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	know_v	2,974	5	4.2147	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A36354	The new plot of the papists to transform traitors into martyrs faithfully exposed to publick view.	J. D. (John Dormer), 1636-1700.	1679 (1679)	Wing D1924; ESTC R29740	7,328	16

The New PLOT OF THE PAPISTS To Transform TRAITORS Into MARTYRS Faithfully Exposed to Publick View Ex ore tuote Judico LONDON Printed 1679. READER THis following Paper will sufficiently shew by what Arts and subtlety this restless and untamable generation still labours to support their wounded Chuse whom neither the Judgements of the Bench nor the Exceptions at Tyburn can silence or convince But to the end all Protestants may the better understand their wayes and their close proceedings here is a faithful Transcript of a Paper newly taken out of the chamber of a notorious Papist wherein is manifestly set forth their whole design of Canonizing those men for Saints whom the Justice of the Nation hath Condemned for Traytors I suppose I shall do acceptable service in the Publication since the best way to avoid Errour is to know it EVery Rational Creature loves to be and loves to be happy This is so rooted in the Nature of Mankind that whosoever acts or opines contrary to this Principle must needs be wholly deprived of the use of Reason All the Rhetorick in the world can never perswade a man knowingly to make himself miserable This being so I say it is impossible that a dying man who is compos mentis and does truly believe there is a God who is powerful and just in rewarding good and punishing Evil should at the very point of death averr his Innocence and call God who is immediately to Judge him to witness the truth or to punish the falsehood of what he then saye and yet be guilty of the Fact by him so denyed Whoever believes there is a God must believe him to be Truth and Iustice it self and therefore he must know there can be no Treason of a higher Nature committed against his Divine Essence then Sacrilegiously to abuse and set his Holy Name to a Lye and also he must be convinced that since God is infinitely Just the punishment he will inflict on such a fact must bear proportion with the Enormity of the crime Since then it is impossible to humane nature for any man knowingly and advisedly to make himself miserable nay infinitely and eternally miserable therefore most impossible it is that all those dying men upon the score of the Plott believing there is a God should vouch him as a witness and Garanty of their innocence and yet be culpable both of the fact by them denyed and of the sacrilegious affront at the same time offered to His Divine Majesty It remains then to consider whither these dying men did believe there is a God If we believe them to be Papists the question is at an end since all mankind knows that the Church of Rome believes there is a God however it may err in the manner of worshiping him for if they did not believe there is a God they could not erre in the manner of worshiping him So that if they dyed ●●●ists they believed in God Now that they dyed Papists I think the matter proves it self and can not be proved by any thing that is more evident For all that we can possibly know of another man's internal belief is by his profession of it and at what time can such profession be of stronger evidence then at the hour of his death There is another weighty reason to demonstrate a Posterior that those Executed persons did believe in God For all Atheists as such must of necessity love this present life as their supreme felicity for death with them is an end of all being and therefore for the preservation of life their summum bonum their is nothing in their power which they will not do whence it must follow that if those men had been Atheists they would certainly have confest a Plott and would have impeached others whereby their own lives might have been preserved Now then the question in short will be whether more credit ought to be given to the Oathes of Mr. Oates Bedlow Prance and Dugdale and the rest of that crew who live and are in fair hopes to live long and are no losers by their Swearing or to the Oath and imprecations of so many dying men at the very moment of their deaths who are so far from gaining by their swearing that if they would but confess the contrary to what they swear might save their lives and perhaps be no less preferr'd than Mr. Oats and his fellows I say again so far from gaining by such their swearing if not trew that either they must believe there is no God or else as I said before they are certain to damn their souls eternally by making a sacrilegious use of his dreadful name with their last breath solemnly to attest and confirm a Lye This seems to me to be a plain demonstration whither the matter be considered in order to Christianity or to humane nature for neither as Christians is it possible for them to do an act the last of their lives to affront the Almighty who is immediately to judge them nor as rational creatures can they wittingly expose themselves to certain and continual misery Therefore most evident it is born according to Reason and Christianity and so it must appear to all who are not void of both that their last words were true and that Mr. Fenwick had a great deal of reason to close his Speech in this manner And I hope Christian charity will not let you think that by the last act of my life I would cast away my soul by sealing up my last breath with a damnable Lye It is a prodigious thing to see with what down-right Nonsence and contradiction the seduced Rabble are impos'd upon in this point by those sticklers who so eagerly follow the chase of innocent blood and still search for the bottome of the Plott as the Heathens did for good or bad Fortune in the intrels of living Creatures but with this difference that they were only for the cutting up of beast but our Zealots are for the imbowelling of men First they tell them that Papists have Dispensations to say and swear any thing for the advantage of their cause and yet all the Roman Catholicks in the world both living and dying solemnly protest and declare that God himself much less the Pope cannot give a dispensation for the doing of an evil thing Hear what dying H 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 says to this point I do utterly abhorre and detest that abominable and false doctrine laid to our charge that we can have Licence to commit Perjury or any sin to advantage our cause being expresly against the Doctrine of St. Paul Non sunt facienda mala ut eveniant bona Evil is not to be done that good may come thereof The rest of them speak upon this matter to the same purpose Now since inward belief cannot be known but by outward profession who are to be believed in this point the living calumniators or the dying Professors In the next place they take upon them to interpret the words of our