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	good_a	work_n	4,641	5	6.8470	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A54833	A correct copy of some notes concerning Gods decrees especially of reprobation / written for the private use of a friend in Northamptonshire ; and now published to prevent calumny.	Pierce, Thomas, 1622-1691.	1655 (1655)	Wing P2170; ESTC R26882	69,017	81

it but he did not resist it unto the end And every technical Grammarian can distinguish the Act which is imply'd in the Participle from the Aptitude which is couched in the Adjective in bilis But to hasten towards the conclusion of my Readers sufferings there is also a final as well as total resisting of such a Grace as is sufficient for the attainment of Glory For not to speak of those men who resisted and sinned against all the means that could be used Isa. 5. 4. and who alwaies resisted the holy Ghost Act. 7. 51. and who would not be gathered after never so many essays Mat. 23. 37. how many Christian professors are now in Hell who when they were Infants were fit and suitable for Heaven Shall not I spare Nineveh in which are above 120000 souls which cannot distinguish betwixt the right hand and the left Ion. 4. 11. God speaks there of Heathen Infants toward whom his Bowels did yearn within him and that upon the Impendence of but a temporal destruction But I speak here of Infants born and baptized into a membership of the Church How many are there of such who in their harmlesse Nonage were babes of Grace and yet have outlived their Innocence so as at last to be transformed into vessels of wrath I will shut up this Paragraph with the words of Tertullian Saul was turned into a Prophet by the Spirit of holinesse as well as into an Apostate by the spirit of uncleannesse And the Devil entred into Judas who for some time together had been deputed with the elect And with the saying of S. Augustine That if the regenerate and justified shall fall away into a wicked course of living by his own will and pleasure he cannot say I have not received because he hath wilfully lost that Grace of God which he had received by that will of his which was at liberty to sin And how exactly that Father doth speak my sense of this businesse I leave it for any one to judge who shall consult him De praed. Sanct. l. 1. c. 14. De bono Persev l. 2. c. 1. 6. l. 2. c. 8. 13. And I would very fain know whether the lost Groat the lost Sheep and the prodigal Son do not signifie in our Saviours Parables that a true beleever may be lost and being lost may be found and again become a true beleever Which is as much as I desire to prove the thing under consideration CHAP. V. 54. HAving evinced to my self and that is all that I pretend to First that my will of it self is inclinable to evil and that secondly of it self it is not inclinable to good and that thirdly it is inclined by the singular and special operation of Grace to the refusing of evil and to the choosing of good and that therefore in the fourth place that singular Grace doth not work so irresistibly as to compel an unwilling will but yet so strongly as to heal a sick one not so necessitating the will of God's elect as that inevitably it must but yet so powerfully perswading as that it certainly will both believe and obey and after repentance persevere unto the end I should in civility to my Reader conclude his Trouble if I were sure that some men would not call it Tergiversation and if I were not obliged by those papers which have been so frequently s●…falsly that I may not say so maliciously transcribed and are threatned to be laid very publiquely to my charge and which I plead in the defence of this mine own publication which I should never have ch●…sen upon such a subject as I have least of all studied and am least delighted in of any other to remonstrate the utmost of what I think in these matters For I do stedfastly beleeve what I also asserted in that extemporary Discourse which was the innocent cause of this unacceptable effect That Gods Decree of Election from all eternity was not absolute and irrespective but in respect unto and in praescience of some qualification without which no man is the proper object of such Decree And this I prove to my self from these waies of Reasoning 55. First I consider with my self that there is no salvation but only to such as are found to be in Christ Iesus in the day of Death and of Iudgement Which no man living can be unlesse he be qualified with such conditions as without which it is impossible to be so found such as are Faith and Obedience and Repentance after sin bringing forth such fruits as are worthy of Repentance and perseverance in weldoing unto the end That God will save none but such is all men's Confession And that he saves none but such whom he decrees to save is every whit as plain Therefore none but such are the object of such Decree For if he decreed to save any without regard or respect to their being such he might actually save them without regard or respect to their being such Because whatsoever is justly decreed may be justly executed as it is decreed But it is granted on all sides as I suppose that God will save none except such as are found to be in Christ with the aforesaid qualifications and therefore it should be agreed on all sides that he decreed to save none but such as they And what is that but a respective and conditional Decree made in intuition of our being in Christ and of our being so qualified to be in Christ So that although our election is not of works but of him that calleth yet good works are required as a necessary condition though utterly unworthy to be a cause of our election Nor can it be without respect to the condition of the Covenant that the Covenant is made and the promise decreed to be fulfilled 56. Secondly I consider that the Decree of the Father to send the Son to be a second Adam was in respect and regard to the backesliding of the first Adam Without which it was impossible that the Son of God should have been sent to be the Saviour of the world And the decree of God Almighty to save the first Adam was in regard of and respect to the meritoriousness of the second Adam For God adopteth never a childe nor doth acknowledge him for his own so as to give him eternal life unlesse it be for the sake of his only begotten Son First God pitied a woful world then he loved what be pitied next he gave his own Son to save what he loved and upon the condition of beleeving in his Son he gave it a promise of eternal life For so beleeving is interposed betwixt love and life in the 3. of S. Iohn vers. 26. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever beleeveth in him should not perish but have everlasting life From this Text it appeareth that God loved the world before he gave his Son to it for

Retail he may be pleas'd to receive it in these following words That God did not absolutely irrespectively unconditionally decree the everlasting misery of any one but in a foresight and intuition of their refusing his proffer That he sent his son to dye for all the sins of the whole world inviting and commanding all men every where to repent and be forgiven Act. 17. 30. but that most like the slave in Exodus are in love with their bondage and will be bored through the ear That everlasting fire was prepared especially not for men but for the Devil and his Angels nor for them by a peremptory irrespective Decree but in praescience and respect of their pride and Apostasie That Christ came to save that which was lost and to call sinners to Repentance and to have gather'd them as a Hen gathereth her Chickens under her wings but they would not That God gave his law his rule his promises to all and excepted none in the publishing of either but so as he expected they should be willing as well as he for he would not save any whether they would or no That God Almighty made no man on purpose to torment him but that he might participate of his goodnesse That so many as perish may thank themselves and that so many as live forever are beholding to nothing but the grace of God That God Decreed the fall of none but the raising up of those were down and that those very men who are reprobated had been predestin'd to salvation if they would have return'd and remain'd in truth and holinesse Gods Decrees being to many the cause of their rise but to none of their downfal Lastly that they who have despis'd the will of God which did invite them to repentance shall feel the terrors of his will which is to execute vengeance upon the children of Disobedience 20. From all this together which hath been said from Scripture The Result of all from Reason from the Authority of the Ancients who are the fittest of any to interpret Scripture I thus conclude within my self That God Almighty is the Author of men and Angels That wicked Angels and wicked men are the Authors of sin and that the sin of men and Angels is the Author of unexpressible and endlesse punishment That sin is Rebellion against the Majesty of God That hell was made to punish Rebels and that God never decreed any Rebellion against himself Upon which it followes that as I look for the Cause of my election in the sole merits of my Redeemer so for the cause of my Reprobation in the obliquity of my will because the Reason of my punishment is to be taken from my sin and the Reason of my sin is to be taken from my self from whence there followes and follow it will do what I can A second Inference from my first Compared with my first Principle viz. CHAP. III. 21. That every Reprobate is predetermin'd to eternal punishment not by Gods irrespective but conditional Decree God doth punish no man under the notion of a Creature but under the notion of a Malefactor and because he does not create a malefactor but a man he hateth nothing that he hath created but in as much as it hath wilfully as it were uncreated his image in it So that no man is sinfull because ordain'd to condemnation but ordain'd to condemnation because he is sinful Sin is foreseen and punishment is foreappointed but because that sin is the cause of punishment and that the cause is not after but before the effect in priority of nature though not of time it followes that the effect is not foreappointed until the Cause is foreseen So that God damns no man by an absolute decree that is to say without respect or intuition of sin but the praescience of the Guilt is the motive and inducement to the determining of the Iudgement And yet however my second Inference is depending upon my first by an essential tye which gives it the force and intrinsick form of Demonstration yet because some Readers will assent much sooner to a plain Reason lesse convincing then to a more convincing Reason lesse plain and that some are wrought upon by an argument exactly proportion'd to their Capacities or Tempers rightly level'd and adapted more by luckinesse then design whilest another argument is displeasing they know not why but that there is an odnesse in the look and meen which betokens something of subtilty and makes them suspect there is a serpent though they see not the Ambush in which it lurks I will gratifie such a Reader by a proof of this too first from Scripture then from Reason grounded upon Scripture and last of all by an addition to my former suffrages of Antiquity in which S. Austin more especially shall speak as plainly and as strongly in my behalf as any man that can be brib'd to be an Advocate or a witnesse 22. That my proof from Scripture may be the more effectual I shall first desire it may be consider'd that since God is affirmed to have a secret and a revealed will we must not praeposterously interpret what we read of his revealed will by what we conjecture of his secret one for that were to go into the dark to judge of those Colours which are seen only by the light but we must either not conjecture at that which cannot be known as Gods secret will cannot be but by ceasing to be secret or if we needs will be so busie we must guesse at his secret will by what we know of his revealed one that so at least we modestly and safely erre Upon which it followes that we who meekly confesse we have not been of Gods Councell must only judge of his eternal and impervestigable Decrees by what we finde in his Word concerning his Promises and his Threats which are fitly called the Transcripts or Copies of his Decrees Such therefore as are his Threats such must needs be his Decrees because the one cannot praevaricate or evacuate the other but his Threats as well as Promises are all conditional therefore his decrees must be so too Thus in his Covenant with Adam and indeed the word Covenant doth evince what I am speaking he threatens Death or decrees it not with that peremptory Reason which is the redoubling of the will only I will therefore because I will but on supposition of his eating the forbidden fruit Which was not therefore forbidden that Adam might sin in the eating man was not so ensnared by the guide of his youth but Adam sin'd in the eating because it had been forbidden Such immediately after was Gods language to Cain If thou do well thou shall be accepted and if thou doest not well sin lyeth at the door Again saith God by the mouth of Moses Behold I set before you this Day a Blessing and a Curse A Blessing if ye obey and a Curse if ye will not obey That