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	necessary_a	produce_v	6,956	5	9.5140	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A40078	A discourse of the great disingenuity & unreasonableness of repining at afflicting providences and of the influence which they ought to have upon us, on Job 2, 10, publish'd upon occasion of the death of our gracious sovereign Queen Mary of most blessed memory : with a preface containing some observations, touching her excellent endowments, and exemplary life.	Fowler, Edward, 1632-1714.	1695 (1695)	Wing F1703; ESTC R7038	47,822	152

You see I shall take it for granted that Good things are all from God and well I may since Tully could ask Why do we Worship Him or Pray to Him if it were otherwise And he thought with Posidonius before him that a Man cannot deny this but he must be an Atheist and therefore made no better Men of Epicurus and his Followers tho' none did more Profess the Belief of a Deity But we will a little Enquire Whether Evil things do come also from God's Hand because those who have the Highest Thoughts of the Divine Goodness may be most apt to Question how God can be the Author of any Evil How out of the same Fountain can Flow both Sweet Streams and Bitter Or rather How Bitterness can issue forth from the Fountain of Sweetness Now that this is very Accountable will chiefly appear from what we are to say hereafter Our present Business is to shew That Evils do proceed from the Hand of God as also what Hand He hath in th●m That they do proceed from His Hand is so evident from the Holy Scriptures that nothing is more evident God Almighty saith by His Prophet Isaiah Ch. 45. 7. I form the Light and create Darkness I make Peace and create Evil I the Lord do all these things And by His Prophet Amos Ch. 3. 6. Shall there be Evil in a City and the Lord hath not done it And by His Servant Moses Deut. 32. 39. See now that I even I am He and there is no God with me I kill and I make alive I wound and I heal neither is there any that can deliver out of my Hand And all the Threatnings in the Book of God do suppose this And therefore we there find Good Men still acknowledging God's Hand in their Afflictions Thus Upright Iob upon his receiving the Tydings of his Prodigious Losses saith The Lord hath given and the Lord hath taken away c. Ch. 1. 21. The Lord hath taken away as well as given King David we find frequently making such Acknowledgments And our Blessed Saviour calls his Sufferings The Cup which his Father had given him to drink And indeed the Pagans had generally this sense of the Evils especially the Greater that befell them as well as of their Good Things And therefore they had their Catharmata and many Expiatory Rites for the Pacifying of their Gods whensoever Calamities of any kind did light upon them Now in order to our Understanding What Hand God hath in Evils we are to take Notice 1. That they do not ordinarily proceed immediately from His Hand Nay we have no reason to believe that any Evils ever do but 't is probable that those do proceed from Invisible second Causes which do not from Visible 2. Nor is it necessary to make Evils at least Ordinarily the Effects of Second Causes by any positive Act of God whereby he useth those Causes as his Instruments in the most proper and strict sence of that Word But it may be enough to say upon the falling out of Disasters that His good Providence did not interpose in preventing those Evil Effects being produced by their Causes Nor can we certainly conclude that ever God doth any more than withhold his wonted Protection in such Cases 3. Evils may be truly of God's Appointing tho not caused by any Positive Act of His. And whensoever His Providence suffers us to fall into such Circumstances as that certain Evils inevitably light upon us and no Care could prevent them then at least we may look upon them as being of the Divine Appointment no less than Permission And even those may be so which are the Effects of other Peoples Wickedness As when the Pride or Covetousness or Malice of another makes me a Sufferer For the Opportunities and Advantages which a wicked Man may at any time have against me are from the Divine Providence So that tho' it be infinitely unworthy of God to infuse Evil Affections Inclinations or Dispositions into any man or to excite any one to Sin yet He knowing such Affections and Inclinations to be in such Persons and that they only want Objects or Opportunities for the Acting of them He may make use of them for the scourging of such Particular Sinners or for the Tryal of such or such of His Servants We have an Instance hereof in Shimei ' s Cursing King David Upon Abishai ' s saying Why should this dead Dog Curse my Lord the King Let me I pray thee go over and take off his Head The King thus Reply'd Let him Curse because the Lord hath said unto him Curse David who shall then say Wherefore hast thou done so David could not mean by these Words that God had laid His Command upon that Wretch to Curse him This would have been to make him no Sinner herein but His Obedient Servant But his Meaning was That God had by his Providence given Shimei this Opportunity of insulting over him and venting his Spite upon him And therefore the good King concluded that God in just Judgment did not scourge him with the Tongue of Shimei as He had done by the Sword of his Son Absalom And thus God calls the Assyrian The Rod of his Anger and saith that He will send him against an Hypocritical Nation And by this Phrase we are to understand God's so Ordering it as that all Difficulties and Discouragements should be removed out of his way to the invading of the Israelites which He knew he was prepared in mind to do as soon as he could have an Opportunity Nor are we to think it strange that such Words as Sending Commanding Doing Determining and many other like them should be used onely to Express either removing Rubs out of the way to certain Evils whether Natural or Moral or bare Permissions since these ways of Speaking are Hebrew Idioms and as ordinary as can be in the Iewish Language Of which there are innumerable Instances in Holy Scripture I will Name one more viz. that in Acts 4. 28. where God's Hand and Counsel and Determination are said to be in the Horrible Death and Sufferings of His Holy Child Iesus But 't is as evident as that 't is impossible for God to be the Author of Sin that those Phrases signifie no more than His Permitting or Decreeing to permit those Sufferings to be inflicted by His Enemies and His so Ordering it in His Wise Providence as that all Impediments to the Executing of their Malice should be removed And we may well say that God's Hand is in the Evils which befal Men tho' there should be no positive Act of His Hand in them since the Evils of which Iob saith Shall we not receive them at the Hand of God Were all inflicted by the Hand of the Devil through His Permission All his Heavy Calamities were the Effects of Satan's Malice and consequent upon God's not restreining him from venting it as he did It appears by the Story that it was the

or Words which gave occasion more or less to their being provoked against us Those that suffer from the Misbehaviour or Vndutifulness of their Children which must needs be especially to Good Men the greatest of all Afflictions are they not for the most part too well aware that these sufferings are in a great measure owing to themselves and that they might have had much better Children if they had set them a better Example and given them better Education And I need not add that the same is to be said in reference to the Divine Providence of those Afflictions which do arise from our Sympathy with those in Affliction who are dear to us when they suffer through their own default And the same thing is to be asserted of those Evils which we have not brought upon our selves but are occasioned by the Faults of our Parents or of such as whose Interests and Concerns are necessarily linked together with ours so that the one cannot suffer but the other also must As when a Man lives in Penury by means of his Fathers disabling himself by his Prodigality Sin or Folly to leave him a Subsistence Or when a Trades-man is made a Bankrupt by his means whom he hath taken into Partnership Or when Parents having by Debauchery Marred their own Bodies and vitiated their Constitutions Propagate their Diseases or Weaknesses to the Children which are afterwards born of them Now I say there is nothing more Unreasonable than to think God Almighty the less Good in regard of such Evils as those now mentioned And if it be well Considered I cannot I say doubt but that most of those which Men complain of are of that nature And what would we have God to do to keep off such Evils as these Would we have him to be continually laying irresistible Restreints upon Free Agents so as that it shall be impossible for them at any time to do wickedly or at any time to act foolishly If we think that this would well become Him we must think at the same time that to make Free Agents did disbecome Him But supposing such Agents so left to the Use of their Liberty as not to be so withheld from either Sinning or playing the Fools as that they can not do either the foresaid and such like Evils will necessarily follow from the Abuse thereof And therefore far be it from us to have the lower opinion of the Divine Goodness upon the account of them But I ought to add in order to our having a just Sense of Gods Goodness and that it may lose nothing of the Honour due to it that He doth innumerable times prevent by Special Providences our running into those Sins and those Rash Actions which we should most Certainly have otherwise been guilty of And He doth frequently and possibly as often in a Secret invisible manner so Over-rule Natural Causes of Evils as to prevent their producing them when they were ready to do it Not only History but many of our Own observations do furnish us with great Proofs hereof And if these Propositions were not both true it is not imaginable but that this world would be a far more intolerable Place than it is Considering how it Abounds with Wickedness and how Corrupt Human Nature is in this lapsed State and what Foolish Heady Creatures the Generality of Mankind are and what Dangers we are always Encompassed with And the worst objectino we can make against Almighty God for not always thus interposing is that He will not have His Goodness in any one instance to thwart and contradict that Wisdom by which He Governs the World But suppose we waved the Consideration of the Divine Wisdom in the Case what Reason can we have to complain of God's deficiency in Goodness because He is not more concerned to keep Evils off from us than we our selves are 'T is certain He is much more concerned for our Good than we can be and sad would it be for us if He were not but suppose Him onely equally so we should not have cause to think Him wanting to us but should see great Reason to Admire His Goodness considering that He is infinitely Above even the Glorious Angels and can get nothing by any of His Creatures being Happy nor lose any thing by their being Miserable II. Let us next Consider That as Abundance of the Evils which men groan under are not from the mere or immediate Providence of God so very many things which we are apt to account Evils and are matter of Discontent to us are not Evils That Stoical Maxim Mens Minds are not troubled with Things but with the False Opinions they have of Things would be very true if it ran thus Mens Minds are not so much troubled with Things c. For there are a multitude of things which greatly disturb men which are onely Evils of their own making and which they would make exceeding light of would they govern themselves more by Reason than by fond Phansy and the Childish Opinions of other Folk To have nothing of Superfluity but a bare Competency how many are there who account this a great Evil Tho' the Apostle saith Having Food and Rayment let us be therewith content And we have a good Old Saying Nature is content with a little and Grace with less How many lay it to heart as a grievous thing to be necessitated to Earn their Bread with the Sweat of their Brows nay not to be able to make such a Figure among their Neighbours as divers of them do And thereupon they take but slight Notice of the innumerable great Mercies which they enjoy and instead of being thankful for them murmur at the Divine Providence because they have not all they would have But as God Almighty asked the peevish Prophet Whether he did well to be Angry I ask these Whether they do well to be discontented and to have so little Sense of the Bounty of their Great Benefactor For not to mind them again that whatsoever the Good things are which they enjoy they are more than He oweth them or than their Deserts can claim they ought to consider that the whole World is God's Charge and not only some particular Persons and that His Goodness expresseth its self by so proportioning His Blessings to particulars as shall be most for the good of the Whole And that it would be extremely ill for the Whole for all to be alike Sharers in His Good things And it is necessary for the Well-being of the whole that there should be a great Variety of Ranks and Orders of Men By which means all necessary Offices have People sitted for them And withal they ought to Consider that if it be necessary that many should be in low Circumstances for the performance of the lower and meaner Offices which yet are every whit as necessary as the higher what Reason can they give why themselves should not be in the Number of those many And whether for the