Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	efficient_a	end_n	final_a	2,172	5	9.9792	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A26905	The crucifying of the world by the cross of Christ with a preface to the nobles, gentlemen, and all the rich, directing them how they may be richer / by Richard Baxter.	Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691.	1658 (1658)	Wing B1233; ESTC R17065	262,204	331

world also must be mortified 5. Moreover the world must be Crucified to us as far as it is presented to us as an independant or separated Good without its due relations unto God It is God only who is the Absolute Necessary Independant Being and all creatures are but secondary contingent dependant Beings whether Univocally or Equivocally or Analogically so called with God let the Schools debate To look on the creature as a separated or simple Being or Good is to look upon it as God And here came in the first Idolatry of the world When Adam had all his felicity in God and had the creature only as a stream and means and when all his affections should have been centred in God and he should not have viewed one line in the volume of nature without the joint observance of the Center where it was terminated Contrarily he withdraws his eye from God and fixeth it on the creature as a separated Good and desiring to know Good in this separated sense he made it an Evil to him and knew it to his sorrow And so forsaking the true and Al-sufficient Good he turned to a Good which indeed as conceived of by him was no Good and knew it by a knowledge which as to the Truth of it was not Knowing but Erring And in this course which our first progenitors have led us into the carnall world proceedeth to this day The creature is near them but God is far off A little they know of the creature but they are utter strangers to God And therefore think on the creature as an independant separated Good And you must carefully note that the dependance of the creature on God is not to be fully manifest by the dependance of any creature upon another The line is locally distant from the Center and the streams are locally distant from the spring though they are contiguous and have the dependancy of an effect But God is not locall and so not locally distant from us The nearest similitude is that of the bodies dependance upon the soul which yet doth fall exceeding short In God both we and every creature do live and move and have our being As no man of reason will talk to a corpse nor dwell and converse with any man meerly as corporeall without respect to the soul that doth animate him nor will he fall in love with a corpse so no man that is spiritually wise so far as he is so will once look upon any creature much less converse with it or fall in love with it barely as a creature conceiving of it as a thing that is separated from God or not positively conceiving of God as animating it and as being its Alpha and Omega its Beginning and End its principall efficient and ultimate Finall cause at least For this were to imagine the carkaise of a creature and to conceive of it as such a thing as is not in being For out of the God of Nature the creature is Nothing nor can do an● thing for there is no such thing even as out of Christ the Lord of spiritual Life and Grace the new creature is nothing and we can do nothing for there is no such new creature You have here the very difference between a Carnal and a Spiritual life The Carnal man doth see only the carkaise of the world and is blind to God and seeth not him when he seeth that which is animated by him But the Spiritual man seeth God in and by the creature and the creature is nothing to him but in God As an illiterate man doth look upon a Book and seeth only the le●ters and taketh pleasure in their shape and order and falls a playing with it as children do but he seeth not nor understands the sense and therefore if it contained the noblest mysteries or the greatest promises even such as his life did depend upon he loveth it not in any such respect nor doth he for that delight in it but let a learned man have the perusing of the same Book and though he may commend the clearness of the character yet it is the sense that he principally observeth and the sense that he loveth and the sense that he delighteth in and therefore as the sense is incomparably more excellent then the character simply considered so is it an higher and more excellent kind of knowledge and delight which he hath in the Book then that which the illiterate hath And indeed it is an imaginary annihilation of the Book and of every character of it formally considered to conceive of it as separated from the sense for the very essence of it is to be a sign of that sense and therefore as the illiterate cannot see the sense for words and letters the wood for trees so the literate can see no such thing as words without sense nor would regard the materials but for this signifying use I have expressed the similitude in more words then I use in such cases because it much illustrateth our present matter It was never the mind of God to make the great body of this world to stand as a separated thing or to be an Idol He made all this for himself The whole Creation is one entire volume and the sense of every line is God His name is legible on every creature and he that seeth not God in all understandeth not the sense of the Creation As it is Eternal Life to know God so this God is the Life of the creature which we know and the knowing of him in it is the Life of all our knowledge The illiterate world doth gaze upon the creatures and fall in love with the out-side and materials and play with it but understandeth not a creature By separating it in their apprehensions from God the sense they do annihilate the world to themselves as to its principall use and signification There are two Texts of Scripture among many others of which I have often thought as notable descriptions of a carnal mans life the one as to the privative part and the other as to the positive One is Ephes. 2. 12. which calleth them Atheists or without God in the world They see and know somewhat of the world but God they neither see not know They converse with the world but not with God All their affections are let out upon the world but God hath none of them All their business is about the world but they live as if they had nothing to do with God As a Schollar if his Master should stand in a corner of the School to watch what he will do will behave himself while he seeth him not as if he were not there he will play with his fellows and talk to them as if there were no Master in the School So do the ungodly live in the world as if there were no God in the world they think and speak and deal with the world as if there were nothing but the world for them to converse with As for

and their living without God in the world But when faith hath opened a mans eyes and shewed him God in every creature who was hid from him before then is the creature who was before his All annihilated to him in that separated sense and God becomes his All again and this annihilation of the creature is indeed its restauration objectively to its primitive nature and use and it was not indeed known or respected as a creature till now So that sensual men by making the creature an imaginary God or chiefest Good or All do make it indeed objectively to become Nothing and so their All their God their felicity is Nothing and so all their life is a Nothing When as the faithfull by Crucifying or Annihilating the creature as it would appear a felicity to us or any Good as separated from God do restore it to its true objective being and use by returning to God who is truly All and in whom the creature is a Derived Imperfect something and out of whom it is indeed a Nothing I will further illustrate it by one other similitude God gave the Ceremonial Law by Moses to the Israelites to be an obscure Gospell and to lead them unto Christ. The sacrifices and other typicall Ceremonies were the Letters of the Law and Christ was the sense The true Believers thus understood and used them but the Carnal Jews lookt only on the letter and lost the sense and thus separating the bare Letter from the sense that is the Legall works from Christ they thought to be justified by those works and by the Law in that separated sense But the Apostle Paul doth plead against thi● errour and tells them that Christ is the end of the Law to all Believers and that he is the fulfilling of it and that through him it is fulfilled in those that walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit and that by the dee●s of the Law in this separated sense no flesh can be justified and that the Letter separated from the sense of it killeth but Christ by his Spirit who is the sense of it giveth life If these Jews had taken and used the Law as God intended it and had taken the sense and spirit with the letter and had understood that Christ was the very life and end and all of the Law Paul would never have cryed down the Law nor Justification by it in this sense for that had been to cry down Justification by Christ. But it was Justification by the Letter or the Law as separated from Christ who was the meaning of it So is it in our present case The creature is the letter and God the sense and Carnal men do understand only the Letter of the creature and fall in love with it and thus God cryeth down the world and vilifieth and speaketh contemptuously of the world When as if it had not been for the separation he would never have cryed it down nor spoken an hard word of it As the Law had never been so hardly spoken of if the mis-understanding Jew had not separated it from Christ. So the world had never been so often called Vanity and a Lie and Nothing and a Dream and that which is not bread and that which profiteth not a Shadow a Deceiver with abundance of the like contemptuous terms if carnal sinners had not in their minds and affections separated it from God And thus I have shewed you in what Respects the World must be Crucified AND let me add in the Conclusion as most necessary for your observation that there is in the world an inseparable aptitude to tempt us dangerously to the foresaid abuse and therefore when we have done all that we can in Crucifying and sublimating it we must never imagine that we can make it so wholsom or harmless a thing as that we may feed upon it without great caution and suspition or ever return to friendship with it again till fire have refined it and grace hath perfectly refined us And yet this is not long of the creature without us but of us and the tempter The world is in it self Good as being the work of God and it cannot be the proper efficient culpable cause of our sin For it hath no sin in it self I mean the world as distinct from the men of the world and therefore cannot be the direct cause of sin But yet there is that in it which is apt to be the Matter of our temptation and so apt as that all that perish do perish by the world As there is no salvation but by the whole Trinity Conjunct who have each person his several office for our recovery so there is no damnation but by the whole Infernal Trinity the flesh the world and the Devil Even to Innocent Adam the world must be the bait and Satan found somewhat in it that made it apt for such an office though nothing but what was very good But now that the flesh is become the Predominant part and power in us as it is in all till the Spirit overcome it the case is much worse and the world is incomparably a more dangerous enemy then to Adam it could be For though still the creature is good in it self yet we are so bad that the better the creature is the worse it becomes to us For we are naturally propense to it in its separated capacity and all men till regeneration are fond of it as their felicity and hug it as their dearest good and Sacrifice to it as their Idol So that an enemy it is and an enemy it will be when we have done our best as long as we are on earth For while we have a flesh that would fain be pleased by that which God forbiddeth and there is a Devil to offer us the bait and tempt us to this flesh-pleasing the world which is the bait will still be the matter and occasion of our danger The consideration of this may cut the throat of licentious principles and hence we may answer the most of their vain pretended reasons who under the Cloak of Christian liberty would again indulge the flesh and be reconciled to the world But certainly it will never lay by its enmity till we lay by our flesh and therefore there is no thoughts to be entertained of closing with it any more but we must be killing it and dying to it to the last SECT IV. HAving thus shewed you in what Respect the world must be Crucified and so resolved the question as to the Object I am next to resolve it as to the Act and shew you wherein the Crucifying it doth consist The Apostle followeth on the Allegory which he took occasion of from the mention of the Cross of Christ. From thence therefore we must also fetch the proper sense As the world did use Christ or would have used him so we must use the world Not actually murder the sons of death as they did murder the Lord of Life but what Christ