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	sin_n	sin_v	3,111	5	9.7434	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A23713	A discourse concerning the period of humane life, whether mutable or immutable by the author of The duty of man laid down in express words of Scripture.	Allestree, Richard, 1619-1681.; R. E.	1677 (1677)	Wing A1110; ESTC R7660	41,105	158

after things of a mysterious alloy and God knows how miserably some men have mistaken in their enquiries after a solution of the present doubt and if I could promise to my self to rectify those huge mistakes some men have fallen into this would be a sufficient justification of my present undertaking But in order to the unfolding of this doubt I shall premise four things which will contribute to the better understanding of it First There is no doubt that every mans life hath a Period It is appointed for all men once to dye this is a warfare from which there is no discharge what man is he that liveth and shall not see death as to this the Prince and Peasant stand upon even terms and as the wise-man tells us the rich poor meet together there is no justling in the Grave for precedency I confess it were not worth the pains to consider the trivial instances taken from the translation of Euoch and Elias to infringe this position For first we are not to debate what God may do he has a Soveraignty over his Creatures and must not be called to give a reason of his actions all whose ways are tracts of wisdom and goodness Secondly We know nothing of the manner of their translation he who will positively say that they did not undergo that which is equivalent to death will say more than he can prove I am apt to believe that no sober man will say that they entred their Heavenly habitation with their unrefined bodies no more than those who rise at the sound of the last Trumpet in the twinkling of an eye are carried into Heaven without any change Secondly It is also unquestionable that Sin introduced this Period to every mans life the primitive threatning runs thus in the day thou eats thou shalt dye And the Apostle hath as plainly exprest it as it can be wherefore as by one man sin entred into the World and death by sin and so death passed upon all men for that all have sinned Rom. 5. 12. where it is plain that Death is a punishment inflicted for Sin so that if man had never sinned we have no reason to think he should have died I confess without Revelation we could never have guessed this to be the cause of Death The Heathen Philosophers were exceedingly confused in their notions concerning the origine of Sin and the cause of Death many of them thought that Death was a natural accident originally appurtenant to Humane Nature And indeed if Revelation had not declared the contrary I had been fully satisfied that Death had been no other thing but such a natural accident but it is strange that any man that has conversed with sacred writ should be of this opinion And yet we find the Pelagians of old were great sticklers for it hence is it that the ancient Fathers and Councils have condemned it with a Curse In the Milevitan Council Can. 2. we read thus Placuit ut quicunque dicit Adam primum hominem mortalem sactum ita ut sive peccaret sive non peccaret moreretur in corpore hoc est de corpore exiret non peccati meri●o sed necessitate naturae anathema sit In after-ages the Scotists the most subtil of all Scholastick writers inclined much to this opinion against whom the Thomists their irreconcilable Enemies took up the cudgels amongst modern writers the seemingly rational Socinians have owned this groundless conceit But I cannot stay to debate this at length only in brief if Death had been natural to man in the state of Innocency it behoved to have been because of these following reasons 1. Because Adams natural constitution implied mortality the Materials of his constitution were not so amicable as to entertain a lasting amity and friendship 2. It was the primitive precept be fruitfull and multiply now it is plain that procreation includes mortality in its notion and farther it seems to be unconceivable how this little Map of Earth should have contained a numerous multiplying and never-dying off-spring 3. Humane Nature in the state of Innocency did stand in need of Meat and Drink as is plain from Gen. 1. 19. now the end of eating and drinking is not only to hold up but to repair the decays of our Bodies which would sudenly return to dust if they were not this renewed strengthened 4. If Death were only the effect of Sin and the Devil were called a Murderer from the beginning because of his tempting our first parents to eat of the forbidden Fruit it will follow that since Christ came to take away the sins of the World and to destroy the works of the Devil that he also took away the wages of sin which is Death than which nothing is more contrary to daily experience 5. Immortality seems to be entailed only to the state of future Glory where Corruption shall put on Incorruption and Mortality shall be swallowed up in life and then there shall be no more death Rev. 21. 4. These are the most material reasons I can find for the proof of this opinion in answer to which I shall desire the Five following considerations may be weighed Consid. 1. It is not to be doubted that the Eternal wisdom furnished our first parents with all these accomplishments their specifick nature could suffer the signatures of Wisdom and Goodness were legible in the lowest least regarded piece of the creation but in Man in a more eminent manner conspicuous It is almost impossible for us in this fallen state to conceive what those endowments is taken Conditionally and so under various considerations it may be attributed either First To perfected Saints who are stated in Glory where the primitive Image lost by mans fall is renewed and perfected and of those our Saviour in the Gospel of Luke tells us that they can dye no more Luke 20. 36. or Secondly to our first parents in the State of Innocency For so long as they remained obedient to the Laws of Heaven Immortality was entailed upon their nature for the tenor of the primitive threatning is in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt dye where temporal Death seems to be threatned which had been idle and vain if men had died altho they had never eaten the forbidden Fruit. I know some men think that Sin only laid a necessary obligation upon men to dye and provoked God to remove that Supernatural and Superadded quality and gift which preserved them from Death With such sort of men I have no great quarrel altho I think that God could as easily have made mans constitution so lasting and the constituent parts of his fabrick so harmonious that he should have never dyed if he had not sinned as to create a superadded being to preserve him safe For reason would plead that that superadded gift required another and so in infinitum But farther 't is very unreasonable to infer mans corruption from that precept be fruitful and multiply for altho in some sense