Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	evil_a	evil_n	sin_n	4,011	5	5.5536	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A67826	A sermon preached before the Right Honourable the lord mayor and aldermen of the city of London at Guild-Hall Chapell, February the 17th, 1677/8 / by Edw. Young.	Young, Edward, 1641 or 2-1705.	1678 (1678)	Wing Y65; ESTC R39193	12,745	34

commodious in their effects And needs a man now say they any infusion here to determine his choice or any assisting influence to put it in execution All that he seems to need is onely this that he do not turn fool and desert the use of those faculties and powers which Nature has given him After such a Moral discourse as this having called upon Reason and stirred up advertency to apply it they presume they have done enough and leave us to grow good upon our own stock and strength But alas these are Icarus his flights Nature has provided no wings for man to soar so high with Vice will never be chas'd out of the world with Invectives nor Vertue advanc'd to her Empire by Panegyricks The most prudent advertency and the most manly resolution the most rational love and the most generous indignation that ever Opinionative Morallist could conceive and fortifie his breast withall will never be able to secure a man against the subtle approaches or the violent assaults of sin 'T is onely the Divine Assistance that is our castle and defence and the vital spring of all our good habits and whosoever terminates his hopes even of serving and pleasing God upon the confidence of any other strength then what is derived from God his hopes are impious and he must miscarry 'T is true that Rational Arguments are proper nay necessary to excite a man to his duty which is a Rational service and effected by Rational endeavours not lazy presumptions But then this is the point A man must likewise know that when he is about his duty he is not sufficient for that which he is about for God has reserved a partial agency to himself and he does as much command our application to him for this assistance as he does demand all the rest of our duty For as God does require us to keep his Commandments so in order to the doing of this he does altogether as much require us to Ask to Seek and to Knock that is to apply our selves for ability to doe what he commands and therefore he who shall undertake to reason and argue a man into his duty without insisting on the necessary application to God does the same thing in resemblance as if he should cut off the Travellers legs and provide him with a staff That one instance of S. Peter to our Saviour Mat. 26. Though I should die with thee yet will I not deny thee being as stout a Resolution upon as good motives and from as honest a heart as any man else can ever dare to pretend to has sufficiently baffled all humane confidence and demonstrated that the opinion of strength in our selves in vanity and the issue of it defeat Having thus adjusted the true measures of humane Nature as consisting between the two extremes of self-sufficiency to Good and absolute necessity to Evil It results that the not making God our strength which in one word we may call Indevotion Doeg's first charge in my Text is the great Parent Evil an Evil more prolifical in us then that of Adam and if we will with S. Augustin attribute the Universal Origine of sin to a Deficient Cause it must be to this Defect of Application to God as being the first the inlet and the cause of all others For whatsoever inadvertencies a man may be guilty of before it is impossible he should fall under the dominion of any vitious habits untill he has first faln from this Guard of the Divine Assistance But then on the other side when a man has once by neglect faln from this Guard when either through desuetude or infrequency or meer formality of devotion he has suffered his mind to grow alienated from God and his dependance upon him to diminish and fail that man is then arrived to a pitch where it is as impossible for him to stay as it is to fix after the first step down a precipice He must go on and his next genuine advance is to the second Member of Doeg's charge viz. He trusted in the multitude of his Riches For The Soul of man like common Nature admits no Vacuum if God be not there Mammon must be and it is as impossible to serve neither as it is to serve both And for this there is an essential reason in our constitution For Man is designed and born an Indigent Creature full of wants and appetites and a restless desire of happiness which he can by no means find within himself and this indispensably obliges him to seek for his happiness abroad Now if he seek his happiness from God he answers the very intention of his frame and has made a wise choice of an object that is adequate to all his wants and desires But then if he does not seek his happiness from God he must necessarily seek it somewhere else for his appetites cannot hang long undetermined they are eager and must have their quarry If he forsake the fountain of Living waters yet he cannot forsake his thirst and therefore he lies under the necessity of hewing out broken Cisterns to himself He must pursue and at least promise himself satisfaction in other enjoyments Thus when our Hope our Trust and our Expectations abate towards God they do not abate in themselves but are onely scattered among undue and inferiour Objects And this makes the connexion infallible between Indevotion and Moral Idolatry that is between the neglect of God's worship and worshipping the Creature for whatsoever share we abate towards God we always place upon something else and whatsoever thing else we prosecute with that share of love desire or complacency which is due unto God that is in effect our Idol as is expressly declared in the case of Riches Col. 3. 5. which is the particular matter I am to treat about in this second part Riches are Gods blessing and the good man's promise and administer not onely the lawfull comforts to Nature but the greatest means and opportunities to Vertue and yet the managery of them is so nice and hazardous and they occasionally produce so much of evil that as the Poets did therefore conclude them to come from Hell so the Scriptures tell us in earnest that they generally tend thither Not things themselves but affections and opinions about things are evil says the Rule and it being so in the present case I shall briefly note some affections of men that thus pervert Riches into evil I shall mention three Excesse of Desire Mistake of Right And undue Complacency The first respects Riches in Prospect the other two in Possession I begin with Excess of Desire The Stoick's Wise man would have no desire for fear of Disappointment but 't is certain the Good man will have no great desire for fear of Impiety For a great desire can hardly be entertained without a secret quarrel with providence an unthankfulness for what is present and a preference of our own wish before the good pleasure and ordination of God When