Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	cold_a	hot_a	moist_a	1,558	5	9.6254	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A75307	A treatise concerning religions, in refutation of the opinion which accounts all indifferent· Wherein is also evinc'd the necessity of a particular revelation, and the verity and preeminence of the Christian religion above the pagan, Mahometan, and Jewish rationally demonstrated. / Rendred into English out of the French copy of Moyses Amyraldus late professor of divinity at Saumur in France.; Traitté des religions. English.	Amyraut, Moïse, 1596-1664.	1660 (1660)	Wing A3037; Thomason E1846_1; ESTC R207717	298,210	567

vigilant care for the good and conservation of men is rebated so much without question is defaulked from their piety towards him And whereas as we shall see in its due place man is by nature alienated from God and extremely averse and reluctant to be reduc'd to him how clear knowledge soever he ha's by his word of this wise Providence how could those doubts and darkeness ever introduce him to an ingenious and free devotion I conclude therefore that all the Religion of the Ancients who liv'd without a particular Revelation had there been no other particulars to make it so but this was either languid or forc'd and that consequently to beget in the hearts of men a true and since respect towards God it is needful that himself instruct us in the knowledge of his Providence But that which follows shall shew the same more evidently CHAP. V. Of what great moment it is to know whether Death be a Natural Accident or Not And that such knowledge cannot be attain'd without special Revelation DEath is the most ordinary thing in the World For all that are born must necessarily dye Yet there is nothing of whose Cause and End Philosophers have been more ignorant All of them look't upon it as a thing purely Natural which befalls us as inevitably as naturally because our bodies being composed of the Elements which include discordant qualities hot and cold dry and moist so long as these continue in good harmony and are mixed in a perfect temperature they are maintained in vigor but when one comes to prevail against another or one of them fails through absumption of the moisture in which it consists or any other way there necessarily follows a dissipation of the compages Which happens in like manner to all other bodies which have the same principles of their generation the union after a certain time being dissolved and the bodies corrupted Indeed if the Soul of Man were mortal as his body is they would have reason for this opinion and Death would be natural to us as it is to other creatures but it befits onely Epicurus who believes the humane Soul corruptible to hold Death for a thing simply natural if every one will speak agreeably to his principles and not run into absurdities and extravagances For Man is not the Soul onely he is the body to that is to say the body is not only the case of his Soul wherein she is included for a time but a part of man which enters into his composition and without which he cannot be called man Now what a disorder is it in the Nature of man that half of his essence should be extinguish'd at the end of fourty or fifty years and the other half his Soul remain for ever after despoiled of it Unless the wild Metempsychosis of Pythagoras be admitted and that our Souls do not cease to go out of some bodies and re-enter into others sometimes into a horse and sometimes a bird and sometimes a man or if it be confin'd onely to humane bodies that he who was a great Philosopher two thousand years ago is now a Cow-heard and that great Prince who discomfited Darius neer the City of Arbela at this present a Porter in the Market An Opinion I conceive they against whom I dispute will not own Shall the Soul then remain eternally a Widow She that cherishes the body so much that she forgets her own interest to be complacent to it She that is not separated from it but with so great regret that the best marriage in the world is not dissolved with so much reluctancy and tears In which respect since these people acknowledge a Providence how come they not to observe that if death be a thing purely natural a good part of that Providence is lost death taking the body from its jurisdiction so that it cannot repay it the rewards of Virtue nor make it feel any penalty for its Vices Or if it be a punishment to the Body to exist no more why do those dy who in consideration of their Virtue and Piety ought to obtain some recompense for their bodies For the course of the World is such as we noted above that in this life neither the greatest part of crimes are sutably punisht nor the least part of compensations distributed and the Colicks Megrims Catarrhs Palsies Goutes and Stone hinder us from boasting of having found our corporeal beatitude here Yea if death be a thing natural as they conceive it cannot be a punishment to the body for the Vices to which it is addicted For that which is natural may indeed be an infirmity or misery but not a punishment which ha's no place but in retribution for sin and because things which are purely natural arrive to us whether we sin or not And besides the Vicious would be no otherwise treated then he which is not so and he that is not Vitious would have no better a condition then he that is culpable Which perverts all order of Justice and all Wisdom of Providence But there daily falls out a certain accident in Life of which in case death be natural noman can give a pertinent reason nor acquit the Providence which governs the world of blame Namely that Infants dye at their birth and even some are extinguish'd in the Womb. To what purpose were it to have lodg'd a Soul so little a time in a body that it had not so much leasure as to know its habitation And since as they teach 't is the Soul it self that fashions and disposes and contrives its mansion why is it ruin'd before she can enjoy it without hope of ever seeing it re-edified And as to the poor wretched body which is not yet sensible of its condition what is it the better for having been so little a while or what hath it committed that it must be no longer I know well that it is taught that it is better to Be then Not to be and I do not gainsay it but yet a Being of so little duration is of no great comfort and he would seem not to satisfie right reason who being ask'd why he breaks an excellent piece of workmanship incontinently after he had made it without having reap'd any use of it either to himself or any other should answer that it was sufficient that he had given it a being of half an hour For it was not to experiment his art that God framed little Infants there are Proofs enough of that in so many millions of men he knows it without tryal and is so expert therein that every work of his being perfect he ha's no cause to repent of or be displeased with it If it be answered that 't is for the exercise of Parents to train them to patience were there no more in it but this the action indeed would have for its end to frame men to Virtue in which their resemblance with the Deity consists but the means that God used to bring them to it

be made of its suffrage And I cannot imagine that there is any at this day that bears the name of Christian who esteems it to have been of Divine revelation Wherefore the little I shall say to prove it is not so much for necessity of the thing in it self as because the design of this work does not permit me to pass it over absolutely in silence To judge therefore what it was we must not conceive it such as it is amongst barbarous and savage Nations such as the Toupinamboults are at present and the people of Suevia and Sarmatia were of old For who will believe that any extraordinary Celestial light in matter of Religion ever illuminated those Nations amongst whom there is scarce seen any traces of so much as humanity It is true there have been some people in our times that have written so highly in commendation of the contentment there is in their opinion in living under the simple Laws of nature as they speak that they seem inclinable to favour the manners and condions of Savages and prefer it before ours so as to have no shame at all of their nakedness and to boast that they do not cover it but onely in respect to custom But as for these persons it is not my present purpose to dispute against them If they would speak the genuine sentiments of their hearts they would not onely not acknowledge any particular revelation of the will of God in Religion but would moreover make profession of not believing the immortality of their souls nor any Religion in the world and after having rendred themselves like to those miserable Savages in all brutalities they would surpass them in this point that they would cast under their feet all remembrance of God of whom in their Desarts and forlorn Barbarism the Margajats and Patagons have yet some fear and reverence I speak now to such as make some esteem of the improving elegancy of Learning and who have some portion of honesty lest in their conversation amongst men The Greeks and Romans therefore have without question carried the preheminence in all kindes of politeness and excellence amongst the Pagan Nations So that it is amongst them that we must seek for this particular revelation whether it may be found in the Religion of either of those people It is true the Egyptians were much celebrated for their mysteries and rare wisdom and divers have thought that all the wisdom of Greece was transported from the treasuries of Egypt by those that travell'd thither for it But if there were any thing of good among them they had it from communication with the Jews who besides that they sojourned a long time in Egypt before the Greek name arose in the world they were their neer neighbours in Palestine and had frequent and free commerce with them yet have they so viciated corrupted and obscured in their superstitions and idolatries what they had learned from them that there is none of it to be known and distinguish'd almost all the books in which they had expounded their mysteries are lost But he that is desirous to know what excellent opinions they had what divine wisdom it was that made them so cryed up he may please onely to read the Treatise written by Plutark of Isis and Osiris and he will see in the first place that the veiles and allegories under which he sayes they hid their knowledge are shameful and putid fables such idle and dull extravagancies and impertinences in themselves that it is impossible they could serve for a coverture to any conceptions I do not say heavenly and divine but worthy of men and ordinary sober sense In the next place he will finde that all that Plutark with singular acuteness of wit could uncypher of them is so dubious and the text on which he comments so plyable to all sorts of fancies that he that would set himself about it might invent several other interpretations as probable as his They are as the divers impressions of clouds to which the fancy of every man ascribes what image or lineaments seems best to him And lastly he will discover that though the expositions which that Philosopher presents us there were as certain as if they had been delivered by an Oracle yet they all terminate in two caitive and dismal Demons unknown even to them that ador'd them in uncouch speculations concerning the motions of the Moon and the Inundations of Nilus in Platonick Idea's and the Riddles of Pythagoras and in that ancient foppery of Oromasdes and Arimanius two opposite principles of all things with some cold mystical interpretations of reasons why the Egyptians religiously worshipped the Ox the Sheep the Ichneumon Larks Storks Serpents Dogs Beetles and Weesels Is not here great cause to boast of having drawn from the fountain of Divine Wisdom it self So little ground is there to think so that on the contrary there is no person of indifferent understanding but in the reading of that Treatise would pity Plutark that bestowed so much knowledge and labour in commenting upon such absurdities and could not discover them to be such What shall we then say of the Greeks who held from the Egyptians whatever they had not altogether bad and what shall we think of the Romans who had nothing but from imitation of the Greeks both in humane Sciences and Religious Politie But put the case they had borrowed nothing from the Egyptians but that this Divine Revelation had been peculiarly imparted to them I would be told from what books that were in reputation amongst them we ought now to take it For we have heard say indeed that they had Sibyls by whose means they were made acquainted with divine secrets and who also writ books of the same but the wind and time have carried them away If there be any thing lest of their Oracles as there are divers excellent Greek verses that bear their name at this day yet are with very just reason suspected by the learned the Christian Religion is clearly described in them and the Pagan so strongly and directly confuted that the Christians could scarce finde more express proofs for themselves then in those books of theirs And there is no likelihood that these were the same whom the Roman Priests went to consult as oft as there was occasion to avert some raging mortality For they taught not to render to Apollo Latona Diana Hercules Mercury or Neptune those honours which they us'd to perform to them to make them propitious in such occurrences If therefore this revelation was contained in the Books of the Sibyls it is perish'd long since and we have no more knowledge of them then of those of Numa Pompilius which were burned at Rome by authority of the Senate because they tended to the subversion and annulling of all their Religious Ceremonies They had moreover memorials of the rights of the Pontifices Augurs and Aruspices Of all which there is nothing left but the name Miserable are