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	good_a	great_a	3,686	5	2.7944	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A30636	Tagathon, or, Divine goodness explicated and vindicated from the exceptions of the atheist wherein also the consent of the gravest philosophers with the holy and inspired penmen in many of the most important points of Christian doctrine is fully evinced / by Richard Burthogge.	Burthogge, Richard, 1638?-ca. 1700.	1672 (1672)	Wing B6157; Wing B6156_CANCELLED	50,348	170

ΤΑΓΑΘΟΝ OR Divine Goodness Explicated and Vindicated FROM THE EXCEPTIONS OF THE ATHEIEST Wherein also the Consent of the Gravest Philosophers with the Holy and Inspired Penmen in many of the most important points of Christian Doctrine is fully evinced By Richard Burthogge Dr. in Phys. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Christ. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 H●●● ●●●es London Printed by S. and B. Griffin for James Collins and are to be sold at the Kings-Armes in Ludgate-street 1672. TO THE Most Honoured ANDREW TREVIL Esq. SIR OF all the Attributes are owned by the Deity This whereon I have engag'd my Pen is the most remarkable and Glorious Which I undertook the rather and with the more assurance because I knew that if I did come short in my Discourses on it as who ever enterpriz'd it must I had my consolation in my Subject It is Divine Goodness to accept of what a Person hath and not of what he hath not I know that God is great as well as good that he is in Heaven and we on Earth and that therefore as in our addresses to him so in our Discourses of him our words should be few But I also know what Cicero observ'd before me that he is Opt. Max. that he is first Good and then Great and that he glories in his Goodness as his greatest Excellency His making of his Sun to rise on the Evil and on the Good and his sending Rain on the Just and on the unjust is called his Perfection and indeed is so 't is be you perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect Once it is the Interest and Cause of God I plead in this Essay and so much that all Religion is concerned in it For 't is an apprehension of the Goodnesse and Bounty and Beneficence of God that established in Mens hearts doth powerfully tie them to Adore Obey and Serve him There is Mercy sayes the Royal Psalmist with thee that thou mayest be feared It was for this Reason that he prefaced the Law he gave the Jewes with a Repitition of the benefits which had accrued to them by him I am the Lord thy God which have brought thee out of the Land of Egypt out of the House of Bondage Thou shalt c. Namely to imprint upon them a due sence of all his Obligations and Engagements that having first possess'd them of a rational and well establish'd Love he might afterwards the better influence them by it to a due respect to all his commands 'T is if you love me keep my commands And the Holy Evangel wherein Almighty God is admirably represented as most infinitely Loving Gratious and Benigne what other end intention or design has it but by so ample proof and Declaration of the Divine Love to prevail with man for his that believing he may love and loving he may serve and obey This is the Evangellical Obedience that of Faith which workes by Love Thus our Love to God it is the life of all our Devotion and Obedience to him and his Benignity and kindnesse unto us it is the ground of all our love And Sathan knows it well enough and therefore he is so industrious for we are not ignorant of his devices to instil into the minds of men hard and frightful apprehensions of the great God as that he rules by will that he hath no consideration in the world of his Creatures comfort but onely of his own Glory that he made the greatest part of Men to damne them and triumphs in their Ruin and that he cruelly exacts impossibilities and obliges Men to come when yet he knowes they cannot And that Evil One is intimate enough with all our minds to know that if he can but once perswade them that the Master whom we are to serve is most Tyrannicall and hard and that he reapeth where he hath not sown and gathereth where he hath not strewed no question but we will away and dig and hide our Lords money as that unfaithful servant did So much it is the interest of God and True Religion that Divine Benignity be vindicated a work as necessary now as ever when Lucretius is as much consulted as Moses and when there are almost as many who blasphemously dispute Divine Goodnesse as there are that seriously believe it And it is with those I principally deal In doing which I have endeavour'd to acquit my self not onely Philosophically by alledging Reasons which Philosophy Common sense and the Natures of the things I treat of do suggest to me but also as a Christian by blending with those other such considerations also as the sacred Oracles whereon I most relie do prompt me with not insisting on the former which yet too many do but as they have the countenance and favour of the latter This Sir is what I offer you Be pleased to accept an Essay but a Part of that whole you have a Title to which with those designs and this Furniture such as it is doth lay it self before you at your seet 'T is its Ambition to have a Person for its Parton whom its Subject hath for its Admirer And it cannot easily despair of being owned by you and so of being made another Instance of your great Goodness of which its Author is already One seeing to be so it is enough to need it And Sir with this high Encouragement it is that I presume to own my self in these circumstances in that capacity you long ago vouchsafed me the honour to be even that of SIR Your most humble Servant and Son Richard Burthogge Bowden near Totnes Oct. 9. 1671. AN ADVERTISEMENT TO THE READER THE Method I have taken in the following Discourse is to second the evincements which I urge from common Reason or Nature with the suffrage of the sacred Oracles Which that the Reader may not mis-interpret and accuse of want of judgement seeing my pretences are against the Atheist who believes not Scripture he is to know that there are Reasons for the Atheist which though to make them more perspicuous and convincing I have backed with the verdicts of the gravest Philosophers and to shew them to be also Scriptural I have confirmed from the Scriptures yet I insist not on them with the Atheist as they are Scriptural but as they are Reasons Scriptural Reasons He may understand me that I Insist not with him on the Authority but on the Reason of Scripture And yet truely taking on me to assert the Christian Religion and such Apprehensions of the Great God as that obligeth us to have I thought it point of Duty not onely to produce Reasons and Notions that might satisfie but also to evince them Scriptural for as much as otherwise though they might be Philosophical and carry in them something of conviction yet not being Scriptural they could not possibly be Christian and so answer my Ends. In Fine to be ingenuous with him I was willing to annex the Testimonies of the Scriptures and of Philosophers