Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	bring_v	good_a	know_v	2,039	5	3.4458	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A60347	A funeral sermon occasioned by the death of Mr. William Rathband an aged and learned servant of Christ, and preached Octob. 13. 1695. at Highgate. By Samuel Slater, M.A. minister of the gospel.	Slater, Samuel, d. 1704.	1695 (1695)	Wing S3965; ESTC R220549	27,757	34

But let me ask thee Was not the glory of God dear to thee and his Name precious Was he not highest in thy esteem valued above all the world set up in the Throne all other things being made his Footstool Canst thou not with all thy heart say after the Prophet in Psal. 73. Whom have I in heaven but thee and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee Hast thou made him thy choice and desired to live in an obedience to him and expressiveness of him Hast thou commended him to others thy Relations Friends and Neighbours and endeavoured in thy place to enlarge his Kingdom and submit themselves to his Government Hast thou offered thy self and thy praise to him He himself tells thee Psal. 50. 23. That is a glorifying him Hast thou had thy fruit unto holiness and was thy heart set for the bringing forth much fruit Our Saviour tells you Iohn 15. 8. Herein his Father is glorified If thou dost find these things in thy self tho thou dost also find too much of that which should not be and is matter of grief to thee thou may'st meditate terror without being terrified thou may'st be very willing yea glad to die whensoever God calls thee to it being fully persuaded that he will with an hand of grace put a glory upon thee when at the same time he will extort glory from others in a way of wrath and vengeance Thirdly Can you say as our Saviour did I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do He had work given him by the Father good and great work in which his Father himself and all his people were concerned it being for his Fathers and his own Glory and for his Peoples Salvation and everlasting Happiness And he was intent upon it industrious and diligent in it I must saith he work the works of him that sent me while it is day And at his giving up of the Ghost he could say It is finished Now none of us were made and sent hither to be idle nor to sport upon the Earth as Leviathan doth in the Sea No no we all have Work to do Work that our heavenly Father hath given us There is the general Work of Godliness and Religion and the particular Work of our several Stations and Relations None need sit still and study how to pass away the time for they have enough to do if they will but mind it Now if our Work be not done how shall we with any comfort or boldness look our great Lord and Master in the Face It was a terrible Sentence that past upon the lazy Servant that had buried his Talent in a Napkin But here again a poor humble Christian will presently object against its self for such an one needs none Accuser he can and will do that work fast enough And in this case he will take shame as his Portion and declare he is very far from finishing the Work which God gave him to do You have minded other things of less concern yea of no concern and neglected that You have lived in the World to very little purpose led unprofitable Lives and suffered your Days your precious Seasons your golden Hours to run out at waste You have done but very little for God and for your Souls and in order to your everlasting Happiness and that which you have done hath been so pitifully done that you are asham'd to look upon it you have botcht and bungled at it And I do readily grant your best Works do not deserve acceptance with God he may justly reject and abhor them and cast them as Dung into your Faces because of the Iniquities which adhere or cleave to them But let me ask you and do you ask your own Souls when you are in your Retirements and greatest Seriousness Hast thou loved the Work of God and preferred the hardest and most unpleasing pieces of it before the most facil and pleasant parts of the Devil's Hast thou counted his Service perfect freedom but that of Sin the basest of Drudgeries Have you been pleased and delighted when you did at any time find your hearts raised in it and enlarged and more than ordinarily carried out Hath it been your Grief and Trouble when you found in your selves straitness deadness and dulness Have you been angry with your selves because you have done no more and no better for God Have you often and often with earnestness begg'd of God that he would give you more Grace and greater Strength in order to your doing him better Service and bringing him more Glory Then you need not be afraid to appear before him for he will spare you as a Father spareth his Son that serveth him and you shall be accepted in the beloved and your gracious and prevailing Advocate will appear on your behalf and plead your Cause saying as once he did on the behalf of the good Woman whom the Disciples in their discontent quarrel'd They have done what they could And he will cover all your Failings and fill up all your Vacancies and Defects with his own most full and perfect Obedience for to your comfort know tho thy Duties be weak and deficient and defiled yet his Obedience was compleat and perfect nay more it was Satisfactory too and of a meritorious Nature too and the merit of it is sufficient for thee and for all his People And therefore if that which I have spoken be the frame of your Spirits you may at a dying hour with triumph say Now Father come I to thee We will now proceed to the third Use of this Doctrine which will be by way of Exhortation and it shall be divided only into Two Branches My first Exhortation is this Do not mourn immoderately over your deceased Friends and Relations Those of them I mean who while they were here lived unto the Lord and when they had finished their course and came to the period of their Days those Bounds which they could not pass died in the Lord and in the faith As to the business now in hand it is no matter by what they died whether a natural Death or a violent one by the hand of an Enemy or an Executioner consumed by the merciless Flames or swallowed up by the mighty Waters whether they died a short and easy Death and having serv'd their Generation according to the Will of God sell asleep or a tedious and lingring one cast upon Beds of Languishment and having wearisom Days Nights and Months numbred out unto them Nor is it as to this any matter in what manner they died whether under a dark and thick Cloud having many Questions Doubts and Fears or under the Smiles of God the Light of his Countenance and the bright sweet shining of his Face whether they came to their Harbour in a pleasant Calm or in a blustering Storm In a word whether they had the perfect use of their Understanding and Reason to the last or were under a delirium and distraction These

but as comfortable as they can But alas how short is their Arm how many outward and inward Troubles are there which their skill and power cannot reach But it must be granted all that which they can do is not comparable to that which God doth for his People nor to be named in the same day with it All that own a God must acknowledge he is infinitely beyond the greatest of men in power infinitely above the highest and best of Creatures in love What is a broken Cistern that will hold no water to the Well of Salvation the Fountain of living waters What is a pitiful little Drop but one remove from nothing to the boundless bottomless Ocean of Being and Goodness Suppose there were ten thousand thousand worlds and put them all together what would they all be to one God And then though the enjoyment which the Saints have of God now doth far exceed all the sinful and sensual enjoyments of carnal and profane Worldlings which was the reason why Moses did esteem the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt and rather chose to suffer affliction with the People of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season and made that Noble Italian Marquis Galeaceus say Cursed be that man who counts all the world worth one hours enjoyment of Iesus Christ. Yet compare the best and fullest and sweetest of the Saints enjoyments here with those in the mansions above and they fall exceeding short of them for what is sitting under the shadow of Christ to the beholding of his glory what is the joy of Faith to that of sight what is a love letter or message of peace or kind token from God now and then to a lying in his bosom to a being and continuance in his joy what is seeing of his power and glory in the Sanctuary to the beatifical Vision what is seeing in a glass darkly to a seeing face to face seeing as we are seen and knowing as we are known what are the first-fruits of the Spirit to the whole harvest what some Praelibamina foretastes to a sitting down with Abraham Isaac and Iacob in that Kingdom of God at the feast of glory and there taking the fill of love to all eternity while the Saints are present in the body they are absent from the Lord and a state of absence neither doth nor can afford satisfaction the holy Soul during that will with the enamoured Spouse be longing and crying Make haste my Beloved and be thou like a Roe or young Hart upon the mountains of spices It is only in the glorious presence of God that such an one will find a fulness of joy and at his right hand those pleasures which are for evermore Let us now come to the improvement of this Point in a way of Application and the first Use shall be for Information in three things If it be just matter of rejoicing to holy Souls that at death they go to God then from hence First We may learn the folly and misery of those who do now depart from God whose lives are nothing else but a continual departure from him Yea in the very Acts of Worship when they draw nigh to him with their lips their hearts are estranged and far from him running after their covetousness The folly that is in this course of life is very apparent and the misery that certainly attends it will be one day no less sensible but there are too too many among us guilty hereof some through the principle and power of Unbelief their not giving credit to the reports of the Word neither to its dreadful Threatnings nor to its sweet and gracious Promises Do you I beseech you look carefully to it that there be not in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God Others yea and the same persons too make this departure from God out of love to the world for if any man love the world the love of the Father is not in him And it is no wonder to see men going from that place and company where and with whom they do not love to be have a care of the world therefore let it not bewitch you While ye live in it be ye not devoted to it but weaned from it If you do set your hearts upon the world you will turn your back upon God Demas saith the Apostle hath forsaken me and in forsaking him he forsook Christ what was the reason of it but his embracing this present world 2 Tim. 4. 10. How powerful and prevalent are these two things unbelief and love of the world with the generality of men what a vast multitude of persons do they carry away from God! What is there that in a moral way he could have done more than that which he hath done He hath frequently and loudly called them by messenger after messenger he hath most graciously invited them most lovingly and sweetly allur'd them and used variety of means and arguments to conquer their aversness to convince their judgments to gain their hearts and bring them to him yet after all he hath cause to complain Ye will not come to me that ye may have life Nay in stead of coming to him they are running further and further from him as if they thought they could never be at too great a distance whereas they have no cause to run from God for in so doing they run from life and rest and happiness and into the mouth of ruin and destruction and are too far removed from him already They are already without God in the world Ephes. 2. 12. They were born with their backs upon God were Transgressors from the womb going astray speaking and seeking Lyes and so they continue to do for every wilful Sin is a step from God Now I would desire such to consider and that seriously whether this their way be not their folly The Scripture doth expresly tell us They that are far from him shall perish Psal. 73. 27. and that he hath destroyed all them that go a whoring from him And as he hath done so he will go on to do for he is in one mind and in this case Repentance shall be hid from his eyes And to this add one Consideration more You must appear before him at the last whether you will or no though you should call to the rocks to cover you and the mountains to fall upon you and hide you from the wrath of the Lamb and from the face of him that sitteth upon the Throne yet you must appear Now you will not be invited to him as a Saviour then you shall be dragged before him as a Judge Suppose you should then beg and plead Lord Lord open to us what answer can you look for at his hands but this Depart from me for I know you not And how do you think he should know you since as long as you liv'd you would never acquaint your selves with him Oh