Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	common_a	king_n	law_n	4,484	5	5.2143	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A26960	More reasons for the Christian religion and no reason against it, or, A second appendix to the Reasons of the Christian religion being I. an answer to a letter from an unknown person charging the Holy Scriptures with contradictions, II. some animadversions on a tractate De Veritate, written by ... Edward Herbert, Baron of Cherbury ... / by Richard Baxter.	Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691.; Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691. Reasons of the Christian religion.	1672 (1672)	Wing B1313; ESTC R4139	63,611	190

be then to say that our Repentance was sufficient without the Sacrifice and Merit and Intercession and Administration which did procure and behow it How absurd is it to say that the Cure of our Disease is sufficient for us without the Physician the Medicine the Apothecary the Application which we see by certain experience are the things that work this Cure And which you your self cannot deny but that they effect this Cure of Repentance or Holiness far more easily and commonly than it is ever wrought without them Nay it is certain that the Grace of Christ is absolutely necessary to Repentance and holiness in any one in the world whatsoever be thought of the necessity of the knowledge of Christ incarnate II. Quest Whether the Notitiae Communes be not many more than this learned and noble writer doth enumerate viz. First That there is one onely God at least supreme whom he very well describeth by his attributes Secondly That this God is to be worshipped and prayed to Religion being ultima hominis differentia pag. 214 Thirdly That the due conformity of our faculties that is their holiness and rectitude is the chief part of Gods worship especially Gratitude Fourthly That all vices and crimes must be expiated by repentance Fifthly That after this life there is another life of rewards and punishment Answ All these are excellent concessions as being not onely Truths but such Notitiae Communes without which a man is scarce a man but unman'd Except that the fourth doth erroneously assert the foredisproved sufficient satisfactoriness in our Repentance And that this is not a Notitia Communis I further thus manifest First By all humane Laws and Justice No King will make such a Law as this Let all the subjects be Traytors Murderers Oppressors Perjured never so long and Repent at any time before they die and all shall be forgiven meer Repentance will not save such persons from the Gallows Secondly And as to more private Justice no man giveth his children and servants such a Law Disobey me burn my house seek my death and do all the mischief you can and repent at last and you shall be forgiven Therefore meer Repentance is not sufficient satisfaction according to the Notitiae Communes of mankind Thirdly The reason of the thing doth prove it Because it is not sufficient to secure the ends of Government Should such a Law alone be made that men shall be forgiven all the villanies of their lives if they will but repent at last First It would encourage the most in the world to live in all manner of wickedness If the hearts of men are fully set in them to do evil because sentence against an evil work is not speedily executed but delayed How much more if they were sure it should never be executed Secondly The Laws and Lawgiver would be contemned and lose their Ruling power Thirdly The common good would be prostituted and cast away utterly and no man should live in safety and peace because of the dominion of wickedness Object Doth not Christianity then introduce these evils which giveth pardon to all the penitent Answ No First because that only Christianity doth acquaint us of a further satisfaction to justice than mans repentance by which all these ends of Government may be obtained better than by our perdition Secondly Because it giveth us no assurance of life and time of Repentance but calleth us to be alwaies penitent and ready Thirdly Because it telleth us of the blindness of the mind the power of sin and hardness of the heart by which Repentance becometh so great and hard a work that without Gods grace it will not be done And his grace is to be diligently sought in the use of means and is so little at our command as that the resisting of the holy Ghost may cause us to be forsaken of God and given over to our own hearts lusts to walk in our own Counsells Psal 81. 11 12. Fourthly Because God doth not totally and perfectly pardon all sin when he doth pardon the everlasting punishment though some in their ignorance will say so and revile those that will not be as ignorant He pardoneth not temporal chastisements and death he remitteth not the sad penalties of a temporary and partial desertion by his spirit horrours of Conscience and fears of Hell He remitteth not the temporal punishment by Magistrates but commandeth Justice to be done even on the penitent even to the loss of life it self Fifthly And his mercy is so great that through Christ he will forgive the eternal punishment and will judge men as he findeth them and not as they have been before conversion So that without Christ you cannot imagine how God should neither send one to Hell or misery that loveth him and hath his Image nor yet expose his Government Laws and the common good to so much mischief as the Proclamation of a pardon to all villanies that are but repented of at last alone would cause Object But if the King must not save a Traitor or Murderer because Christ died and satisfied for him why should you say that God doth so Answ First Because Christs Sacrifice and merits were not to satisfie the King but God Secondly Because that God who is satisfied by them hath told us how far and with what exceptions he is satisfied Not so far as to excuse men from the Laws of men or temporal Justice chastisement or death but to save them from everlasting misery and procure them everlasting happiness and to sanctifie their unremitted castigatory penalties to the furtherance of these ends And that there are more Notitiae Communes about Religion than the five forenamed is easily manifested It is as common a truth that all men are sinful and depraved even from the first however it came to pass that they are indisposed to the certain duties and ends which their nature was formed for That God is the universal Governour of man by moral means That he is just and true that God only can make known to us what is pleasing to himself and what reward or punishment he will retribute That mans darkness is so great that he learneth all this from nature alone with great imperfection doubtfulness and dissatisfaction That therefore a further supernatural Revelation which is sure would be a great confirmation and satisfaction to mans minds And therefore almost all the world do hearken after Oracles Prophecies Visions or some such further Revelation as Conscious of the unsatisfactoriness of their natural light That all Gods Revelations are certainly true That whatever Revelation hath First On the doctrine of it no contradiction to natural truth but the clear Impress of divine Power Wisdom and Goodness as its self evidence Secondly And maketh the same impress by divine co-operation on mans Souls in sanctifying them Thirdly And was attested by a multitude of evident uncontrolled Miracles Resurrection raising the dead giving to multitudes a Spirit of Miracles c. this Revelation

Pleasure with a simple complacency though not alwaies by election To will all that is fully discerned to have omnimodam rationem boni and nill all that is discerned to have omnimodam rationem mali Now it oft falls out that Historical Narratives shall proceed from some of these necessary acts Salvation Life and Goodness and the necessary means of all may be the Motives Thirdly There are other acts of the will which though they are not absolutely necessary are yet so neer to necessary that they alwaies go one way except in some very rare extraordinary case As for example It is not of absolute necessity that a man feed or cloath himself or that he murder not himself But yet he will ordinarily do the first and forbear the latter because he is necessarily a lover of himself and life and therefore will not cast himself away nor destroy himself without some conceived cause Fourthly There are no causes extant in rerum Natura for the commonness of some such actions Therefore it is certain they will not be done because there can be no effect without its cause And the turning of the will to a mans known corporeal destruction is an effect which hath no common cause Therefore it is a point of more Natural Evidence and Certainty than many Conclusions from Natural premises are that all the people of Europe or England will not to morrow kill themselves nor go naked nor famish or wound themselves c. And consequently that formerly all never did so since it was notoriously so much their interest to do otherwise For there was no cause to produce such an effect If it must be a Miracle rebus sic stantibus which should make all the Europeans or the English to go naked to morrow or to kill themselves than it is Natural to them to do the contrary or not to do this for a Miracle is the over-powering of Nature But the Antecedent is evident to reason from experience Ergo c. There may be Causes for one mans actions which can never fall out to All or to very many All the Physicians in England never did perswade all men against Physick nor all the Lawyers against Law nor all the Covetous men in England the Labourers or Beggars were never against recieving Meat Drink and Money Because there never was a cause of such effects And as it must be a great powerful common Cause that must do this so also if the question be whether ever there were a Parliament in England Whether ever they made Laws with the Kings Whether our statutes were made by such Kings and Parliaments as they are ascribed to c. There is such a concurrent consent of competent Witnesses as could not be to it were it false because it would be an effect without a sufficient Cause Yea against the tendency or disposition of mans nature which would have caused the wills of some to contradict it except a miracle had hindred them For among so many there are cross interest notorious Some Mens interest is against the thing while other Mens are for it And to make multitudes go against their apparent Interest and Friends and Enemies of the event to agree must be done by the power of truth or by a miracle suposing the case such as they could not be all deceived in Fifteenthly But there is yet a fuller natural evidence of the truth of some reports Even when besides the report there remain some visible unimitable effects of the reported actions which could be caused by nothing else As if their Fathers told the Grand-Children of Noah of the deluge they might see such effects of it as might assure them that it was true If the Parents of the man born blind Joh. 9. were told by him that his eyes were cured when they saw it in the effects they must believe it If uncontroulled History tell our Children that London was burnt and new built that Pauls Church was burnt c. that multitudes died of the Plague the year before c. When they see the City the Church the Graves the change of Inhabitants the proved Testaments of the deceased besides uncontradicted testimony here is a natural evidence to assure it Sixteenthly Though some half witted Philosophers boast much of the certainty of their Physicks in comparison of Morality the truth is the most of Physicks are meer untainties and the wisest see it and busily pull down others doctrines but confess they are yet but searching and groping by extrinsick effects and experiments to know what to set up in the stead And so did others before them And long may they so search before they find Whereas there is a more satisfying Evidence in much of Morality as being Natural to Mankind and such as will no sooner cease to be believed than man will cease to be man whereon all the affairs of the world are turned and converse Societies and all the private Comforts of Nature are maintained God hath made known to us what pleased him according to his own wisdome and not at our direction or choice And he hath chosen that for us which is most usefull It is more usefull to us to know how to live well and how to be happy and how to please and glorifie God and do good to one another than to know Gods skil or mysteries in his workes to know what is in the center of the earth or how the active Nature doth operate on the passive whether cold be a privation or positive what is the cause of the continued motus projectorum Whether Light and Heat be bodies or Substances whether they penetrate other bodies c. As it is more useful for me to know how to keep my Clock in order than how to make one to know how to plow sow eat drink to my health than to know by what mysterious operations the Corn or other things do grow and my food is digested c. Therefore this Learned Lord doth truly and wisely enumerate his Notitiae Communes in Morality and Religion as certainties the denial whereof doth unman us God hath left such instincts powers inclinations and conscience in humane nature as shall naturally though with some degree of freedome in the exercise be an insuperable witness in the world to himself and to our common principles and duties Seventeenthly The Historical Evidence of the Gospel of Christ is such as hath all the advantages before described in its kind He lived and preached and wrought his miracles frequently before thousands friends and foes His miracles were never controlled as Moses did the Magicians by greater nor by any certain Truth which they contradicted The eye witnesses themselves were unbelieving till forced by Cogent Evidence They delivered his Doctrine Miracles Resurrection to the world not onely by credible report and to the ruine of their worldly pleasures and interests with the loss of their lives and all this meerly for the hopes of a reward in heaven from God that well