Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	effect_n	good_a	sin_n	2,776	5	5.2292	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A40772	The faithfull pastor his sad lamentation over, heart-rending challenge and dreadfull thunders against, sharp reproof of, and seasonnable warning to his apostat-flock. In a letter written by a French minister to those over whom the Holy Ghost had made him an overseer upon their wofull defection, renouncing the faith, and joyning in idolatrous worship. Now carefully translated. Together with a word to mourners in Zion who by grace have kept the faith, to sleepers under the storm, and to the almost Christian; Sad lamentation over, heart-rending challenge and dreadfull thunders against, sharp reproof of, and seasonnable warning to his apostat-flock.		1687 (1687)	Wing F279; ESTC R216409	68,644	59

to answer necessities Did you think that he who had given you so much had drained his treasure by his beneficence and if you lost any thing for his interest that he was not able to make you amends The Histories of Abraham Jacob Joseph and of Job who were richer after banishment after affliction after losses and so many examples ancient and modern of the care God takes of those who fear him were they not powerfull enough to make you understand what you were to hope from him if you had confessed his name and suffered for his sake You thought perhaps that the present was more sure then the time to come and by a carnall prudence you loved rather to Keep what you had then to renounce them for uncertain hopes But why do not you use that prudence to a better purpose to Keep the pledge of the Heavenly truth that was committed to you Why dit you not hear Jesus Christ calling to you from heaven where he sits at the right hand of the Father (c) Apoc. 3. Hold fast that which you have and let no man take your Crown You might then have been assured that this precious treasure had not been taken from you But for those goods of which you said (d) Job 31. You are my trust who promised you that they shall not be taken away Should you think that God will suffer you to enjoy them peaceably who have don such an injury to him by denying his truth I should lament your condition if I saw you continue without being partakers of the Rod which a good Father spares not to the Children he loves (e) Hieron in Ose lib. 4. c. 4. The wrath of God is then great when after we have sinned God (f) Nihil inselicius co cus nihtlevenit adversi Senec. de Prov. treats us as if we were not worthy of his anger It is the greatest proof of his severity when he will not lead us to repentance even by Chastisements (g) August in Psal 98. As for him to whom God is truely mercifull not only doth he pardon his sins that he may not suffer for them in the world to come but he afflicts a sinner that he may not take pleasure in his sin He tells you that he rebukes and corrects those whom he loves It would be a token of his love if he appeared to you with a rod in his hand And where could the effects of his vengeance fall more justly then on the cause of your sin then on those good things you have loved better then him Thus he may make you know your errour In departing from him You have lost that Good which God would not and no power on earth could ever take from you and have preferred to it riches that he can take from you when he pleases For the Lord gives them and the Lord rakes them away You have them from him and by him only you can preserve them Perhaps he forbears the rod to invite you to repentance by the riches of his patience long suffering and bounty but let not this delay deceive you (h) Cypr. de Lapsis You must not thinke you have escaped because the punishment is delayed There is so much the more reason to fear the effect of this forbearance that he seems thereby to reserve the sinner to more severe judgments You have by you those whom God wil make use of to Chastize you those Priests and Monks those Officers of the Religion you have embraced will be the procurers and instruments of your ruine They have a mind to your Estates after they have devoured your souls Hitherto they have had no advantage by your professing their errors Your pretended conversion is not the least aime of their interessed politiques According to the genius and maximes of their religion which breaths nothing but riches and grandour they will after they have deprived you of the Heavenly Treasure deprive you likerwyse of your earthly riches Do not think that your obsequious complyance to their Worship will content them they never pardon that which they call Heresie and when one has once undergone that Character there is no conversion will reconcile him to their jealous Politiques Heresie they think is a discase that is never well cured and Chiefly those Heresies which stop up the springs of their immense riches or overturn the foundations of their tyrannicall authority The reconcilement of Henry the IV. to the Roman Church was not able to secure him from a thousand conspiracy's nor at last from death The Jesuits first suggested that Wicked Counsell in Charles the IX tyme of massacring those who turnd Catholicks through fear of death Do you think they have not still the same mind and the same opinions yet I know not if they have a design on your life God only knows that It may be the present Constitution of the state agreeth not with their violent designs Men arrive not to the highest degree of mischief on a sudden Perhaps they are preparing greater stroaks as may be collected from the experiments of inhumanity which have desolated so many Provinces It was by degrees they came to the perfidious revocation of the Edict of Nantes They passed from a secret hatred to an open war from war they came to manifest injustice and from injustice they came again to secret craft and in the end having renounced all Modesty from Craft they came to a publick breach of faith and from thence to force pillaging and dragoons You may by this Lamentable gradation judge what they are like to do who have published their designs by so dreadfull beginnings You have reason to fear they will not stop here on the occasion of supposed new crimes the difficulty is only to begin after the first step the progress is easy and great way is made in a short time in the rode of iniquity But tho it were not thus do you thinke those men who gape after confiscations and look on you that are rich with the same regrate envy as we look on Usurers that they will suffer you to enjoy your riches Do not you know the depth of their Moralls and maximes Must you try experiments to be convinced of their inhumane intentions Call to mind what you have read of the expulsion of the Moor 's The time that passed from their Baptisme to Phtl. 3. could not cure the jealous and distrustfull minds of the Catholique King They were made believe from time to time that the Moriskos were still Mahometans in their heart and that they kept intelligence with the ennemiesof the State and on the pretence of such crimes that very often were but Calumnies they took occasion to spoil pillage and banish them and to ruine them by prisons and punishments The miserable remnant of the Jewes who had setled in Spain were used after the same manner (a) Isidor Chron. Sisebut whom their own Historians say had a zeal without knowledge began

giving the least token of Repentance What and do you yet expect to recover yourselves How long will ye put off your conversion that is so necessary Who promised you that the patience of God would not be wearied out with your delayes but would attend your leasure Come out of Babylon my People too much estranged from God! Come out of Babylon that you may draw neer unto him If you will not do it for fear of her sins do it at least for fear of being partakers of her plagues You have time to escape seing vengeance is not yet begun but you cannot avoid it except you seperate from that impure Church on whom the justice of God who is the Protector of Truth is ready to be revealed You know there is a kind of wilfull sin after having received the knowledge of the Truth that is never pardoned a sin for which there remains no more sacrifice a sin that leaves no issue to sinners but a fearfull looking for of judgment and of fire which will consume without mercy I will not say that yours is of this nature I think and hope better things of you I would a wake your Consciences by just fears but I would not sound a mortall alarme to you I would grieve you but not put you into despaire Happy I if I could work in you a sorrow that conduceth to your salvation I would then bless the severity of my complaints I would rejoice to have made you sorrowfull not because you sorrowed but because your sorrow wrought Repentance in you Therefore I will not say that the sin that you have committed against God is that sin for which there is no remission I will only say they do not much differ Nor shall I aggravate your Crime tho I say there is but one step between you and death You have sinned against truth after you had handled the word of life and were enlightned with the knowledge of God Your sin is accompanyed with such circumstances as give ground to beleive you sinned wilfully and deliberately against the dictates of your mind and the motions of your heart Would you know if there be any ground to hope for pardon It is easily known there is one Character that distinguisheth the unpardonable sin from all others It is impossible for those that commit it to recover by repentance Repent therefor and you may be assured your sin has not yet proceeded to so dreadfull a degree but repent quickly I have already told you that Repentance delayed grows every day more difficult and if the freshness of your sin be not enough to strike you with horror and remorse you will come to it more uneasily when sin is rendred familiar to you by a long continued practice (a) Cypr. Ep. ad Pompon You must carefully with draw your ship from dangerous places lest it split against the shelves and rocks you must quickly save your goods from burning before the threatning fire reach them It is impossible to be secure if you remaine long on the frontiers of danger It had been glorious for you to have continued Stedfast and not to have given to your enemies the joy of vanquishing your faith But every one has not the courage to overcome by heroick actions it is necessary therefore for those that have stumbled and fallen in the way to the Heavenly Kingdom to recover and establish themselves by repentance Tho the Crown be properly for those that run the race without falling yet there remains praise and honour to those who rise by repentance (b) Cypr. Ep. 55. ad Cornel. The first degree of happiness is without doubt not to sin but the second is to acknowledge the fault amend And the second doth not so much differ from the first when the amendment is not delayed We do not find in other persecutions that all those who fell continued in their defection they very oft recovered before they departed from the presence of their Judges The faithfull of Lions gloryed that those whom fear struck down were raised with honour and returned to the Combat with renewed courage Bibliade a woman who denyed thorow weakness and whom the Devil thought he was already sure of regained her courage in the midst of her Torments and Confessed she was a Christian many others guilty of the same sin were restored with her Those who had already escaped death and were restored to their life and liberty by the Orders of the Emperours who then as it is now in use recompensed Cowardize and punished Constancy who were exposed in publick to be absolved of the reproach of being Christians those I say recovered their first zeal and made open Confession of the name of Christ loving rather to die in the communion of the truth than to enjoy life and liberty as the price of their denying it (c) Cypr. Epist ad Cornel. St. Cyprian congratulating Cotnelius Bishop of Rome for the Constancy of his Church writes thus How many fell who were restored by a glorious Confession and who became more bold and valiant in the battle even by the anguish of repentance It was without doubt a great joy to that faithfull Bishop to see his Church imitat his zeal who was so far from seeing it diminish'd by the defection of its children that he saw it encreased by the publick Conversion of those who had faln in the former persecution What a glorious spectacle in the eyes of God what joy of the Church in the presence of Christ to see her march to the battle offered by the enemy not souldiers singly but a whole army of generous Confessors You have fallen very short of this example You among whom not one would signalize himself by a single discovery of Constancy But do not add to the singular property of your fall which has been common to all another fault more shamefully singular by continuing in your defection It is enough that you could all fall but it would be a prodigy if in so generall a fall none of you should rise again Repent then and let your Conversion be as generall if possible as your sin You have hitherto had some pretence of not awaking from this sleep of sin The same affrightment that was the cause of your sin has made you persevere in it the same love of your estates that perverted you has detained you in your error the same complyance that made you forget God has deprived you of the courage of reconciling yourselves to God lest you should offend men since that time you have learnt of none who has laboured to bring you back or thought of curing the deep wounds that you pierced your souls with you have not been ashamed of your fall because there was none who reproached you with it But the case is now altered I come to awake you with my cryes and to call you to repentance Take heed that my Labour be not in vaine and that you be not offended with my