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	nature_n	power_n	3,155	5	5.1866	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A42446	The certainty of the Christian revelation, and the necessity of believing it, established in opposition to all the cavils and insinuations of such as pretend to allow natural religion, and reject the Gospel / by Francis Gastrell ...	Gastrell, Francis, 1662-1725.	1699 (1699)	Wing G301; ESTC R14557	148,794	394

THE CERTAINTY OF THE Christian Revelation AND THE NECESSITY OF Believing it Established In Opposition to all the Cavils and Insinuations of such as pretend to allow Natural Religion and reject the Gospel By FRANCIS GASTRELL B. D. and Student of Christ-Church Oxon. Ye believe in God believe also in me John 14. v. 1. LONDON Printed for Thomas Bennet at the Half-Moon in St. Pauls-Church-Yard 1699. To the Right Honourable Sir John Holt Lord Chief Justice of England and one of His Majesties Most Honourable Privy-Council My Lord THE Design of the following Discourse being to prove the Christian Religion in the most unexceptionable manner I could I was resolved to give the Enemies of our Faith as little Advantage against me in my Dedication as in my Proof And 't is for that Reason I have presumed to offer these Papers to your Lordship as being well assured that your Lordship's Name and Character will not only Justifie this Address but Recommend the Cause I am defending For to whom could an Advocate for Christianity better direct his Defence than to a serious Believer and a great Example placed in a high Station whose Profound Knowledge of Law and Government has fully convinced him of the absolute Necessity of Religion in general and the Reasonableness and Wisdom of the Christian Institution and who in a long diligent and impartial Administration of Justice must be very well acquainted with all the Ways and Methods of proving Matters of Fact and nicely understand the Force and Proportion of every Proof I shall not take upon me in this place to set forth all the Extraordinary Qualifications your Lordship is Master of because most of them being imployed in the Service of your Country they have already procured you the just returns of Gratitude and Esteem from the Publick which has received the benefit of them But this I think my self more particularly obliged to mention for the Honour of the Christian Religion that it is to the Influence of that Holy Doctrine your Lordship owes the most advantageous Distinctions in your Character What other Account can be given of that Firmness and Steadiness of Mind which your Lordship has preserved in all the difficult and trying Circumstances that different Turns of State and different Measures of Policy have ingaged you in When new Interests and new Dangers arose and every thing chang'd about you it must be wholly owing to Christian Principles that your Lordship always kept your Ground and your Posture To the same Cause it must be ascribed that your Lordship has never stained your Publick Character with private Immoralities Notions of Honour and Reputation may preserve a Man's Dignity upon the Bench but 't is only a Just and Awful Sence of Religion that can make him Reverence himself at home And in a Corrupt Age where Impiety is grown Fashionable and has Quality and Title to Countenance it t is no small Sign of your Lordships regard for Religion that you judge it for your Honour to have it known that you make the Scriptures the Rule of your own Life and think it the highest Concern of all Humane Laws and Constitutions to support their Authority and Obligation For all these Reasons my Lord it must be very proper for any Person that appears in the Christian Cause to Address his Endeavours to your Lordship especially if it be considered that besides your great Capacity to make a right Judgment of the Proofs alledged for it you have no other Considerations to ingage you in the Interests of Christianity but those of Truth and the Happiness of Mankind It cannot be said of your Lordship that the Credit or Advantages of your Profession are concerned in the Defence of the Gospel you derive none of the Honour and Greatness you possess from the Church and therefore your Lordship's Example is a very good Argument to Unbelievers that those who are peculiarly set apart for the Service of God are not carrying on a separate Interest from the rest of the World but are promoting all they can the Universal Good of Mankind I might among other Inducements to the present Dedication reckon personal Favours But I must own that though I have all the Gratitude imaginable for the Honour of your Lordship's good Opinion and kind Intentions and though I have no greater Obligations to any Man Living than to your Lordship yet nothing of that Nature would have produced such an Address as this if I had not been determined by more publick Considerations to interest your Lordship in the Cause I have undertaken I am My Lord Your Lordship 's most Obliged and most Humble Servant FRANCIS GASTRELL THE PREFACE WHen Christianity first appeared in the World the Light and Influence of it were so strong that it bore down all the Powers of Vice and Falshood and made one of the worst Generations of Men that perhaps ever lived since the Flood a most astonishing Example of the greatest Vertue and Piety that Humane Nature has yet reached but now the Spirit of Wickedness seems to have recovered it self and to threaten Revenge to that Religion which has so often triumphed over it And Deism is employed by the great Enemy of Mankind to do what Atheism Superstition and Idolatry never could effect And indeed it has pleased God to suffer Irreligion to spread so far under this new Title that one would be apt to imagine it had like the Lying Spirit we read of in the Time of Ahab a solemn Permission from the Lord to go forth perswade and prevail For what other Account can be given of the Original and Growth of such a Delusion which has no manner of Foundation either in Reason or Fact to support it 'T is true Deism is look'd upon as a more defensible Post than Atheism and when we observe with what seeming Calmness and Serenity some deny the Christian Religion with what Contempt they treat the Holy Scriptures and with what Boldness they ridicule the History and Doctrine of the Gospel we are tempted to suppose that these Men must certainly have a great deal to say for themselves or otherwise they durst not thus despise what they could not prove to be false nor bear up against if it should be true But whoever has that regard for Truth and Happiness as to consider the Pretences of Christianity and to examine carefully the Proofs it stands upon will be throughly and effectually convinced that those who deny Revelation have as little ground for their Infidelity as those that disclaim all Religion and that the Confidence of the one as well as the other is only the Effect of a desperate not a well-defended Cause For if Matters of Fact are capable of any Proof if we can have any Evidence of Things not seen or heard by us the Christian Religion has as sure an Establishment as any other part of our Knowledge which does not confist in pure abstract Ideas or immediate Sensations This upon the strictest Enquiry I

Prognosticks grounded upon the necessary connexion and dependance of Natural Causes and Effects which are all the ways of foretelling things that Men are capable of 'T is true indeed some general common Events may sometimes by a luckly turn of imagination be foretold such as Life or Death Peace or War Prosperity or Adversity and the like and therefore had Christ spake no other Prophecies but such as these that Peter should be Crucified and John should out live the rest of the Apostles there might have been some ground to think them casual conjectural Predictions though a great many true Predictions even of this nature without one mistaken guess could not with any colour of reason or probability have been attributed to chance Several other Events likewise there are which by a skill in this or that part of Knowledge and by an immediate information concerning several antecedent Circumstances may be foretold Thus does an Astronomer foretel an Eclipse a Physician the Death of some particular Person a Politician a National Calamity or Advantage and thus does a Wise Man understand how such a Person whose Temper and Principles he is well acquainted with will behave himself upon such an occasion and many other the like Instances might be given But the Prophecies of Christ and other Ancient Prophets before him concerning the whole Dispensation of the Gospel could not possibly be meer Guesses and Conjectures because the things foretold were most of them such as the Persons who foretold them had never seen or heard of any Instances of before and so could have nothing to lead or determine their thoughts that way And if the Ideas of such Facts could be supposed to have entered their Minds they could not have positively and confidently affirmed that those Facts would really happen without thinking it probable that they might so happen and 't is impossible that any Men in their senses should look upon such Events as probable which they had had no manner of experience of before without a deep insight into the nature and reasons of things by which they were enabled to see such a train and connexion of Causes as would very likely produce such Effects But this cannot be pretended in the case before us for several reasons For first of all our Knowledge of Nature and the Causes of things is so very scanty and imperfect that hardly any thing was ever foreknown by Man without an antecedent experience of something of the same kind or nature that had already happen'd Some Eclipses were observed before any were foretold such a complexion of Symptoms had actually proved fatal before it was known to be a certain cause or sign of approaching Death and the like will hold in all other Instances of Humane Prediction by virtue of any natural or acquired Knowledge Besides in none of these cases can any particular Event be foreseen by the most certain comprehension of all the Causes producing it without a true and particular information concerning the punctual and determinate Existence of those Causes and all the Circumstances requisite to make their Influence effectual If a Man be never so well acquainted with the Motions and Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies he cannot tell that an Eclipse will happen at such a time without knowing the particular position of the Bodies contributing to an Eclipse at that time nor can a Physician by all his skill in the frame and structure of Humane Bodies foretel that such a particular Man whose Constitution and Circumstances of Health he knows nothing of shall at such a determinate time dye or recover of such a Disease But supposing a Man knew the whole Oeconomy of the Corporeal World was acquainted with all the Laws of Motion and saw the necessary dependance of all the Parts of Matter upon one another he could not be enabled from hence to foretel such things which depended upon the free Resolutions and Determinations of Intellectual Beings nor is it possible for us by what we know of the Temper and Dispositions of all the Persons we converse with to foretel what Men will Live and what particular Actions will be done by them at a great distance from us The connexion of all Humane Actions is nor discoverable from the clearest view we can have of Humane Nature and all the Principles and Motives Men act upon Now for all these reasons 't is impossible that those great and wonderful Events foretold by Christ and the Ancient Prophets which we find mentioned in the New Testament could be foretold by any Humane Skill or Learning the same way that we have seen other natural Truths Predicted For several of them 't is plain were such as the Prophets had never seen or heard of any Instances of before As for Example that a Person should come down from Heaven to save Mankind from their Sins that a Virgin should conceive bear a Son c. And indeed all those Facts we call ●●raculous may be referred to this Head 〈◊〉 tho' some of the same or alike kind were known to have happen'd before yet the Prophets who knew and believed them look'd upon them as exceeding all Humane Power and Cognizance and therefore could not foresee the like by any ordinary Natural way of Knowledge because they had never had any Experience of such things happening according to the ordinary course of Things Several of the Matters prophesied of if they had depended upon certain necessary Causes and that dependance had been very well known to the Prophets yet they could not have been foretold by them for want of knowing some particular Circumstances which must concurr to their Existence Thus for instance supposing a Man was able by his extraordinary Skill in Nature to explain how a Virgin might conceive or the Dead rise the Lame be made to walk and the Sick be cured he could not by the means of this Knowlede foretell that at such a certain time hereafter such Facts as these should happen because he could not understand whe ther the State and Disposition of Things at that time would certainly be such that those Facts must ensue But these Reasons chiefly concern corporeal Agents Whereas besides the difficulties arising from hence all the Prophecies we are concerned to defend could not be fulfilled without the concurrence of an infinite variety of Humane Actions which were not the Results of irresistible Motives when they were done nor was the Application of any Motives for the doing of them nor even the Existence of the Persons that did them necessary That such a Person as Christ should at such a Time and Place be Born depended upon Ten Thousand Millions of the most contingent Determinations Humane Nature was ever sensible of which must all happen in sucha manner betwixt the time of the Prophesy and the Completion or else the Event had never been And the like might be shewn in all the other Christian Facts and Events prophesied of All which is abundantly sufficient to prove