Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	church_n	true_a	visible_a	3,262	5	9.6634	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A15826	The saints sufferings, and sinners sorrowes. Or, The evident tokens of the salvation of the one, and the perdition of the other Phil. I.28, 2 Thes. I.6,7	Yates, John, d. ca. 1660.	1631 (1631)	STC 26087; ESTC S101332	67,289	372

2. Thess 1.6.7 Little doe the Iewes know their approching miseries their perdition hastneth and you shall be cōforted when you see Christ as good as his word Vpon this ground I verily beleeve is that to the Hebrewes Heb. 10.36 37. Yet a little while and hee that shall come will come and will not tarry You have a promise that Christ will come upon the unbeleeving Iewes and destroy them bee you patient and waite live by faith and the Lord will come and save you when that disobedient nation perisheth Iames 5.1 Goe to now ye rich Iewes weepe and houle c. The Apostle fetcheth his reason from their last dayes and miseries neere at hand that is the very periode of your kingdome and policye is now approching c. It shall bee a comfort to us to see the downefall of Rome according to holy prophecie as it was to the beleeving Iewes to see Christs promise fulfilled upon Ierusalem hee had threatned and in time executed his decree in punishing the ungodly Vse 1. To teach us that afflictions should not bee strange to the godly that live at home in their Fathers familie and make his word their stay For what can be strange that falls out seasonably Yee and Snow in winter thunder and lightening in Sommer are no wonders no more can afflictions seeme strange seeing they are alwayes fitted to their owne proper time Vse 2. Afflictions are not dangerous nor hurtfull howsoever sharpe and bitter because seasonable Many a thing is undone by missing its owne season If sowen corne be not buried with winter snow and nipped with frosts whereby wormes and weedes are destroyed it will not flourish afterward no not in the strength of Sommer The want of seasonable correction hazardeth many a soule thousands perish because they know not even this their acceptable time But those happie crosses that fall seasonably upon us never departe without a blessing This makes a Christians chaines to bee chaines of gold and the markes of the Lord Iesus to be glorious Vse 3. Afflictions are glorious and beautifull in the eyes of the Lord. Every thing saith the wise man is comely in his season then it flourisheth and floureth and expresseth beauty to every beholder The scars of a souldier received in the field are ensignes of valour and the wounds which a Christian suffereth in fighting the good fight are impressions of honour Vse 4. Afflictions are profitable time and season make for the good of all things The poore woman of Edessa fearing to come too late to suffer with Christians forgets her selfe and with her child in her arines and her clothes halfe on meets the Deputy in the face and feared not to tell him the cause of he haste to wit least he should have made an end before her comming who desired as well to dye as to live with Christians Vse 5. Afflictions are changeable No season will last alwayes there will bee an end of the Saints sufferings the rod shall not alwayes rest upon them Psal 125.3 God knowes how to take off and lay on his owne blowes how to bring in and bring out his owne seasons Sommer it selfe would bee teadious if Winter should not follow it out and bring it in Afflictions should never have an after fruite were they ever grevious for the present and had no change They are but an exercise which without change cannot bee endured God having a fit time doth but begin with his house In these words is expressed the measure and method of afflictions the beleeving Iewes have the first hansell Their share is the first and least but not the last of the cup Psal 75.6 The best of good and the worst of ill doth alwayes settle to the bottome Hence it is that wicked men sip of the cup of pleasure before the godly but the godly tast of the cup of sorrow before the wicked Isa 49.12.34.5 Rom. 2.9 Heaven first endures the sword then the earth Ier. 25.17 18 19. All Nations Egypt and the mingled people must pledge in that cup wherein Ierusalem begins Every soule must smart for sinne but the Iew first and then the Gentile Rom. 2.9 Vse 1. Learne Gods severity that will not spare sinne in his owne no not when he spares it in a wicked man A maister of a family will often winke at the misbehaviour of stangers but will not suffer his children to looke awry Vse 2. See Gods mercy that having tempered the bitter cup of his wrath appoynts his owne to tast the top reserving all the dregs for the wicked who must wring them out whiles his owne servants do but wash their lips and let downe some drops to know how bitter sin is in the bad fruites of it Vse 3. This helps to plead the cause of Gods house against the enemies thereof Papists vpbraide Protestants with their calamities as a curse upon their cause affirming that our Churches if true would flourish and appeare by those visible signes which accompany the glorious monarchy of the Catholick Church But stay there Romanists reckon without their host and take an intruder for the maister of the house Their holy father hath played the false Prophet and healed the wound of the Romane Monarchy with a plaister of new Idolatry so that all the world wondereth after him Rev. 13.3 No marvaile then if their Church flourish having such a wicked throng to defend it whose portion is the botome of the cup in Gods hand and therefore in order of time the last Bohemia the Palatinate Churches of Germany and France have drunke and begun to others yet never the lesse pretious in Gods eye because the first in trouble Let others expect that time when the Lord Iesus shall arme himselfe with that power which as yet stirs not and reigne not onely in his owne but over his enemies by making them angry when the time of his wrath commeth to recompence his servants for their sufferings and sinners for their wickednesse That the one may glory in the perfection of their blessednesse and the other pine under the pressure of their miseries They that now destroy the earth must themselves be destroyed Rev. 11.17.18 The times for persecution ratified by an oath Dan. 12.7 are by the oath of the same Angel proclaymed to continue no longer Rev. 10.6 The continuance of Antichrists succesfull tyranny is the lesse to be admired seeing Christ hath sworne that the Romane monarchy in the ten hornes shall enjoy so long a terme to doe mischeife both to the naturall few and to the surrogate Israel of God Luk. 22.24 Rev. 11.2 But when the time times and halfe a time shall be no longer and the oath of the 42. moneths shall expire then the latter end of Antichrist shall be worse than his beginning Pleade therefore the cause of Gods people and let the world take notice that these judgements begun in the Church will end in her enemies Vse 4. Let every Christian learne hence to plead his owne

cause and not to cast away his confidence in the evill houre of tentation for the Devill will put hard to perswade him that hee is in worse case than other men and more hated of God because his hand is heavier upon him But know that in chastisements God begins with his best servants who therefore must take it as an argument of his love Sinners Sorrow Where God begins to judge hee makes not there an end The end of Iudgement is wofull and the last lash of Gods scourge workes the bitterest smart In the disobedient or rebellious here mentioned wee have a terrible patterne for ungodly men The Iewes wished the blood of Christ to be upon them and their children Reade but their end in story and it will suffice to move a heart of flint and make us compassionate to desperate sinners Besides this their end was eternall perdition for that is the end of ungodly men disobeying the Gospel It is noted in story that when the Romans had slaine a great number of them upon the bankes of Iordan and tumbled their carkeises into the river they never left swimming till they fell into the lake of Sodom where they were buried as in a grave a tipe of the sinking of their soules into the gulfe of hell for St. Iohn living to see their miserable end turnes the stile of hell and tearmes it the lake of fire and brimstone Rev. 19.20 where I beleeve that he alludes to this fearefull presage of the Iewes eternall perdition The better to conceive of the end mentioned in the text let us consult with our Saviour who by the end understands the destruction of Ierusalem Matth. 24.6.13.14 The end is not yet that is with the first signes foregoing Ierusalems destruction He that endures to the end shall be saved i.e. he that houlds out in other signes of persecution scandall apostacy shall bee saved even temporally when the end of Ierusalem is come as all the Christians were being warned by a voyce from heaven to remoove to Pella Then shall the end come that is no sooner shall the Gospell bee preached to the Gentiles and the Iewes rejected but the Romane Army shall come and destroy Ierusalem Dan. 9.26 Messiah being once cut off from the Iewes they shall no longer bee his people but another that he will choose shall come and spread over them the wing of abomination Notwithstanding with many shall he confirme his covenant and by seaven yeares labour gather a Church amongst the Iewes which hee will save when hee suffers the rest to perish This is likewise the end which Peter mentioneth vers 7. before the text by consideration whereof he exhorteth the Christian Iewes to sobriety watchfulnesse and prayer Iohn out living this Apostle points it out by an houre 1 Iohn 2.18 This example of the end of the Iewish Nation must become a rule to all Nations to take heed of rebellion against the Gospell God that spared not the Iewes will spare none that long provoke his patience And here let us observe foure things 1. All the wicked must have an end and that first of Gods patience 2. of their pleasures 3. of their lives God will not alwaies beare the reproaches of sinners neither shall they alwayes injoy their pleasures which at the best are but pleasures of sinne for a season and with their naturall lives all their jollities in this world come to their period 2. The end of the wicked is miserable for when it commeth it lasteth and continueth one misery overtaketh an other they must drinke and be drunke and spue and fall and rise no more Ier. 25.27 Neither can they refuse to drinke because Gods people have drunke before them And if they drinke whose sinnes are pardoned then such as have no pardon must needs have judgement endlesse easelesse and remedilesse Now the misery of this end of the wicked consists 1. In the extreamity of it hence compared to unquenchable fire utter darkenesse the never dying worme and everlasting perdition 2. In the place called hell a prison tartarus gehenna and bottomlesse pit Hell is beneath all comfort a prison is a streight custody of the soule tartarus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a place of horror and fearefull spectacles Gehenna a vally where Idolaters burnt their children with fire and to prevent all pitty drum● were beaten up to drowne the horrible hideous cryes of Infants No pitty in hell for all the yelling of damned spirits a bottomlesse pit out of which the damned shall never bee able to creepe or craule 3. In their lamentation they shall weepe their bellies full and bee never the better To weeping they shall adde wailing wringing of hands and the height of their lamentation shall be gnashing of teeth Their teeth shall chatter as if extremity of cold chilled them much weeping cools the heart daunts the spirits and sets the whole body in a shaking Such cooling shal the wicked finde in the hottest fire 3. Though the damned feele exquisite torments yet they shall never know their full extremity Peter stands amazed in expressing their end and smothers the terrour under a question as unutterable What shall the end be Good men can fathom the depth of their sorest calamities and Peter here determines their crosses with a beginning but when hee commeth to decipher the end of the wicked as being at a non plus hee stops the currant of his discourse and conceales the rest under a cloud of admiration A wicked mans end is unknowne from the capacity of the subject he shall never know what his strength is able to beare He might count himselfe happy if hee were as a stone in a rocke of flint which as it tasteth no joy so feeles no paine 2. It is not to bee expressed for the extremity of the torment So that a wicked man shall never know his worst 3. It cannot be knowne for the perpetuity of it whence wee may say of their torments as of the joyes of heaven The eye of man never saw them yea such as the eare hath not heard nor which surpasseth the highest straine they never entred into the heart of man which of all things created approacheth neerest to an infinite nature 4. That which shall bee knowne shall be enough to crush and confound every wicked sinner He shall not know where to appeare or hide his head Happy man if the mountaines would overlay and the rocks crush him in pieces no burthen would then be too heavy no waight or pressure too painefull no punishment too great that would shelter him from the piercing eye and revenging stroke of his angry judge Alasse how can men living contest with the Almighty outface his word outbrave his justice who when they are dead cannot brooke the frowne of his countenance nor put to silence the voyce of despaire I should now conclude this point with the counsell of Christ Math. 5.25 Agree with thy adversary quickely whilst thou art in the way least at any