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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	effect_n	natural_a	nature_n	4,625	5	5.6875	4	true

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A94272	A treatise of the schism of England. Wherein particularly Mr. Hales and Mr. Hobbs are modestly accosted. / By Philip Scot. Permissu superiorum.	Scot, Philip.	1650 (1650)	Wing S942; Thomason E1395_1; ESTC R2593	51,556	285

Gods glory How they do speak it they can declare no more then they are according to Mr. Hobbs and therefore onely things finite which is to confine God against the drift of the Psalms Philosophy and Scriptures teach us to finde God by his creatures as St. Paul 1 Rom. 20. remits us to the creatures Invisibilia à constitutione mundi per ea quae facta sunt intellecta conspiciuntur our understanding of God is from these visible things nay it is the onely natural way we have from the effect to finde the first cause and not from the first cause the effect and all things without his confinement So by pictures we ascend to what is represented not tying our selves to the manner in our worship of God under that representation In the pursuit we relinquish the manner and going forward with our discourse we find and with our devotions follow the Infinity of Gods goodness All representatives are essentially inferior to the Prototypes by many degrees yet safely conduct us to the knowledge of them without abasing their natures to the Images So here and all acts of acknowledgment of God in and by his creatures for we know the effect cannot equalize the first cause especially neither in nature nor in manner of existence and therefore we conclude Gods supreme essence and goodness to transcend all we see in the like manner we easily ascend by the use of pictures neither can we do otherwise if we use our reason so that there is no danger of Gods confinement and therefore no Idolatry I remember that Cassian in his Collations tells us of a poor ignorant Monk who out of error had framed to himself in his narrow imagination a conceipt of Gods being corporal and could very hardly be brought to entertain higher thoughts of Gods spiritual essence being unwillng to relinquish his Phantastically ill framed Image of God We are much beholding to Mr. Hobbs who is so tender of Christians dulness that least by their Images they should conceive God to be finite or corporal with this poor Monk he would remove all picturs though God himself not so careful as Mr. Hobbs hath been pleased to talk and walk with Adam which are acts of a corporal and finite creature and othertimes to make resemblance as if he had appeared in corporal shape as to Moses perchance to Jacob and others nay even the Son of God appearing in our poor nature all which would draw us into errors if God had not by his Prophets Apostles and daily by his Church and even by reason taught us the right use of such passages and to know that those sensible representatives were onely conductives to God himself as we teach Students by emblems to conceive things more remote from their present capacity All which will warrant our use of Images yet without Gods confinement and consequently without Idolatry Neither would this if true any way excuse them from sacrilegious Schism except all were compelled to Idolatry St. Augustine saith there can be no just necessity to cut off unity l. 2. Cont Ep. Parm. c. 2. and as he elsewhere Ep. 166. Our Heavenly Master hath so much admonished us to take heed of this That he would make the common people secure even of evil superiors that not for them the chair of saving doctrin should be destroyed Therefore the chair ought not to be forsaken much less destroyed for the errors of the Presidents O how St. Cyprian doth purge that poison of theirs to the quick Epist l. 3. Ep 2. If there be seen darnel to be in the Church our faith and charity ought not to be hindred thereby that because we see darnel to be in the Church we therefore leave the Church c. The Apostle in the second Epist to Timothy 2. saith In a great house there are not onely vessels of gold and of silver but also of wood and of earth and certain indeed unto honour but certain also unto contumely but it is onely lawful for God who hath a rod of iron to break the earthen vessels c. Let not any one assume to himself what the Father alone hath given to his Son c. It is saith he a proud obstinacy and sacrilegious presumption which wicked fury assumeth to it self Let our Country men think sadly of this It is objected to me that the Church of Rome doth force her Proselites to beleeve falshoods perniciously under Anathema in the Councel of Trent I answer That if we should make an impossible supposition against all the promises of Christ that the Church should in necessary points teach errors yet even in that case every child of the Church must exteriorly carry himself quiet and not make commotions for that were to seek a cure worse then the disease as in the like impossible supposition our Country-man Waldensis l. 2. c. 27. teaches Non perperam insilire debet He must not leap against the Churches face in rebellion Neither is he bound to beleeve an untruth nor yet is one in danger to incur the censure For the Church cannot reach the minde onely God in a just sentence confirming her act reaches home which cannot be in this case for he should confirm an injustice Whence it followeth that no man is or can be compelled to beleeve untruths but onely not to make Schism which by divine law is forbidden And therefore St. Augustines rule is still true There cannot be no necessity of cutting off the Church unity no not in supposition that she should command great errors But you will not object that if the articles commanded by the Church are in themselves true yet if I cannot perceive their truth after all diligence used to that end it were hypocrisie in me and therefore unlawful to adhere to that Church I conceive though falsly teacheth and commandeth false doctrins and extraordinary practises upon those grounds This truly is most seriously objected by some but without all Solidity For surely Christians are obliged by the law of God and reason to depose their own false judgments in obedience to God his Church else this will open a gap to all itching ears of whom we are premonished to introduce each man his fancy and prefer it before the wholesome doctrins of Christ delivered by his Church Neither is it difficult for man though learned to depose his own judgment especially in order to external actions for it is daily done by all sorts of timorate consciences who do mangre their own reason direct themselves by the authority of such whom they know to be more learned then themselves Mr. Hobbbs Chap. 15. and n. 13. saith unusquisque rationem privatam rationi totius civitatis submittere potest Here he labours to lay the grounds of the derivation of power in the Common-wealth to determine what belongs to matters of religion which he faith that the people have transferred to the Magistrate He proves it as he faith evidently I examine it not being pertinent to

comes that the Socinians call in question if not absolutely deny the diety of the Son and of the Holy Ghost hence with the Pelagians they reduce Christs death to example of our imitation onely not to be the price of our redemption hence generally they profess with Chillingworth and others whom I could name that holy Scriptures are to be understood according to each mans small reach of reason as if nothing were contained in them what is not commensurated to our understanding and therefore needs not any supernatural aide from God which Mr. Hobbs very well confutes Chap. 17. n. 28. Yet he saith it belongs to the City to interpret Scriptures at least in all such things which he will please to call juridical or Philosophical which have far too great latitude in his sense For purely supernatural he speaks more reason then any others of these new ones from whom hath proceeded contempt of Prelates and Doctors because every one of the most inferiour Laytie of these Enthusiasts by their impetuous imaginary instinct and private spirit or what is the same their particular ratiocination though most groundless are supreme and infallible Masters and Doctors to themselves Neither do they beleeve any thing to be Divine which flowes not from the sensless impetuosity of their imaginations without any respect to higher considerations Yes truly those who are esteemed the wiser sort following Socinas stick in the same puddle expounding holy Scriptures and all mysteries of our holy Faith not according to the universal reason of the Church delivered by the hands of the ancients to us as Catholicks do but by their private spirits or by the conduct of their private reason A thing ridiculous to conceive that the profoundness of Christian misteries should not exceed the shallow reach of our reason Which error is the Source of all dissonancies and inconstancies amongst them which even by intrinsecal necessary consequence must needs cause a perpetual flux or issuing out of changes of conclusions of Faith for the effect cannot be more noble then the cause On the other side Catholick tenents must by a great necessity be always constant because they depend not upon our daily changable reasons or ratiocination but upon the unvariable word of God revealed and delivered by the Church The sum of all is that the verity of a Philosophicall conclusion is demonstrated by the verity of human reason the verity of Christian reason is proved by the verity of ancient faith indeed one verity may be diverse but never adverse to another Neither doth Divine contradict human but often surmounteth it and therefore it is comprehended by the sparks of our scanted reason but it is setched from else where Ask thy Father c. This is a safe way in which there is no danger to be dashed upon the rocks of errors according to that of Athanasius in his Epistle to Epicietus teaching how Hereticks Schismaticks are to be treated with There is no better way and indeed it is alone sufficient to answer them Those things not to be orthodoxall which our forefathers have not taught us This is plea enough against all pretences in the judgment of Athanasius let therefore Christians and they that bear the name of Christ be ashamed if leaving the fountain of antiquity from whence all sound doctrin floweth to follow certain small rivolets full of vanity and foolery shadowed under a precious shew of reason which from whence they had their Source and beginning none for certain know We Catholicks therefore adhere to the holy Councels and ancient Fathers in the first place after the holy Scriptures neither dare we accuse them of foolery a Christian minde will hurdly permit them to be rashly and presumptuously defamed But these men and others of the some tribe who make the glimmering of their reasons the rules of Faith and Religion easily reject them It is a wonder rather that they do not with their supercilious spectacles clime up the heavens and there with the Albumazar Aicabatius Massaeius and infinite other Astrologers seek out the verity of all Religions and one while for the conjunction of Saturne with the Sun adhere to Judaismes another while for the conjuction of Mars with Jupiter promote the Chaldaick Sect if with Venus the Mahumetical if with Mercarie the Christian So by some little shew of reason drawn from the heavens they may change their religion as for the most part they are wont to do several times of the year according to the several dominations of the planets or certainly every year according to the annual dominion or if this seems to much aerial they may according to the Successory government of those intelligences which they call Seconds appoint the stations retrogradations and cadences of their divers sects and religions as some not without applause of such lunitick persons have unhappily enough attempted as especially some attribute the innovation of Luthers sect to the new lunary inteligences then 1517. undertaking the worlds government And Ticho Brahe affirms that those sects which indeed are derived from mens brain-sick fancies may be found out in the heavens both in their risings and fallings Of which this present age administreth change enough The truth is Judas the Apostle toucheth these home whatsoever they do not know they blaspheme whatsoever like bruit beasts they know they are corrupted in They are indeed so swoln in their imaginations that breaking they corrupt themselves and others CHAP. 6. A digression against Mr. Hales the supposed Author of the Treatise of Schism And a farther proof of Schism in England Mr. HALES who is said and supposed to be Author of the Treatise of Schism objects that Schirm may be spread over all the parts of the Church and so the whole be infected in which case Schism cannot be imputed to one place more then to another and this may peradventure be affirmed of the sepuration of England from other Churches as it was touching the ancient celebrating of Easter wherein also a how Schism is rison for aching not necessary yea saith he in a matter ridiculous If I should bring the general Councel of Nice condemning and separating from these Quarta-decimans he would deride it he accuseth all the ancients of foolishness in this matter Thus he sporteth and trifleth in mysteries of faith to root out all faith out of the mindes of the faithful I deny first what he averreth that the West and East were at variance that is to say that that Schism did invade the whole Church and cleave her into two parts for the matter of Easter but that some considerable part did raise stirs in the East yea in the West also is manifest amongst historians this cause of division in a late work de consilijs made in latine by a Country man of ours is laid open to the very root But to peruse a little more the grounds of his mistakes in this important point of Schism we must alwayes remember what before we noted that