Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	death_n	grace_n	sin_n	2,826	5	5.1233	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A59044	Animadversions upon a book entituled Inquisition for the blood of our late soveraign &c., and upon the offence taken at it wherein in order to peace the ground, reason, and end of our wars are discovered, the old cause stated and determined, the late insurrection animadverted, and a way of peace propounded / by William Sedgwicke.	Sedgwick, William, 1609 or 10-1669?	1661 (1661)	Wing S2382; ESTC R25203	133,070	314

by the sword to raigning and ruling by force They are surely most contrary and therefore Christ knowing he was to suffer commanded Peter to put up his sword and gave this rule for ever He that taketh up the sword to defend himself from suffering or to fight for Christ shall perish by the sword Note 1. We took up the sword at first to avoid suffering and to deliver our selves and Party 2. We now perish by that sword 3. If we now begin to learn what we then refused we go back and repent of all these twenty years work We may I think well do it as it was our work and therein justifie both the righteousness of God in his works and our honesty and innocency in serving of him This your Profession of suffering for Christ will I think overthrow all your active dispensation and if you be true to it it will lead you to an open declaration of the change of your minds and to a faithful resolution wholly to commit your cause to God and never more take up arms to deliver your selves and destroy others If you can do this pluck up this root of bitterness and cut out this core it will be a great ease both to your selves and the Nation If you are able to pull it up and remove it from you by a full honest and clear demonstration of your hearts and minds that may be sufficient to satisfie the Magistrate It will effect one of these two things Either it will overcome your enemies with love and so heal all the distractions of the Nation Or if they continue to persecute after such a declaration of your minds they will soon break themselves For by love and patience Christ hath and doth overcome all enmity and will do so for ever it is the most certain and invincible strength that ever was When you prosecuted the King and his Party beyond bounds and measure you went into confusion and there lost your selves And if they should be guilty of the same thing and pursue a weak faln people beyond the measure set by God the same confusion will be in their affairs that was in yours I think this of your present sufferings That in a large and common sense they are the sufferings of Christ as the sufferings of all men are his so far as they are humane though weak In all their afflictions he is afflicted The sins and sufferings of all are laid upon him We all like sheep have gone astray and the Lord hath laid upon him the iniquities of us all and as our sins so our sorrows Surely he hath born our griefs and carried our sorrows Even of all Parties and of the worst of all not the godly only but the wicked not the obedient only but the rebells He made his grave with the wicked Even for the rebellious that the Lord God might dwell amongst them Therefore we do see that all Parties are enabled to suffer for that Cause they engage in And do find mercy to pardon their sins and strength to suffer death The common resolution of a man strengthened with the common grace of the Gospel and with any measure of common honesty or an opinion of the justice and truth of their cause do carry men off the stage of the world into death handsomly and steadily That some of you that have suffered have met with more peace and more innocency in suffering then in acting And more love and comfort in a prison and death then in a corrupt toylsom and sinful life in war and contests I do not wonder and yet cannot magnifie it as Martyrdom This I am bold to affirm That Christ hath not yet in these times so clearly or visibly set up his standard and gathered a people to it into distinction from other men as to commit his name truth and cross wholly and only to them Nor hath he formed a body by any law rule spirit or ministry into an outward profession under any visible charracters as he did in the Primitive times And therefore there are none whose sufferings can challenge this peculiar honour of fighting under this standard the Cross of Christ Therefore I do much fear that this profession and glorying in the Cross will cost you dear and involve you in deeper sufferings then you are aware of You will sooner come to a true feeling of your selves and a sober sense of your condition if you would sink down into your confession and acknowledgement of the righteous hand of God upon you for your sins And alas not so much for your personal sins as for the evil state and spirit in which you have acted Against it hath God very great indignation I feel in my soul God hath great pitty to your persons as men and as his creatures and servants And because as weak men you have been deceived and misled But that corrupt state and that spirit that misled you is judged for ever and never can nor shall recover It is not the lowness of a condition that keeps a people down but the unsoundness of it Were we once true and single we should find rest and peace in the worst things and deliverance out of them The upright may and shall rejoyce in the hottest fires and soon come forth But a false and unsound state must fall from heaven though it be exalted thither To fall under sin and shame to be humbled under the feet of the vilest creatures in the world to bear first our own sins and then the wrath scorn and revenge of all the world Is nearer to Christ shews more of innocency then t● 〈◊〉 our selves For the first part of 〈◊〉 Christian righteousness is to bear sin to judge and condemn our selves and to intercede for others To justifie our selves and condemn others is very contrary to the Cross of Christ This may seem and is strange to men but the mysterie of the Cross of Christ will open it to them that seek wisdom To conclude this point I do judge that as there was confusion in your actings so there is in your sufferings And though you are much to be pittied yet not to be justified in them or for them There is much mixtures in them Ingagements and necessity make men stout in their way Naturally what men cannot make good by wisdom and power they will maintain by resolution in suffering It is easier far for men to do so and die then to repent A false spirit and zeal will carry men out in suffering even to death it self as well as a true Yea the anguish and pain of so great a disappointment will make men chuse rather to die then to live in the shame and disgrace of it Shame is the greatest affliction to some tempers And therefore it is easier to die then to yield confess and give glory If there should be none of all this in your present sufferings yet so long as there is bitter envying and strife in your hearts glory not and lie not

body to keep or recover life in it or are so lamentably angry for the loss of it I would have that charity to hope that it is because you think that holiness and godliness will be suppressed and prophaness and wickedness will get up To satisfie you know this assuredly 1. Iniquity unrighteousness had got a Sanctuary in and amongst you and was lodged more secure in your professions and gifts then in any company or state of men in the earth and therefore 2. It is a most holy and righteous God that hath pulled down or is pulling down that strong hold that spiritual wickedness in high places And 3. As God will not suffer iniquity to harbour under his own name and cause so he will not suffer it to rest upon the earth for the earth is the Lords and the creation is his 4. Sin and ungodliness got ground of you in your greatness and riches you know it did And while you thought to reform the world you were deformed by it and that the spirit that engaged for righteousness against the world betrayed that cause and fell into the unrighteousness and filth that it opposed The Lord rejects this pretender in great jealousie know assuredly God in this act is gone forth with vengeance against unholiness and will manifest himself in such holiness as you will not bear if you were not plunged into suffering 5. Know God hath set his holy Son upon his holy hill of Zion The Lord reigns in righteousness and in righteousness hath brought you down for your unholiness and if you have any true love to holiness but a spark of the truth of what you profess you will rejoyce more in these fires while they consume you and your dross then ever you did in your success and greatness because God is now avenging himself of his wicked enemies that lurked in the prayers preachings gifts prophecying of his kingdom and for the world trouble not your self with that he hath laid you aside as unworthy of and false to the work of reformation which you professed he that refuses that spirit because it was unholy and base hath a more excellent spirit which he will manifest to the purging of all things and all men I cannot without some indignation pass this point that men so palpably corrupt and unclean when under rebuke and judgement and that for their impurity yet should think that they are the only Champions of holiness as if the cause of holiness did die or fall with them No it is iniquity and hypocrisie that falls There is an incorruptible holiness that is mighty and will throughly purge away yours and others dross and cleanse the whole earth As to the things that I write in my Book concerning his Majestie and those principles of rest and grace laid in Noah and in that Covenant which God made with him and his seed for perpetual generations which I affirm to be the firm foundations of all the Kingdoms of the world that tried stone tried first in all Nations and then laid in Zion and is now the root of his Majesties restoration after his long sufferings I confess the things are deep and remote from common understandings What I feared and writ concerning these principles I find true that they are little understood being yet low and under a vail and therefore might appear remote and strange both to his Majestie and the Nation which way prolong our trouble c. They are so indeed understood neither by one side nor other Let them lie and sleep a while foundations must do so when shaking and troubles make us need them they will be enquired after if any do there they are But my friends let us reason a little together and lay aside all allusions and all passions and soberly consider what evil was offered to you in that book After the case of the prisoners and so of the partie was represented I still think to their advantage more then ever I yet met with elsewhere the desire was to wave that tryal and procure another Court that should try principles that might at least supersede or succeed that What the issue of that Court and tryal is we now see and had reason to foresee Supposing his Majesty and the Law of the Nation to be offended and provoked against them that took away the life of the late King what probable or rational way was left to save the Prisoners but by moving that they and their principles and so the principles of the whole party should be tried in a higher and more spiritual Court A trial must be the common Law and ordinary way certainly destroyes both life liberty and estate To avoid that another must be proposed What rests to be tryed but opinions and principles And how can that be done humanely but by such a Court and by such a Law as is there propounded If those principles are good they may not only be justified but prevail to rule if they be not found so then their deceit will be discovered your judgements delivered from them and the prisoners and Party in a fair way to be pardoned by and reconciled to the present power Or else a third and middle state would have appeared A large righteous and merciful Law might have been produced that might have united comprehended and saved both Parties I confess freely I do believe and know it is to be had and will come forth whenever the righteous and good Law of God may obtain among men and right reason may be heard I confess to obtain this I did declare to his Majestie my sense and judgement of your principles which I have long had and do still retain upon a judgement made by many and great trials in my spirit and confirmed by constant experience much examination and deliberation And being many years fully convinced of humbled and sore afflicted for that prophane carnal cruel and selfish spirit in which this work was begun and carried on I did and do still offer them up to trial and was and am still willing that his Majestie and the Nation might see that they need not seek the lives of men seeing they might have the principles which is the best satisfaction can be given It is that which I have long desired even of this Party when they were up That we might have a Bar of Religion and Reason where the right of all parties in the Nation may be fairly argued and heard but could never obtain it I do judge it the true and only Christian and humane way to come to Peace and therfore I shall and do earnestly desire it There is nothing in the earth that I do seek more then this That my mind and judgement may be tried by the Reason and Religion of the Nation or the Reason and Religion of the Nation tryed by my Judgement Had it been a known enemy that had propounded such a thing to you why should you be angry at it or why not embrace and

become our advantage if we be made wise by our failings Let us first observe the process of things After his Majesties return there was by the sweetness and gentleness of his Government a great calmness and stilness in the Nation and in a degree in the most opposite The trying condemning and executing of the prisoners for the death of his late Majesty stirred a new passion in the spirits of many people And the execution together with the resolution of the sufferers revived a zeal confidence and boasting of their cause and an extraordinary earnestness in their minds which was expressed in incessant meetings discourses and prayers day and night These passions and religious exercises boyl up their minds into new heats which kindled this wild-fire and at last blowed it up into this open Insurrection That you may understand the reason of these things let it be considered what I have expressed in this and the former Treatise 1. That God had a controversie with this Church and Nation because of its sins and its sinful state and standing not with the things themselves only as they stood in darkness and weakenss 2. God must have some to plead this controversie with the Government and Governors of Church and State 3. Those that he called forth for that purpose he inspires and impowers with spirit for that work 4. The seat and subject of this spirit and ministry is the judgements and consciences of men For men by being inspired and led into opinions and judgements contrary to the received Law of the Church are thereby fitted to be instruments in Gods hand of his displeasure to the Church For the Church cannot be tried but by such spirits and judgements which differ from it and are contrary to it 5. They that are thus impowered for such a service so far as they do the will of the most high Lord in it are to be owned and justified Though the office be never so mean and never so contrary to ●he honours wills and wayes of States and Kingdoms yet it is the rod of God and must be kissed 6. These ministers of this displeasure have transgressed exceeded ●he●r Commission and exalted themselves in their service And so corrupted themselves and defiled their work This also is true Therefore there is in them that have executed this displeasure and in their consciences and work something that is just and something that is unjust and unrighteous Till these are distinguished there is no right judgement of them It must also be considered and it is granted by all Divines That the works of divine Providence and Government are executed by the administration of Angels Both the standing and changing of Governments is by the ministry of these principalities and powers Therefore in the great revolutions of this Kingdom both good and bad Angels have been employed They being spirits their proper sphere in which they move is the spirits and consciences of men Therefore it follows that as there hath been in these great Providences a righteous work of God and with it much unrighteousness so there are both Angels of light and of darkness inspiring the minds and consciences of men Now to administer justice upon men that have acted in these things without any judgement made of the principles and spirits that have moved in them cannot be thought to be perfect nor a right way to cure our distractions For outward punishments upon the body will not remove the evils that are planted by spirits in the consciences and judgements of men 1. For all men know First That if there be but a little truth and uprightness in any conscience it will bear up the person in the greatest outward suffering Neither death nor hell are able to over-power the least grain of honesty in the poorest wretch that ever lived That which is sincere is able to live and triumph under many sins and sufferings and will never yield till right be done to it 2. Mens spirits and consciences and the spirits that inspire and lead them are above the reach of the secular sword and only subject to the Scepter of Christ in his Church to the sword of the Spirit 3. Conscience though erroneous and seduced will enable men to suffer bodily punishment imprisonment and death with great chearfulness And if they are laid upon men without the means of conviction they do harden men in errour And therefore legal proceedings only to bodily punishments are not sufficient remedies to cure these distempers The case of the Nation under its present distempers is certainly extraordinary and far different from what it was an hundred or fifty years since Great variety of spirits are gone forth which have raised up the minds of men to a greater height of reason religion and resolution And old ordinary remedies will not cure new and extraordinary diseases If the Physick be not proper to cure and remove the disease it will by stirring the humours and enraging of them make dangerous commotions in the body For if men either from some measure of simplicity be it in the least degree and much mixed or from some spiritual operation be it of what kind it will or from an erroneous conscience If from any of these the sufferer be able to repell the Sentence of the Judge and to glory in his suffering and in a shew of righteousness to triumph over death he doth notably affront and wound that authority and judgement under which he suffers A man and his cause when he comes to judgement is brought out into the open view of all men and not only made publick but he and his cause is exalted to endure a conflict and tryal with the Law If the Law comes forth with that brightness and majesty that it ought the man is condemned in his own conscience and so justifies the Law and submits to his sentence and by this the Law and Authority is honoured But if the person judged stands clear in his own conscience upon any account and acquits himself in the face of dead when all men ordinarily yield such have a kind of conquest and do seem to overcome the sentence which must needs have an effect upon the people For people do naturally mind dying men death is King of terrours and it is a great thing to die it raises men on high And therefore in them that can die comfortably and confidently there is a great appearance of righteousness and worth which doth much affect the minds of people some are moved to pitty the sufferer and thereby his words and cause steals into their minds Others are convinced and drawn to the Party Others are hardened and strengthened by it For men think with themselves I cannot live comfortably bur here is that which will make me able to die comfortably and that is worth embracing That which makes the Magistrate to be feared and reverenced is his power of life and death That which makes men able to overcome death secretly overcomes the Magistrate