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	soul_n	1,821	5	5.5524	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A63741	Dekas embolimaios a supplement to the Eniautos, or, Course of sermons for the whole year : being ten sermons explaining the nature of faith, and obedience, in relation to God, and the ecclesiastical and secular powers respectively : all that have been preached and published (since the Restauration) / by the Right Reverend Father in God Jeremy Lord Bishop of Down and Connor ; with his advice to the clergy of his diocess.; Eniautos. Supplement	Taylor, Jeremy, 1613-1667.	1667 (1667)	Wing T308; ESTC R11724	252,853	230

he runs to commit his sin with as certain an event and resolution as if he knew no Argument against it These notices of things terrible and true pass through his Understanding as an Eagle through the Air as long as her flight lasted the air was shaken but there remains no path behind her Now since at the same time we see other persons not so learned it may be not so much versed in Scriptures yet they say a thing is good and lay hold of it they believe glorious things of Heaven and they live accordingly as men that believe themselves half a word is enough to make them understand a nod is a sufficient reproof the crowing of a Cock the singing of a Lark the dawning of the day and the washing their hands are to them competent memorials of Religion and warnings of their duty What is the reason of this difference They both read the Scriptures they read and hear the same Sermons they have capable Understandings they both believe what they hear and what they read and yet the event is vastly different The reason is that which I am now speaking of the one understands by one Principle the other by another the one understands by Nature and the other by Grace the one by Humane Learning and the other by Divine the one reads the Scriptures without and the other within the one understands as a Son of Man the other as a Son of God the one perceives by the proportions of the world and the other by the measures of the Spirit the one understands by Reason and the other by Love and therefore he does not only understand the Sermons of the Spirit and perceives their meaning but he pierces deeper and knows the meaning of that meaning that is the secret of the Spirit that which is spiritually discerned that which gives life to the Proposition and activity to the Soul And the reason is because he hath a Divine Principle within him and a new Understanding that is plainly he hath Love and that 's more than Knowledge as was rarely well observed by S. Paul Knowledge puffeth up but Charity edifieth that is Charity makes the best Scholars No Sermons can edifie you no Scriptures can build you up a holy Building to God unless the Love of God be in your hearts and purifie your Souls from all filthiness of the Flesh and Spirit But so it is in the regions of Stars where a vast body of Fire is so divided by excentrick motions that it looks as if Nature had parted them into Orbs and round shells of plain and purest materials But where the cause is simple and the matter without variety the motions must be uniform and in Heaven we should either espy no motion or no variety But God who designed the Heavens to be the causes of all changes and motions here below hath placed his Angels in their houses of light and given to every one of his appointed Officers a portion of the fiery matter to circumagitate and roll and now the wonder ceases for if it be enquired why this part of the fire runs Eastward and the other to the South they being both indifferent to either it is because an Angel of God sits in the Centre and makes the same matter turn not by the bent of its own mobility and inclination but in order to the needs of Man and the great purposes of God And so it is in the Understandings of Men when they all receive the same Notions and are taught by the same Master and give full consent to all the Propositions and can of themselves have nothing to distinguish them in the events it is because God has sent his Divine Spirit and kindles a new fire and creates a braver capacity and applies the Actives to the Passives and blesses their operation For there is in the heart of man such a dead sea and an indisposition to holy flames like as in the cold Rivers in the North so as the fires will not burn them and the Sun it self will never warm them till Gods holy Spirit does from the Temple of the New Jerusalem bring a holy flame and make it shine and burn The Natural man saith the holy Apostle cannot preceive the things of the Spirit they are foolishness unto him for they are spiritually discerned For he that discourses of things by the measures of sense thinks nothing good but that which is delicious to the palate or pleases the brutish part of Man and therefore while he estimates the secrets of Religion by such measures they must needs seem as insipid as Cork or the uncondited Mushrom for they have nothing at all of that in their constitution A voluptuous person is like the Dogs of Sicily so fill'd with the deliciousness of Plants that grow in every furrow and hedge that they can never keep the scent of their Game 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 said St. Chrysostom The fire and water can never mingle so neither can sensuality and the watchfulness and wise discerning of the Spirit Pilato interroganti de veritate Christus non respondit When the wicked Governour asked of Christ concerning Truth Christ gave him no answer He was not fit to hear it He therefore who so understands the Words of God that he not only believes but loves the Proposition he who consents with all his heart and being convinc'd of the truth does also apprehend the necessity and obeys the precept and delights in the discovery and lays his hand upon his heart and reduces the notices of things to the practice of duty he who dares trust his proposition and drives it on to the utmost issue resolving to go after it whithersoever it can invite him this Man walks in the Spirit at least thus far he is gone towards it his Understanding is brought in obsequium Christi into the obedience of Christ. This is a loving God with all our mind and whatever goes less than this is but Memory and not Understanding or else such notice of things by which a man is neither the wiser nor the better 3. Sometimes God gives to his choicest his most elect and precious Servants a knowledge even of secret things which he communicates not to others We finde it greatly remark'd in the case of Abraham Gen. 18. 17. And the Lord said Shall I hide from Abraham that thing that I do Why not from Abraham God tells us ver 19. For I know him that he will command his Children and his Houshold after him and they shall keep the way of the Lord to do justice and judgment And though this be irregular and infrequent yet it is a reward of their piety and the proper increase also of the spiritual man We find this spoken by God to Daniel and promised to be the lot of the righteous man in the days of the Messias Dan. 12. 10. Many shall be purified and made white and tryed but the wicked shall do wickedly and what then None of

natural and therefore health and life was to descend upon him from Heaven and he was to suck life from a Tree on Earth himself being but ingraffed into a Tree of Life and adopted into the condition of an immortal Nature But he that in the best of his days was but a Cien of this Tree of Life by his sin was cut off from thence quickly and planted upon Thorns and his portion was for ever after among the Flowers which to day spring and look like health and beauty and in the evening they are sick and at night are dead and the oven is their grave And as before oven from our first spring from the dust on earth we might have died if we had not been preserved by the continual flux of a rare providence so now that we are reduced to the Laws of our own Nature we must needs die It is natural and therefore necessary It is become a punishment to us and therefore it is unavoidable and God hath bound the evil upon us by bands of natural and inseparable propriety and by a supervening unalterable Decree of Heaven and we are fallen from our privilege and are returned to the condition of Beasts and Buildings and common things And we see Temples defiled unto the ground and they die by Sacrilege and great Empires die by their own plenty and ease full Humours and factious Subjects and huge Buildings fall by their own weight and the violence of many Winters eating and consuming the Cement which is the marrow of their bones and Princes die like the meanest of their Servants and every thing finds a Grave and a Tomb and the very Tomb it self dies by the bigness of its pompousness and luxury Phario nutantia pondera saxo Quae cineri vanus dat ruitura labor and becomes as friable and uncombined dust as the ashes of the Sinner or the Saint that lay under it and is now forgotten in his bed of darkness And to this Catalogue of mortality Man is inrolled with a Statutum est It is appointed for all men to once die and after death comes judgment And if a Man can be stronger than Nature or can wrestle with a Decree of Heaven or can escape from a divine punishment by his own arts so that neither the Power nor the Providence of God nor the Laws of Nature nor the Bands of eternal Predestination can hold him then he may live beyond the fate and period of Flesh and last longer than a Flower But if all these can hold us and tie us to conditions then we must lay our heads down upon a turf and entertain creeping things in the cells and little chambers of our eyes and dwell with worms till time and death shall be no more We must needs die That 's our Sentence But that 's not all We are as water spilt on the ground which cannot be gathered up again Stay 1. We are as water weak and of no consistence always descending abiding in no certain place unless where we are detained with violence and every little breath of wind makes us rough and tempestuous and troubles our faces every trifling accident discomposes us and as the face of the waters wafting in a storm so wrinkles it self that it makes upon its forehead furrows deep and hollow like a grave so do our great and little cares and trifles first make the wrinkles of old age and then they dig a grave for us And there is in Nature nothing so contemptible but it may meet with us in such circumstances that it may be too hard for us in our weaknesses and the sting of a Bee is a weapon sharp enough to pierce the finger of a child or the lip of a Man and those Creatures which Nature hath left without weapons yet they are armed sufficiently to vex those parts of men which are left defenceless and obnoxious to a Sun-beam to the roughness of a sowre Grape to the unevenness of a Gravel-stone to the dust of a Wheel or the unwholsom breath of a Star looking awry upon a sinner 2. But besides the weaknesses and natural decayings of our bodies if chances and contingencies be innumerable then no man can reckon our dangers and the praeternatural causes of our deaths So that he is a vain person whose hopes of life are too confidently encreas'd by reason of his health and he is too unreasonably timerous who thinks his hopes at an end when he dwels in sickness For men die without rule and with and without occasions and no man suspecting or foreseeing any of deaths addresses and no man in his whole condition is weaker than another A man in a long Consumption is fallen under one of the solemnities and preparations to death but at the same instant the most healthful person is as neer death upon a more fatal and a more sudden but a less discerned cause There are but few persons upon whose foreheads every man can read the sentence of death written in the lines of a lingring sickness but they sometimes hear the passing-bell ring for stronger men even long before their own knell calls at the house of their mother to open her womb make a bed for them No man is surer of to morrow than the weakest of his brethren and when Lepidus and Aufidius stumbled at the threshold of the Senate and fell down and dyed the blow came from Heaven in a cloud but it struck more suddenly than upon the poor slave that made sport upon the Theatre with a praemeditated and fore-described death Quod quisque vitet nunquam homini satis cautum est in horas There are sicknesses that walk in darkness and there are exterminating Angels that fly wrapt up in the curtains of immateriality and an uncommunicating nature whom we cannot see but we feel their force and sink under their Sword and from Heaven the vail descends that wraps our heads in the fatal sentence There is no age of man but it hath proper to it self some posterns and outlets for death besides those infinite and open ports out of which myriads of men and women every day pass into the dark and the land of forgetfulness Infancy hath life but in effigie or like a spark dwelling in a pile of wood the candle is so newly lighted that every little shaking of the taper and every ruder breath of air puts it out and it dies Childhood is so tender and yet so unwary so soft to all the impressions of Chance and yet so forward to run into them that God knew there could be no security without the care and vigilance of an Angel-keeper and the eyes of Parents and the arms of Nurses the provisions of art and all the effects of Humane love and Providence are not sufficient to keep one child from horrid mischiefs from strange and early calamities and deaths unless a messenger be sent from Heaven to stand sentinel and watch the very playings and sleepings the eatings and drinkings of the Children

end of your labours and they the end of your preachings your preaching is vain and their faith is also vain The particulars of this are not many but very useful 1. It is never out of season to preach good works but when you do be careful that you never indirectly disgrace them by telling how your adversaries spoil them I do not speak this in vain for too many of us account good works to be Popery and so not only dishonour our Religion and open wide the mouths of adversaries but disparage Christianity it self while we hear it preached in every Pulpit that they who preach good works think they merit heaven by it and so for fear of merit men let the work alone to secure a true opinion they neglect a good practice and out of hatred of Popery we lay aside Christianity it self Teach them how to do good works and yet to walk humbly with God for better it is to do well even upon a weak account than to do nothing upon the stock of a better proposition and let it never be used any more as a word of reproach unto us all that the faith of a Protestant and the works of a Papist and the words of a Phanatick make up a good Christian. Believe well and speak well and do well but in doing good works a man cannot deceive any one but himself by the apendage of a foolish opinion but in our believing only and in talking a man may deceive himself and all the world and God only can be safe from the cousenage Like to this is the case of external forms of worship which too many refuse because they pretend that many who use them rest in them and pass no further For besides that no sect of men teaches their people so to do you cannot without uncharitableness suppose it true of very many But if others do ill do not you do so too and leave not out the external forms for fear of formality but joyn the inward power of godliness and then they are reproved best and instructed wisely and you are secured But remember that prophaneness is commonly something that is external and he is a prophane person who neglects the exterior part of Religion and this is so vile a crime that hypocrisie while it is undiscovered is not so much mischievous as open prophaneness or a neglect and contempt of external Religion Do not despise external Religion because it may be sincere and do not rely upon it wholly because it may be counterfeit but do you preach both and practise both both what may glorifie God in publick and what may please him in private 2. In deciding the questions and causes of Conscience of your flocks never strive to speak what is pleasing but what is profitable 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as was said of Isidor the Philosopher you must not give your people words but things and substantial food Let not the people be prejudiced in the matter of their souls upon any terms whatsoever and be not ashamed to speak boldly in the cause of God for he that is angry when he is reproved is not to be considered excepting only to be reproved again if he will never mend not you but he will have the worst of it but if he ever mends he will thank you for your love and for your wisdom and for your care and no man is finally disgraced for speaking of a truth onely here pray for the grace of prudence that you may speak opportunely and wisely lest you profit not but destroy an uncapable subject Lastly The Apostle requires of every Mnister of the Gospel that his speech and doctrine should be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 unreprovable not such against which no man can cavil for the Pharisees found fault with the wise discourses of the eternal Son of God and Hereticks and Schismaticks prated against the Holy Apostles and their excellent Sermons but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is such as deserves no blame and needs no pardon and flatters not for praise and begs no excuses and makes no Apologies a discourse that will be justified by all the sons of wisdom now that yours may be so the preceding rules are the best means that are imaginable For so long as you speak the pure truths of God the plain meaning of the Spirit the necessary things of Faith the useful things of Charity and the excellencies of Holiness who can reprove your doctrine But there is something more in this word which the Apostle means else it had been an uselesse repetition and a man may speak the truths of God and yet may be blame-worthy by an importune unseasonable and imprudent way of delivering them or for want of such conduct which will place him and his doctrine in reputation and advantages To this purpose these advices may be useful 1. Be more careful to establish a truth than to reprove an error For besides that a truth will when it is established of it self reprove the error sufficiently men will be lesse apt to reprove your truth when they are not ingaged to defend their own propositions against you Men stand upon their guard when you proclaim war against their doctrine Teach your doctrine purely and wisely and without any angry reflexions for you shall very hardly perswade him whom you go about publickly to confute 2. If any man have a revelation or a discovery of which thou knowest nothing but by his preaching be not too quick to condemn it not onely lest thou discourage his labour and stricter inquiries in the search of truth but lest thou also be a fool upon record for so is every man that hastily judges what he slowly understands Is it not a monument of a lasting reproach that one of the Popes of Rome condemned the Bishop of Sulzback for saying that there were Antipodes and is not Pope Nicholas deserted by his own party for correcting the Sermons of Berengarius and making him recant into a worse error and posterity will certainly make themselves very merry with the wise sentences made lately at Rome against Galileo and the Jansemists To condemn one truth is more shameful than to broach two errors for he that in an honest and diligent inquiry misses something of the mark will have the Apologies of humane infirmity and the praise of doing his best but he that condemns a truth when it is told him is an envious fool and is a murderer of his Brothers fame and his Brothers reason 3. Let no man upon his own head reprove the Religion that is established by Law and a just supreme Authority for no reproofs are so severe as the reproofs of Law and a man will very hardly defend his opinion that is already condemned by the wisdom of all his Judges A mans Doctrine possibly may be true though against Law but it cannot be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 unreproveable and a Schismatick can in no case observe this Rule of the Apostle If something may be amiss