of Ignatius in not telling their Story plausibly and without any repugnance between the several parts of it but also by their improvident zeal to raise the Honour and Grandeur of their Saint have so imprudently represented many of his most illustrious and wonderful Actions that we might justly suspect the concurrence of evil Spirits in the performance of them if we either believed the truth of those Actions or were ready to admit any such suspicions When he first dedicated himself to the Blessed Virgin as soon as he had ended his Prayer he heard a mighty noise the House trembled all the Windows of the Chamber were broke and a rent made in the Wall which remaineth to this day This Bouhours would gladly attribute to God testifying thereby the acceptance of Ignatius his Prayers as formerly of the Prayers of the Apostles by a like sign However he doth not deny that it might possibly have been caused by the Devil who by that Earthquake endeavoured to put a period to Ignatius his Life Bussieres makes no doubt of it but confidently affirms it to have been caused by the Devil A little after the Devil excited in him an extraordinary nauseousness of the Hospital into which he had voluntarily entred and shame to see himself in the company of Beggars At Manreze he appeared to him in the Habit of an honest Young man disswading him from the use of so great Austerities While he learned the Latin Tongue at Barcelona the Devil to hinder his Learning instigated him to practices of Piety filled him with Consolations raised in him such tender sentiments of God that all the time of his study was spent in devout Thoughts Of the Demoniacks which he dispossessed some were lifted up into the Air and himself in time of Prayer was often seen to be raised from the ground and be elevated in the Air. From this pendulous posture Procopius concludes that Iustinian the Emperor was a Devil and no man. That Apparition of the Devils hovering in the Air before his Eyes in form of Stars he mistook a long while for an Angelical Vision and effect of the Divine Favour to him When a Spanish Maid was brought to him under the notion of a Demoniack raging with violent contortions over all her Body he asserted she was not possest and that those extraordinary motions proceeded from a natural cause and that if the Devil had any part in it it was only in disturbing the Imagination of the sick Person Lastly being told of a Religious Woman at Bologna endued with an extraordinary gift of Prayer and having frequent Raptures and Extasies during which she had no sense of feeling altho fire were applied to her he assures Ribadeneira that God indeed did operate in his Soul and abundantly infuse into it the Vnction of his Spirit but that this happened rarely and only to Persons much in favour with God whereas the Devil who could act nothing upon the Soul I know not how this can be reconciled with the former assertion was wont to counterfeit externally Divine Operations and by such appearances impose upon the Credulous That this was the case of the Nun as in effect it was afterwards found out that all her pretended Holiness was but an Illusion of a Wicked Spirit If then the Devil can externally counterfeit Divine Operations suspend the Senses and cause extraordinary Extasies and Raptures of the Soul and by these Impostures procure to any one a great repute of sanctity and devotion in the Church of Rome If he can disturb the Imagination of Men without possessing their Bodies or taking from them the liberty of their Will If Ignatius actually mistook an Illusion of the Devil for a Divine Favour and was often observed in the same pendulous posture with Demoniacks If the Devil sometimes inspired him with good Thoughts and Resolutions as well as at other times diverted him from them Lastly if it be uncertain which miraculous Actions of Ignatius are to be ascribed to God and which to the Devil it cannot but remain infinitely doubtful whether God or the Devil had the greater share in the Actions of Ignatius whether he acted by the power and impulse of the former or by the assistance and suggestion of the latter It cannot be pretended that the Church by giving attestation to the sanctity of his Life and the truth of his Miracles in his Canonization hath removed all suspicions of this nature and vindicated the Memory of Ignatius from all possibility of disadvantageous Scruples For till the late Jesuits of Clermont proposed their Theses it never was pretended that the Church much less the Pope is infallible in determining matters of fact and that the Pope in attesting the sanctity of Ignatius was actually deceived and imposed upon the credulous World I will undeniably demonstrate In the Bull of his Canonization the Pope affirmeth that from the time of his Conversion no word or action proceeded from him which can be accounted a mortal Sin. Despair of the Divine Mercy is by Divines commonly accounted the greatest of all Sins and even this may receive greater or less aggravations as it is more or less unreasonable Ignatius committed this sin in the most aggravating circumstances some while after his Conversion when he had received frequent Illuminations from Heaven had enjoyed infinite Raptures and Extasies performed stupendious acts of apparent Charity and undergone the most severe exercises of external Mortification which if they be indeed acceptable to God as the Admirers of Ignatius and the Church of

prayed earnestly against his Wish and by good fortune the Confessor died before him Alas What a loss did the immature Death of Eguia bring to Christendom Such a loss no doubt the World had before suffered in the case of Don Quixot a great part of whose most noble Adventures were not mentioned in the Records of Mancha Ambition is the chief and fundamental Quality of an affected Enthusiast that Ignatius was eminently endued with it we have now proved Other accedaneous Qualities are required to constitute a compleat Fanatick which were not wanting in our Saint I shall instance only in two weakness of Body and want of Judgment The first is commonly antecedent to and in some measure the cause of Enthusiasm but must necessarily be contracted by those immoderate Fermentations and Commotions of the Blood which attend the Extasies of Enthusiasts which may for a time confer an unusual Vigour upon the Body but when the Heat is expired and the Tempest calmed leave it languid and dejected The Production and Conservation of a strong and irregular Imagination by gross and impure Spirits supposeth a vehement Indisposition of the Body and general Corruption of Blood which also that very Imagination promotes and augments And this alone might unanswerably detect all the Illusions and Impostures of Enthusiasts who pretend to intellectual Visions and divine Raptures For if those Visions were indeed purely intellectual no extraordinary motion of the Body would attend them whereas the violent Ebullition of the Spirits which accompany these pretended Visions of Enthusiasts demonstrate them to be wholly owing to their Imaginations and disturbed Brains Thus St. Phillip Neri being often overflowed with celestial Pleasures was forced to fall flat upon the Ground and rowl himself to and fro And in praying his whole Body was wont so much to Quake and Tremble as would cause the Chamber to shake and the Stools in it to dance about Nay once this shaking proceeded so far that the poor Saint broke two of his Ribs by it Ignatius began his fits of Devotion in a violent Fever and ever after maintained them in a weak and crazy Body In his Retirement into the Vale of Paradice where he enjoyed such extraordinary Raptures he impaired his Health so far in a few days that his Friends searching for him found him in a Swound which wmmediately followed by a desperate Fever In his Meditations and Raptures he poured forth so great an abundance of Tears that he was often very near blinded by it In all his Extasies his Body was wonderfully weakned By reciting Mass wherin he always pretended to receive a flood of Consolations he often became so languid that he was forced to be carried to his Chamber upon the Shoulders of other Men not being able to stand upon his own Legs for weakness Sometimes in praying or celebrating Mass he burned with such vehement Heat that all the Parts of his Body seemed to be on Fire his Face grew red as Scarlet his Pulse beat violently and all his Veins swelled through the extraordinary Fermentation of his Blood and the hair of his Head stood upright Or as another Author expresseth it His Countenance was inflamed in praying and commonly in the heat of his Devotion he had very violent Palpitations of Heart and frequent Raptures withal he poured out a Torrent of Tears till he obtained of God by Prayer that he might be able to restrain his Tears but when they were kept in he felt in his Soul an Inundation of spiritual Delight From which last words it is manifest That he mistook the extraordinary motion of his Blood which commonly produceth a grateful sentiment of Pleasure for spiritual Delights since from the restrainment of his Tears no other effect could follow than that the motion not being allayed by an Evacuation of Tears should continue longer in its first Vigour To mention no more our Saint Whensoever he thought of Death and the Love of God had such furious motions in his Heart that his Health was exceedingly injured for a long while after After so many manifest Indications of a violent and disturbed Imagination we cannot with any shew of reason ascribe his spiritual Delights and Visions to the serene and calm Operation of the Holy Ghost but must impute them to the Phantomes of his Brain an effect which naturally followed his method of Devotion and Meditation insomuch as Peter Faber having wholly resigned up himself to his Conduct and to the Rules prescribed in his Book of Spiritual Exercises felt such fervour in his Meditations that he was forced often to go down from his Chamber into a little Court to take fresh Air and cool his Brains Ignorance and Weakness of Understanding is so necessary a quality to those Enthusiasts who are perswaded of the truth and reality of their Dreams and Visions such as Ignatius seems to have been at least in the former part of his Life that without it Enthusiasm could gain neither Admission nor Belief even in their own Breasts For this reason St. Philip Neri Above all things endeavoured that his Disciples should suppress in themselves the too nice Inquisitions of the rational Intellect and often said it was the Abridgment of all Spiritual Life to lay aside Reason and Arguings This affected Ignorance not only disposeth them to submit their Judgment to the Direction of an irrational Imagination and resign up their Conduct to the fortuitous Impulse of irregular Motions in the Body but also disables them from discovering the Folly and false Ideas of Enthusiasm from perceiving that nothing can be more contrary to the genius of Christianity than Fanaticism that right Reason is the greatest Ornament as well as Perfection of Mankind that whatsoever violates the Laws of Decency and Sobriety cannot be Divine and instead of merit that God is dishonoured by ridiculous Actions and irrational Austerities The great Founders of Monastick Orders are observed to have been Ignorant and Stupid to a Prodigy and Ignatius far from being Ambitious to surpass them in Learning thought it meritorious to be more ignorant than them all He judged it a great Perfection to be esteemed a Fool and made it one of his chief Maxims that whoever would do great things in Gods Cause must have a care of being too wise Nature it seems had taken care that he should not be too wise if the Writers of his Life do not foully misrepresent him Vitelleschi saith plainly That he was an Ideot Bouhours That he was but meanly instructed in the Mysteries of the Faith. Maffeius That he had scarce learning enough to preserve him from Heresy Orlandinus That he was devoid of all Learning He was so far indeed conscious of his own Ignorance that he put himself to School and bestowed many years in learning Philosophy and the Latin Tongue but all his Labour met with small success his natural Stupidity was too prevalent for the greatest Industry In the