Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	election_n	faith_n	justification_n	1,763	5	9.6743	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A75307	A treatise concerning religions, in refutation of the opinion which accounts all indifferent· Wherein is also evinc'd the necessity of a particular revelation, and the verity and preeminence of the Christian religion above the pagan, Mahometan, and Jewish rationally demonstrated. / Rendred into English out of the French copy of Moyses Amyraldus late professor of divinity at Saumur in France.; Traitté des religions. English.	Amyraut, Moïse, 1596-1664.	1660 (1660)	Wing A3037; Thomason E1846_1; ESTC R207717	298,210	567

at all and withall think no Jesus Christ was ever in the world and consequently all this Discourse is absolutely unprofitable they must be referr'd to the preceeding dispute in which I prov'd their Divinity against the Jews and others like them If they afford any belief to those Books certainly they will never accuse them of having forg'd the testimonies render'd of Christ from heaven the authors of which might not only have contradicted one another but might have been convinc'd of fal shood by fifty thousand persons What then was the meaning of God in these words This is my Son in whom I am well pleased As for the miracles which he wrought as raising the dead giving sight to such as were born blind healing inveterate lamenesses of many years and the like they could not proceed from any but a special assistance of a power truely divine And what appearance is there that God should have afforded his infinite power to such an impostor to cause men to believe in him and consequently to found such a prodigious and universal Idolatry We know said one God hears not the wicked But who ever was more wicked then Christ if he was so impious and such a blasphemer as this Opinion represents him Then in reference to the certain predictions which Christ made of things to come into which no humane conjecture could dive there needs no other proofs of them then by comparing the correspondence which the Evangelists observe of them with the events themselves He foretold that he should dy and it came to pass accordingly But which is more he foretold that he should rise again and he was not deceived in his assurance He foretold the ruine of Jerusalem and the Romanes as if they had been hired by him for that purpose fullfill'd his Prophecy He declar'd that when he was once lifted up on high he would draw all men to him and experience attests the verity of this oracle For his Cross is like a standard lifted up before the Eyes of all Nations to summon and invite them to his knowledge Now many others indeed have foretold things to come but I judge it impossible for such a person as Christ would have been had he been such as these people describe him to have obtain'd the spirit of Prophecy from God Balaam sometimes prophesied of things to come but it was for the good of the people But this of Christs would have been to gain credit to the word of an impostor to lead men into many snares and especially as was said for God to lend his hand to the seting up of Idolatry As for what these good the people say that it was lawful to abuse men in some points in order to leading them to embrace certain excellent virtues although it be a strange and absurd method of teaching truth by the favor of prodigious falsities and a wiliness uncommendable by prudent judgements yet should it be admitted it ought not to be practis'd unless in matters which draw no pernicious consequences after them as when the simplicity of childhood is beguil'd by smearing honey or sugar on the brim of the cup which contains a medicinal potion Deceptaque non capiatur Sed potius tali facto recreata valescat But the using impious and blasphemous falsities and which are infallibly effective of such idolatry had Christ and his Apostles practis'd it they had not followed that incomparable precept which they give us for a rule of our actions Not to do evil that good may come of it As for the other opinions being they are consequent of this and by reason of their dependency implicitly prov'd in the proof of their primitive principle I shall not insist upon demonstrating the truth of them Only I shall intimate that Saint Paul had been a person of a stranglye distemper'd mind to labor so much in disputing against the Gentiles from the maximes of Nature and against the Jews from the constitutions of the Law to draw arguments from the books of the Old Testament to expound allegories to reason raise and resolve objections in maintaining the doctrine of justification by faith and of predestination or eternal election and other like doctrines if they were nothing but fictions His writings discover a wisdom too profound to leave place for an accusation of so inept and ridiculous deceit But the cause these people speak after this rate is that they never read or never understood the Holy Scriptures and the oeconomy of Christian Religion For did they attentively consider them they would easily observe that the point of Christs incarnation in this doctrine is like the image of Phidias in the Statue of Minerva which if taken away the whole work is dissolv'd if let alone all the parts of the statue are terminated in the same with such art and wisdom that an observing mind is ravish'd with admiration at the whole contrivance But let us now return to our Design and bring it to conclusion CHAP. XI That Indifference in the professing all Religions is not justifiable according to the Christian Religion which Party soever be embraced And for Conclusion The Refutation of the Pretext propounded in the Preface WE have by the Divine assistance shewn by reasons in which all endu'd with any sense of piety and even in whom nature and reason are not absolutely perverted ought to acquiesce That the Jewish Religion having been heretofore alone of divine institution the Christian hath by the authority of the Messias so succeded it as that it hath wholly abrogated its use and That this latter bears infinite evidences of its heavenly original both in the excellence of its doctrine and the correspondence of it with the ancient Prophecies We also intimated at the beginning that there are two principal Parties of Christians under which all are ranked that wear this name differing in two principal Points on which all their other controversies depend One of these Parties holds that that particular Revelation by which God hath ordain'd Religion and matters pertaining to his service ha's been left to men by two ways namely by the Scripture and by verbal Tradition the Scripture to serve for a foundation to Tradition and Tradition to be a supplement in the deficiency of the Scripture for that it contains not all things necessary to salvation and even in what it do's contain is of dubious understanding and hath need of the interpretation of Tradition Moreover that the dispensing of Tradition ha's been committed to the hands of the Bishop of Rome to use it with a Soverain and Apostolical authority and a promise from God to be absolutely infallible in it The other Party acknowledge no other revelation of the Divine Wisdom then that which is contained in the Books of the Old and New Testament rejecting all verbal Tradition in reference to things necessary to salvation And as for the authority of the Pope concerning the infallible interpretation of the Word of God they not onely do not