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
A29880	Religio medici	Browne, Thomas, Sir, 1605-1682.; Keck, Thomas. Annotations upon Religio medici.; Digby, Kenelm, Sir, 1603-1665. Observations upon Religio medici.	1682 (1682)	Wing B5178; ESTC R12664	133,517	400

obvious effects of Nature there is no danger to profound these mysteries no sanctum sanctorum in Philosophy the World was made to be inhabited by Beasts but studied and contemplated by Man 't is the Debt of our Reason we owe unto God and the homage we pay for not being Beasts without this the World is still as though it had not been or as it was before the sixth day when as yet there was not a Creature that could conceive or say there was a World The wisdom of God receives small honour from those vulgar Heads that rudely stare about and with a gross rusticity admire his works those highly magnifie him whose judicious inquiry into his Acts and deliberate research into his Creatures return the duty of a devout and learned admiration Therefore Search while thou wilt and let thy reason go To ransome truth even to th' Abyss below Rally the scattered Causes and that line Which Nature twists be able to untwine It is thy Makers will for unto none But unto reason can he e're be known The Devils do know thee but those damn'd Meteors Build not thy Glory but confound thy Creatures Teach my indeavours so thy works to read That learning them in thee I may proceed Give thou my reason that instructive flight Whose weary wings may on thy hands still light Teach me so to soar aloft yet ever so When near the Sun to stoop again below Thus shall my humble Feathers safely hover And though neer Earth more than the Heavens discover And then at last when homeward l shall drive Rich with the Spoils of nature to my Hive There will I sit like that industrious Flie Buzzing thy praises which shall never die Till death abrupts them and succeeding Glory Bid me go on in a more lasting story And this is almost all wherein an humble Creature may endeavour to requite and some way to retribute unto his Creator for if not he that saith Lord Lord but he that doth the will of his Father shall be saved certainly our wills must be our performances and our intents make out our Actions otherwise our pious labours shall find anxiety in our Graves and our best endeavours not hope but fear a resurrection Sect. 14 There is but our first cause and four second causes of all things some are without efficient as God others without matter as Angels some without form as the first matter but every Essence created or uncreated hath its final cause and some positive end both of its Essence and Operation this is the cause I grope after in the works of Nature on this hangs the providence of God to raise so beauteous a structure as the World and the Creatures thereof was but his Art but their sundry and divided operations with their predestinated ends are from the Treasure of his wisdom In the causes nature and affections of the Eclipses of the Sun and Moon there is most excellent speculation but to profound farther and to contemplate a reason why his providence hath so disposed and ordered their motions in that vast circle as to conjoyn and obscure each other is a sweeter piece of Reason and a diviner point of Philosophy therefore sometimes and in some things there appears to me as much Divinity in Galen his Books De usu partium as in Suarez Metaphysicks Had Aristotle been as curious in the enquiry of this cause as he was of the other he had not left behind him an imperfect piece of Philosophy but an absolute tract of Divinity Sect. 15 Natura nihil aget frustra is the only indisputed Axiome in Philosophy there are no Grotesques in nature not any thing framed to fill up empty Cantons and unnecessary spaces in the most imperfect Creatures and such as were not preserved in the Ark but having their Seeds and Principles in the womb of Nature are every where where the power of the Sun is in these is the Wisdom of his hand discovered Out of this rank Solomon chose the object of admiration indeed what reason may not go to School to the wisdom of Bees Ants and Spiders what wise hand teacheth them to do what reason cannot teach us ruder heads stand amazed at those prodigious pieces of Nature Whales Elephants Dromidaries and Camels these I confess are the Colossus and Majestick pieces of her hand but in these narrow Engines there is more curious Mathematicks and the civility of these little Citizens more neatly sets forth the wisdom of their Maker Who admires not Regio Montanus his Fly beyond his Eagle or wonders not more at the operation of two Souls in those little Bodies than but one in the Trunk of a Cedar I could never content my contemplation with those general pieces of wonder the Flux and Reflux of the Sea the increase of Nile the conversion of the Needle to the North and have studied to match and parallel those in the more obvious and neglected pieces of Nature which without further travel I can do in the Cosmography of my self we carry with us the wonders we seek without us There is is all Africa and her prodigies in us we are that bold and adventurous piece of nature which he that studies wisely learns in a compendium what others labour at in a divided piece and endless volume Thus there are two Books from whence I collect my Divinity besides that written one of God another of his servant Nature that universal and publick Manuscript that lies expans'd unto the Eyes of all those that never saw him in the one have discoveerd him in the other this was the Scripture and Theology of the Heathens the natural motion of the Sun made them more admire him than its supernatural station did the Children of Israel the ordinary effects of nature wrought more admiration in them than in the other all his Miracles surely the Heathens knew better how to joyn and read these mystical Letters than we Chiristians who cast a more careless Eye on these common Hieroglyphicks and disdain to suck Divinity from the flowers of Nature Nor do I so forget God as to adore the name of Nature which I define not with the Schools to be the principle of motion and rest but that streight and regular line that settled and constant course the wisdom of God hath ordained the actions of his creatures according to their several kinds To make a revolution every day is the Nature of the Sun because of that necessary course which God hath ordained it from which it cannot swerve by a faculty from that voice which first did give it motion Now this course of Nature God seldome alters or perverts but like an excellent Artist hath so contrived his work that with the self same instrument without a new creation he may effect his obscurest designs Thus he sweetneth the Water with a Word preserveth the Creatures in the Ark which the blast of his mouth might have as easily created for God is like a skilful Geometrician who when more

of many Nunc's or many instants by the addition of one more it is still encreased and by that means Infinity or Eternity is not included nor ought more than Time For this see Mr. White de dial mundo Dial. 3. Nod. 4. Indeed he only is c. This the Author infers from the words of God to Moses I am that I am and this to distinguish him from all others who he saith have and shall be but those that are learned in the Hebrew affirm that the words in that place Exod. 3. do not signifie Ego sum qui sum qui est c. but Ero qui ero qui erit c. vid. Gassend in animad Epicur Physiolog I wonder how Aristotle could conceive the World Eternal or how he could make two Eternities that is that God and the World both were eternal I wonder more at either the ignorance or incogitancy of the Conimbricenses who in their Comment upon the eighth Book of Aristotle's Physicks treating of the matter of Creation when they had first said that it was possible to know it and that actually it was known for Aristotle knew it yet for all this they afterwards affirm That considering onely the light of Nature there is nothing can be brought to demonstrate Creation and yet farther when they had defined Creation to be the production of a thing ex nihhilo and had proved that the world was so created in time and refused the arguments of the Philosophers to the contrary they added this That the World might be created ab aeterno for having propos'd this question Num aliquid à Deo ex Aeternitate procreari potuit they defend the affirmative and assert That not onely incorporeal substances as Angels or permanent as the celestial Bodies or corruptible as Men c. might be produced and made ab aeterno and be conserved by an infinite time ex utraque parte and that this is neither repugnant to God the Creator the things created nor to the nature of Creation for proof whereof they bring instances of the Sun which if it had been eternal had illuminated eternally and the virtue of God is not less than the virtue of the Sun Another instance they bring of the divine Word which was produc'd ab aeterno in which discourse and in the instances brought to maintain it it is hard to say whether the madness or impiety be greater and certainly if Christians thus argue we have the more reason to pardon the poor Heathen Aristotle There is not three but a Trinity of Souls The Peripatetiques held that men had three distinct Souls whom the Hereticks the Anomaei and the Jacobites followed There arose a great dispute about this matter in Oxford in the year 1276 and it was then determined against Aristotle Daneus Christ Eth. l. 1. c. 4. and Suarez in his Treatise de causa formali Quaest An dentur plures formae in uno composito affirmeth there was a Synod that did anathematize all that held with Aristotle in this point Sect. 14 Pag. 18 There is but one first and four second Causes in all things In that he saith there is but one first cause he speaketh in opposition to the Manichees who held there were Duo principia one from whom came all good and the other from whom came all evil the reason of Protagoras did it seems impose upon their understandings he was wont to say Si Deus non est unde igitur bona Si autem est unde mala In that that he saith there are but four second causes he opposeth Plato who to the four causes material efficient formal and final adds for a fifth exemplar or Idaea sc Id ad quod respiciens artifex id quod destinabat efficit according to whose mind Boetius speaks lib. 3. mot 9. de conf Philosoph O qui perpetua mundum ratione guberna● Terrarum Coelique sator qui tempus ab aevo Ire jubes stabilisque manens das cuncta moveri● Quem non externae pepulerunt fingere causae Materiae fluitantis opus verum insita sum● Forma boni livore carens tu cuncta supera Ducis ab exemplo pulchrum pulcherrimus ipse Mundum mente gerens similique in imagi● formans Perfectasque jubens perfectum absolvere part●● And St. Augustine l. 83. quaest 46 where amongst other he hath these words Restat ergo ut omnia Ration sint condita nec eadem ratione ho●● qua equus hoc enim absurdum est existimare singula autem propriis sunt creata rationibus But these Plato's Scholar Aristotle would not allow to make or constitute a different sort of cause from the formal or efficient to which purpose he disputes l. 7. Metaphysic but he and his Sectators and the Romists also agree as the Author that there are but the four remembred causes so that the Author in affirming there are but four hath no adversary but the Platonists but yet in asserting there are four as his words imply there are that oppose him and the Schools of Aristot and Ramus I shall bring for instance Mr. Nat. Carpenter who in his Philosophia libera affirmeth there is no such cause as that which they call the Final cause he argueth thus Every cause hath an influence upon its effect but so has not the End therefore it is not a Cause The major Proposition he saith is evident because the influence of a cause upon its effect is either the causality it self or something that is necessarily conjoyned to it and the minor as plain for either the End hath an influence upon the effect immediately or mediately by stirring up the Efficient to operate not immediately because so it should enter either the constitution or production or conservation of the things but the constitution it cannot enter because the constitution is onely of matter and form nor the Production for so it should concur to the production either as it is simply the end or as an exciter of the Efficient but not simply as the end because the end as end doth not go before but followeth the thing produced and therefore doth not concur to its production if they say it doth so far concur as it is desired of the agent or efficient cause it should not so have an immediate influence upon the effect but should onely first move the efficient Lastly saith he it doth not enter the conservation of a thing because a thing is often conserved when it is frustrate of its due end as when it s converted to a new use and end Divers other arguments he hath to prove there is no such cause as the final cause Nat. Carpenter Philosop liber Decad. 3. Exercitat 5. But for all this the Author and he differ not in substance for 't is not the Author's intention to assert that the end is in nature praeexistent to the effect but only that whatsoever God has made he hath made to some end or other which he doth to