Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n
Text snippets containing the quad
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A28346
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The Ladies Charity School-house roll of Highgate, or, A subscription of many noble, well-disposed ladies for the easie carrying of it on
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W. B. (William Blake), fl. 1650-1670.
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1670
(1670)
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Wing B3152; ESTC R2137
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96,148
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302
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but give at length some diligence to make your Calling and Election sure Honours and Evidences are never sure enough can Heaven be too sure for you Come look after God and Christ more pray oftener throw your selves into the Arms of Jesus depend upon Free Grace and he will certainly save you and your Souls Like and love holiness Be in love and league with no sin and you shall have Joy Happiness and Holiness to Eternity And therefore as ever you would be Lodgers out of Hell live in the Church as a holy member of the Church love the best of Protestants persecution is a devilish sin And good preaching a great mercy And if ye love one another then are ye my disciples indeed sayes Christ Joh. 14. 21. And 't is reported of St. Chrysostom that they had rather want the shining of the Sun than his preaching and sayes he if I had a Mountain for my Pulpit and the whole world to hear me it should be upon that Text. O ye sons of men how long will ye love vanity Psal 4. 2. The delight of the soul is to know its maker and heavenly preaching is a soul-ravishing thing there being infinite sweetness in the love of God But he that does not lift his head and his heart above this world will perish with the world And he she that is for much ease new fashions and fine cloaths haiting up down in Coaches is oftentimes for little religion If you cannot live without excess of pleasures I say excessive ones you will be carried down the stream of Nilus to the deadly Sea called Mare Mortuum like the skipping fishes till they fall into it Come let brave Sparks and gallant Ladies mind better things the great God and his Son that came down from heaven and never knew pleasure here on earth but in doing his Fathers Will and if you will now do it when the Dore is once shut it is too late Some would be troubled if they should never go to the Park again or see another May-day But if you should never go to heaven you are utterly undone for there are but two places all go to one place saith Solomon but he means that of the grave Eccles 12. 7. But all besides believe two places if the principles of Religion were never so dubious yet it concerns us to be serious because they are of such mighty concernment to us Said the great Earl of Leicester Fools play with their souls and drawlers at Religion cut the thread of life and throat of them But sink not into this deadness and deadly wickedness as to make sin a sport of at any time especially such kind of sinning as throws a contempt upon God and his word and hardens others to despise and condemn that namely Religion which all ages and nations beside this have never done before But it were better to be drowned with a milstone about our necks than left to dye and be buried with a hard heart in the grave or live to draw others to hell Take heed which way you go the broad way is most easie but the narrow is most safe Luke 13. 24. Safe bind and safe find but sin loosened and the Reins let go carries us whither we should not and whither we would not If we did but consider but the want of due consideration if you will indeed do it too then you shall know it more than you do and taste it to be far better than all the sports and pleasures of the Court and Country too Oh! that I had never been King of Spain said that great Prince Charles the fifth and that I had lived a Hermite's life But a heavenly life will never be repented of Should not Ladies strive to be Angelical and holy in the eyes of God as well as lovely in the eyes of men why should you be all for Honour and not for Religion as some of you are It becomes great Sparks to seek great things and not to spend their time in Ladies Chambers tossing of a Play-Book or reading this or that little Jest crying Faith Madam here 's a good one Lord Bacon said Nothing concerns us so much in all the world as Religion and the Principles of it Come then and let us seek the world to come this passes away like May-day and May-flowers all but smoak or dew quickly gone but everlastingness is a mighty thing The world and times are bad let us make Christ all in all Col. 3. 11. He is so and will be so Let him be to us in point of Justification Sanctification and Redemption Imitate him and lean upon him in Life Death and Eternity Wisdom waits at his Gate to keep you from sin which a Play-house leads unto But I will go to the house of God sayes David and pay my Vows in thee O Jerusalem Psal 116. 19. And I mine in thee O Smithfield said that brave Hampshire Martyr John Philpot but if you care not for God's Honour he will not care for yours nor what becomes of you when you dye But he that honours me will my Father love said Christ Joh. 14. 21. But no man can love serve or honour him enough who has loved us so much as to wash us in his own blood Rev. 1. 5. And Philpot shed his free and boldly and disputed as bravely as ever man did for Christ and his Truth in the Convocation-house And the world is not worthy of those men which have been burnt upon this account in all or divers Countreys by the Man of Sin But take heed you be not foolish Virgins and foolish Ladies and such as have not Oil in your Lamps nor saving Grace in your hearts at midnight when the Cry of the Bridegroom shall come For if the door be then shut and Repentance too late Christ will never hear though you knock beg and cry upon your knees and were more beautiful than Angels saying Lord open open with ten thousand tears in your eyes The day is past and the night will never have an end But 't is non-consideration is the cause of men and women's damnation said a good Divine Therefore said God O that my people did but consider But the Ox knows his Owner and the Ass his Masters Crib but my people doth not consider Isa 1. 3. The length of Time the certainty of Eternity the impossibility of more than a long Life and how vain it is to labour not to dye once Methusalem dyed Gen. 5. 7. Piety strength or policy keeps none from the grave Consider saith Solomon do not all go one way to the dust Eccles 12. 5. But Christ shall say Come ye Blessed Go ye Cursed I was an hungry and you fed me naked and you cloathed me or you did it not Nay what you did to one of these little ones you did to me Matth. 25. 41 42. O Do something for the School if you have not yet though works do not merit 'T is impossible saith St. Austin
and then die and go to Heaven or else lie three days in Purgatory and from thence go to Heaven willing him to take his choice He presently pitched on Purgatory and his Soul went strait thither where he had not been one hour but the Angel appeared to him there and asked him how he did and that he was the same Angel that brought him the Message from God about his two years or three days in Purgatory Ay but said he You are not a good Angel for I have been here three years and you told me but two days No said the Angel it is not one hour yet O pray for me said he that I may come out and go to my sick Bed again which the Angel did and the man was very glad he got into the world again St. Francis writes just such another Story and God sent an Angel to him to know whether he would lie one day in Purgatory or one year longer in his Bed but prayed hard here and the Angel came and let him out before he had lay'n one hour and yet he thought his two dayes had been out so great were those Torments and therefore what a cruel hard hearted thing is it for People that have money to let their Friends lie there in Torment when the Priest can so easily get them out if they will but pay for it Ay and what a devilish thing is that of the Pope to keep them there for money especially if they be poor Gregory the Great writes of Tarsellus's Sister being dead cast forth a most fragrant smell beyond Oyntment Jessamy or Roses and that St. Hillarion did the like for 10 moneths together A French Doctor in Paris wondering in his mind how God should make the Bodies of his Saints to shine in the Kingdom of Heaven had immediately his Feet so transparently shining and bright that he was not able to behold them with his eyes but to cover his head and them with the Bed cloaths St. Anthony in one day past from Padua to Portugal St. Ignatius transported himself from Rome to Cologne and to Rome again in less than two hours St. Francis and St. Martinus were seen lifted up in Prayer to a very great height namely above Trees or Towers or any Steeples and continued praying a great while very visible to be seen A Gentleman of Noble Parentage became a Monk and went on with that courage and zeal that at last he challenged the Devil and bade him do his worst The Devil appeared and fought in his own Cell and made his nose and mouth bleed but with the noise the rest of the Monks came in where he lay as in a trance but they carried him to his Bed where he continued almost three days without any sign of life in which time by the company of an Angel who descended to a dark obscure place and saw a man sitting in a Chair and certain beautiful Women thrusting Torches in his mouth drawing them thorough his body again and many strange things which frighted the Monk and he prayed the Angel to tell him what it meant This miserable Wretch said the Angel was a Gentleman much given to Women and therefore the Devil torments him in the shapes of Women And he said the Angel that lay on the Gridiron rub'd with Salt was a cruel Lord to his Tenants Others had their Brains and Eyes beat out because that in their life-time they would not see These and such like Stories be in that Book which is big and large but has not a Primer-full of Divinity in it only a few moral rational things mixt with these kind of Lyes which they would teach men instead of the Scriptures and the Holy Word of God And if such kind of Divinity shall be Translated and Dedicated to agreat Princess what stuff is there in France Spain Italy and other Countries for which we may justly charge these two or three Scriptures against them and a hundred more were we minded who are Enemies to the Bible and the Souls of Men. The first Scripture is this They have forsaken me the Fountain of living Water and digged to themselves broken Cisterns which can hold no Water Jer. 2. 13. That is they have forsaken the Holy Scriptures which contain the waters of consolation and comfort for all thirsty and desiring Souls after God and Christ and the saving knowledge of God and Christ in their Souls and for the broken Cisterns that is the deceitful lying crackt unsound History Books of little Truth or Divinity in them And this is the very same which St. Paul speaks of in the 2d Chapter of the 2d of the Thessalonians ver 11 12. where he says For this cause God shall send them strong delusions that they should believe a Lye 'T is but one Lye all their whole Religion that is one great entire Lye congealed linked mass'd and coupled together by Time Policy Covetousness Deceit and Ignorance And a strange delusion is sent them by God ver 12. who can and doth most righteously and often punish sin with sin the Jews and Pharisees for malicious accusing and persecuting Christ and his Apostles with blindness to this day and the Papist too for abusing of the Word of God and concealing of it from the People to believe Lyes and Delusions God suffering it to be because of the Peoples ignorance and willingness to have it so not at all caring for his Word or receiving the love of and Truths contained in it about Jesus Christ and his pure Worship full and infinite satisfaction to the Father for our sins by his sufferings all which they are willingly ignorant of and for this cause or sin of theirs God has sent that is suffer'd Satan by false foolish Teachers Books and Lyes to deceive them that they might be justly damned for not loving regarding or forsaking the pure Fountain that is the plain wholsom Word and Truths of God but suffer their Priests to forbid Meats and Marriages which is the very Doctrine of Devils saith S. Paul 1 Tim. 4. 1 3. S. Peter whom they advance above all almost equal with Christ making him a Rock or that the Church of God stands upon him when as he is no more than another but says this against them that Christ is the Rock or precious Corner-stone on which all the Church of God and Believers are spiritually built 1 Pet. 2 4. and how his Word is a more sure Rule to us and that we ought to take more heed to it than if an Angel from heaven speak to us 2 Pet. 1. 18 19. Gal. 1. 8. And says St. John If any man add to that God shall add to him all the Plagues that are written in this Book Rev. 22. 18. Or if they shall take away any thing of this Prophesie God shall take his part out of the Book of Life ver 19. And yet you presume to alter or take quite away one of his Commandments Read this you poor well-meaning