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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	day_n	time_n	year_n	3,093	5	4.9048	4	true

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A39674	Planelogia, a succinct and seasonable discourse of the occasions, causes, nature, rise, growth, and remedies of mental errors written some months since, and now made publick, both for the healing and prevention of the sins and calamities which have broken in this way upon the churches of Christ, to the great scandal of religion, hardening of the wicked, and obstruction of Reformation : whereunto are subjoined by way of appendix : I. Vindiciarum vindex, being a succinct, but full answer to Mr. Philip Cary's weak and impertinent exceptions to my Vindiciæ legis & fæderis, II. a synopsis of ancient and modern Antinomian errors, with scriptural arguments and reasons against them, III. a sermon composed for the preventing and healing of rents and divisions in the churches of Christ / by John Flavell ... ; with an epistle by several divines, relating to Dr. Crisp's works.	Flavel, John, 1630?-1691.	1691 (1691)	Wing F1175; ESTC R21865	194,574	498

of the Promise in our hearts yea the effects of those absolute Promises of the first Grace Ezek. 36. Ier. 32. Or else notwithstanding Christ's performance of Redemption on his part we can neither be justified nor saved For I don't think you intend to lay the Conditions of Repentance or believing upon Christ who in the New Covenant hath laid them upon us tho in the same Covenant he graciously undertakes to work them in us and yet your words sound in that wild Antinomian Note But I suppose you take my Notion to be as self-repugnant as your own when I say Faith is an antecedent Condition to Justification because I also say this Grace is also supernaturally wrought in us and is not of our selves This staggers you and is the very stone you stumble at all along this Controversie for in your sense p. 34. every Condition is meritorious by condignity or congruity First What do I say more in all this than what those Worthies before-mentioned do expresly affirm Doth not Dr. Owen the man whom you deservedly value make Conditions both in Adam's Covenant and the New with this difference that Adam's Covenant required them but the New Covenant effects them in all the Foederates Sir We take it for no contradiction to assert That the planting of the Principle and the assisting and exciting of the Acts of Faith are the proper Works of the Spirit of God and are also contained in the absolute Promises of the New Covenant Ezek. 36. 26 27. Ier. 32. 39 40. And yet Faith notwithstanding this is truly and properly our work and duty and that upon our believing or not believing we have or have not an actual interest in Christ Righteousness and Life For though the Author of Faith be the Spirit of God yet believing is properly our Act and an Act required of us by a plain Command 1 Iohn 3. 23. This is the Command of God That ye believe And if its being wrought in God's strength makes it cease to be our Work I would fain know what Exposition you would give of that place Phil. 2. 12 13. Work out your own Salvation c. for it is God that worketh in you both to will and to do And as this Faith is truly and properly our work though wrought in God's strength for it is not God but we that do believe so it is wrought in us by him by your own confession before the application of pardoning Mercy which is consequent in order of nature thereunto and therefore hath the true nature of an antecedent Condition which is that I contend for and did you but understand your own words you would not contend against Oh but say you p. 34. every Condition is meritorious either by way of congruity or condignity This is your ignorance of the nature of a Condition with which I find you as unacquainted as with the nature of a Covenant A Condition whilst unperformed only suspends the act of the Law or Testament it being the will of the Testator Legislator or Donor that his Law or Testament should act or effect when the Condition is performed and not before but it is not essential to a Condition to be a meritorious or impulsive cause moving him to bestow the benefit for the sake thereof A man freely gives another out of his love and bounty such an Estate or Sum of Money which he shall enjoy if he live to such a year or day and not before is this quando dies veniet this appointed time the meritorious or impulsive cause of the gift surely no man will say it but that it is a causa sine quâ non or a Condition suspending the enjoyment of the gift no man will deny that knows what the nature of a Condition is An act meritorious by way of Congruity is that to which a reward is not due out of strict justice but out of decency or some kind of meetness Merit of condignity is a voluntary action for which a reward is due to a man out of justice and cannot be denied him without injustice Our Faith is truly the Condition of the New Covenant and yet we detest the meritoriousness of it in either sense But you object my words to me in my Method of Grace where I assert the impossibility of believing without the efficacy of supernatural Grace p. 102 103. Sir I own the words you quote and am bold to challenge the most envious Eye that shall read those lines to shew me the least repugnancy betwixt what I said there and what I have said in my Vindiciae Legis c. p. 9. of the Prolegomena and p. 61. of that Book You shew your good-will to make an advantagious thrust but your Weapon is too short and can draw no blood But leaving these weak and impertinent Cavils let us come to your Solution of my Arguments p. 98. by which I proved the Conditionality of the New Covenant My first Argument was this If we cannot be justified or saved till we believe and are justified when we believe Then Faith is the Condition on which those consequent Benefits are suspended c. The sum of your Answer without denying distinguishing or limiting one Proposition is this That here Faith is properly put into the room of perfect Obedience and is to do what perfect Obedience was to do under the Law whereas say you Faith is only appointed as an Instrument to receive and apply the Righteousness of Christ which is the alone matter of our Justification before God and Faith it self is not our Righteousness as it would be if it were a Condition p. 105 106. Not to note the weakness and impertinence of this Answer I shall only take notice of what you here allow and grant That Faith is appointed as an Instrument to receive and apply the Righteousness of Christ which is the alone matter of our Iustification before God Whence I infer three Conclusions First That we cannot be justified before God till we believe except you can prove that the unaccepted and unapplied Righteousness of Christ doth actually justify our persons before God Secondly That the justification of our persons before God is and must be suspended as by a non-performed Condition untill we actually believe Which two Conclusions yield up your Cause to my Argument which you here seem to oppose Thirdly That hereby you perfectly renounce and destroy your Antinomian Fancy before-mentioned That if Christ have fulfilled the Law and purchased Heaven for men nothing can remain but to declare this to them c. for it seems by this they must receive and apply Christ's Righteousness by Faith or they cannot be justified you say not declaratively in their own Consciences but before God And thus instead of answering you have confirmed and yielded my first Argument and only oppose your own Mistakes not the sense or force of my Arguments in all that you say to it or the Scriptures

being in Christ and on that as well as on many accounts necessary The difference between him and other good men seems to lie not so much in the things which the one or other of them believe as about their order and reference to one another where 't is true there may be very material difference but we reckon That notwithstanding what is more controversible in these Writings there are much more material things wherein they cannot but agree and would have come much nearer each other even in these things if they did take some words or terms which come into use on the one or the other hand in the same sense but when one uses a word in one sense another uses the same word or understands it being used in quite another sense here seems a vast disagreement which proves at length to be verbal only and really none at all As let by Condition be meant a deserving Cause in which case 't is well known Civillians are not wont to take it and the one side would never use it concerning any good Act that can be done by us or good Habit that is wrought in us in order to our present acceptance with God or final Salvation Let be meant by it somewhat that by the constitution of the Gospel-Covenant and in the nature of the thing is requisite to our present and eternal well-being without the least notion of desert but utmost abhorrence of any such notion in this case and the other side would as little refuse it But what need is there for contending at all about a Law-term about the proper or present use whereof there is so little agreement between them it seems best to serve and them it offends Let it go and they will well enough understand one another Again Let Justification be taken for that which is compleat entire and full as it results at last from all its Causes and Concurrents and on the one hand it would never be denied Christ's righteousness justifies us at the Bar of God in the Day of Iudgment as the only deserving cause or affirmed that our Faith Repentance Sincerity do justifie us there as any cause at all Let Iustification be meant only of being justified in this or that particular respect As for instance against this particular Accusation of never having been a Believer and the honest mistaken Prefacer would never have said O horrid upon it s being said Christ's Righteousness doth not justify us in this case For he very well knows Christ's Righteousness will justifie no man that never was a Believer but that which must immediately justifie him against this particular Accusation must be proving that he did sincerely believe which shews his interest in Christ's Righteousness which then is the only deserving cause of his full entire Iustification There is an Expression in Vol. 1. p. 46. That Salvation is not the end of any good work we do which is like that of another we are to act from Life not for Life Neither of which are to be rigidly taken as 't is likely they were never meant in the strict sense For the former this Reverent Author gives us himself the handle for a gentle interpretation in what he presently subjoyns where he makes the end of our good works to be the manifestation of our Obedience and Subjection the setting forth the praise of the glory of the Grace of God which seems to imply that he meant the foregoing negation in a comparative not in an absolute sense understanding the glory of God to be more principal and so that by end he meant the very ultimate end so for the other 't is likely it was meant that we should not act or work for life only without aiming and endeavouring that we might come to work from life also For it is not with any tolerable charity supposable that one would deliberately say the one or the other of these in the rigid sense of the words or that he would not upon consideration presently unsay it being calmly reasoned with For it were in effect to abandon Humane Nature and to sin against a very Fundamental Law of our Creation not to intend our own felicity it were to make our first and most deeply Fundamental Duty in one great essential branch of it our sin viz. To take the Lord for our God For to take him for our God most essentially includes our taking him for our supream good which we all know is included in the notion of the last end it were to make it unlawful to strive against all sin and particularly against sinful oversion from God wherein lies the very death of the Soul or the sum of its misery or to strive after perfect conformity to God in holiness and the full fruition of him wherein its final blessedness doth principally con●ist It were to teach us to violate the great Precepts of the Gospel Repent that your sins may be blotted out Strive to enter in at the strait Gate Work out your salvation with fear and trembling To obliterate the Paterns and Precedents set before us in the Gospel We have believed in Jesus Christ that we might be justified I beat down my body lest I should be a castaway That thou mayest save thy self and them that hear thee It were to suppose one bound to do more for the salvation of others than our own salvation We are required to save others with fear plucking them out of the fire Nay we were not by this rule strictly understood so much as to pray for our own salvation which is a doing of somewhat when no doubt we are to pray for the success of the Gospel to this purpose on behalf of other me● T were to make all the threatnings of Eternal Death and promises of Eternal Life we find in the Gospel of our Bles●ed Lord useless as motives to shun the one and obtain the other For they can be motives no way but as the escaping of the former and the attainment of the other have with us the places and consideration of an end It makes what is mentioned in the Scripture as the Character and commendation of the most eminent Saints a fault as of Abraham Isaac and Jacob c. That they sought the better and Heavenly Countrey and declared plainly that they did so which necessarily implies their making it their end But let none be so harsh as to think of any good man that he intended any thing of all this if every passage that falls from us be stretch'd and tortured with utmost severity we shall find little to do besides accusing others and defending our selves as long as we live A Spirit of meekness and love will do more to our Common Peace than all the Disputations in the World Vpon the whole We are so well assured of the peaceful healing temper of the present Author of these Treatises That we are persuaded he designed such a course of managing the Controversies wherein he hath concerned himself as