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	sin_n	7,176	5	5.3331	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A63842	A discourse of the government of the thoughts by George Tullie ...	Tullie, George, 1652?-1695.	1694 (1694)	Wing T3238; ESTC R1827	60,979	194

be an argument that sin has acquired an arbitrary power over us and that the Law in our members has got the ascendent over the Law of our minds when the seeds of evil thoughts shoot forth into criminal words and actions and in this respect the off-spring is worse than the Parent that is 't is worse to speak and do evil than barely to think it yet consider the outward acts of sin separately and apart by themselves abstracted from those previous cogitations that give them birth and then the sins of the mind are infinitely more criminal for is it not worse to prostitute an immortal Soul to sin and folly then a mouldering Caroase the one is in the nature of the Artificer that models and contrives the sin the other but as the instrument as it were in its hand and who reckons the murdering sword as faulty as he that dar'd to sheath it in his brother the one is as the mother of the spurious brat or the womb wherein lust first conceives till the heart grow big and the reckoning of the sin be out the other only comes and midwives it into the world and brings forth that which brings forth death and who ever thought these two equally criminal nay set aside the guilt that derives from the corruption of the mind and why should the worst actions of the outward man be reputed any more sinful than those of the horse and the mule that have no understanding for sin is properly in the Soul only the proper subject both of it and of that grace which corrects it II. OUR Thoughts are always first in the transgression and so in respect of precedency are more inexcusable than outward actions they are ring-leaders in the rebellion of sin against God and persons of that Character are generally made as exemplary in their punishment as they are in their crime these are the first begotten of their Father the Devil the eldest Sons of original corruption the might and the beginning of the strength of sin in us Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts murders c. There the Son of violence first layes his scene of blood the Extortioner of oppression the Adulterer of the forbidden bed and so of the rest for a man first devises mischief in the Psalmists language and then puts himself in a way that is not good and abhorreth not evil nay they are not only thus the Devils puny Counsel that open the Cause and make a Motion in behalf of sin but they are perpetually soliciting abetting and pleading its Cause at the Bar of a debauch'd fancy and a bribed understanding where many times they unhappily carry it for 't is no wonder that a corrupt Judge should give it on their side Thus do our Thoughts cater and make Provision for the Flesh to fullfil the lusts thereof bring and recommend the beloved Object to the Heart till it dotes and commits actual Folly with it thus they lay in fuel for our Sins and not only enkindle but blow up the fire into open flaming wickedness and therefore III. SINS of Thought are more criminal than outward Transgressions in as much as the guilt of the one derives from the other for all Thoughts are Errors as it were of the first concoction which affect nature in all her subsequent operations of life Thoughts are as the Principal outward acts but as Accessories The one is in the nature of the cause the other of the effect for out of the abundance of the heart does both the mouth speak and the hands act and out of it says the wise man are the issues of life and I add of death too And who can blame the streams for their necessary partaking of the pollutions of their fountain Thoughts then are the principle of spiritual life or spiritual death in us that great leading wheel within the engine which as when it moves regularly it causes the outward hand of our words and actions to point right so when t is out of course it puts all in the like disorder with it for our actions will be of a piece with our thoughts and no one acts like a wise man who thinks like a fool O generation of vipers says our Lord to the Pharisees how can ye being evil think good things for who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean who can bring good words or deeds out of foolish wandering and unhallow'd thoughts for how shall a man reap there where he has not sow'd can he from weeds reap grain gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles IV. IF we govern not our thoughts they will govern us or to speak more properly will leave us without any true government of our selves they are natural movers that need no winding up but are incessant in their motion towards good or evil and therefore if we take not care to determine them to proper objects they will run out upon any that come in their way will haunt and dog us to the table to the bed to the closet to the Church will be perpetually intruding interposing and interrupting us in our duty will either intercept all good motions or distract and confuse us in the performance of them and to be sure will be most busie and impertinent at the time of our religious services when we are to compose our Souls to the severest sobriety and intenseness of Meditation V. THE peculiar malignity of evil Thoughts is farther visible in this that they render the outward act of sin more or less criminal according as they have been more or less active in the contrivance of it for every previous reasoning premeditation and debate enhances its guilt and inflames its punishment as that which argues a more studied and deliberate contempt of the supreme Legislator and therefore it was that the murder of Vriah was more charged upon David than his adultery with Bathsheba He took a great deal of thought about the one but in the other thoughts took him VI. SINS of Thought have this particular aggravation above outward breaches of the Law that they are committed upon less temptation than these and the weaker the temptation the more powerful is the strength of sin in us The two great leading Passions of the Soul that determine us to or deter us from outward acts are our hopes or our fears which carry many times so fatal and so strong a byas with them that they incline us to evil even contrary to the checks and reluctancies of our own minds ILL times may scare men into those actual complyances which left to themselves they abhor and the impending danger which as it bore a mighty stroke in the commission of the sin so tho it cannot justifie it yet will it make some abatement of its guilt but Thoughts are in this sence free free from all external compulsion nor prisons can confine them nor fire nor sword force them into a complyance So that if they joyn in the act they are perfect

Composition where tho the Spirit may be willing yet the flesh is weak will necessarily make our minds nod take them off their guard now and then and consequently give the Tempter an anavoidable advantage over us yet if these wandrings of our Spirits are grievous to our Minds upon recollection if we hence learn what unprofitable Servants we are even in our best Performances and humble our selves hereupon in the sight of God begging him to whip those Thieves that steal away our Thoughts out of the Temples of our Souls we shall not stand chargeable with the Robberies they commit upon us but as the motions of the good Spirit when rejected do so much the more inhaunce Men's guilt so will the injections of the evil One when guarded against as far as may be and resisted be sanctified through the divine Mercy to our greater advantage In fine this wandring of the mind in holy Duties tho in its best Construction 't is a great Unhappiness yet will be only so far imputed for Sin to us as it is voluntary in its Cause and in our own power to remedy and is in its Progress whence soever it derives indulged and complyed with SECT 5. WE proceed now to another more terrible sort of Thoughts wherewith the Minds of Men are many times unhappily infested For it is not unusual for some tempers especially to be assaulted with abundance of odd extravagant and horrid Thoughts breaking in upon them in spite of all Guard and Opposition Thus you shall have some those particularly of musing heads and melancholly Dispositions press'd upon now and then with Atheistical and Blasphemous C●gitations tempted either with David to deny God Ps 73. 2. from a consideration of the unequal Dispensation of his Providence in the World or some other such illogical Topick or else through the pressure of their Afflictions or the like to think hardly of him to deny him in his Attributes to charge him foolishly and to curse him and die Others you shall have possess'd with dismal 〈◊〉 of th●●r having sinned the ●in again●● the holy Ghost of their being Reprobates cast off of God without the verge of his Mercy and seal'd up for destruction Others Lastly there are hurried on in their minds to the commission of some great and crying Sins even against the bent of their own Propensions and that sometimes as far as self Murder it self c. NOW these Thoughts being all of 'em a kin and of the self same Family I shall not go about to treat of them severally and apart but together and in the following Method I. I shall endeavour to shew that there is some difficulty in stateing their proper Rise and Origine But that II. 'T IS of great use to know it and therefore III. IN order thereunto I shall assign some Marks and Characteristies whereby it may be known when they are of their Father the Devil IV. I shall shew that howsoever troublesom and afflicting they are they do not affect nor endanger our main State V. and Lastly I shall endeavour to prescribe the regulation of them I. IT must be owned there is some difficulty in the enquiry into the rise and origine of these horrid Thoughts and 't is hard to know many times whether they are the genuine Issue of our own corrupt Nature or spurious Brats falsly father'd on us by the Devil For he can inject as much and more than our Corruptions can suggest and yet possihly on the other hand they are able of themselves to carry us on to those excesses that look diabolical and when they joyn hand in hand 't is hard to know whether of the two first made the Motions or proves the abler Solicitor of their common cause of Sin Out of the Heart says our Saviour proceed evil Thoughts Murders Adulteries c. there they are conceived whosoever begets them And St. Paul in his Epistle to the Romans resolves Rom. 1. 24. some of those black Crimes for which he brands the heathen World into the Lusts of their own Hearts and yet at the same time 〈…〉 to understand that the P●ince of the power of the Air wrought in all such Children of Disobedience And indeed as the Doctrine Eph. 2. 2. of divine and humane Concurrence in the progress of true Piety is very plain and legible in the Scriptures so as that we are said for instance to be washed and sanctified by the Spirit of God and 1 Cor. 6. 11. yet are required to cleanse our selves from all filthiness of the Flesh and Spirit So are the same sins in 2 Cor. 7. 1. different places charged upon the Devil and our own Hearts too As David's numbring the people 1 Chron. 21. 1. v. 8. is ascribed to Satan and yet the King takes it to himself Just as it is said of Ananias lying to the holy Ghost that Satan put him on it and yet that he conceived it in his Acts. 5. 3 4. Heart NOW tho it be somwhat difficult as we have seen to know the true Parent of these hideous Thoughts we speak of yet II. IT is of no small use and concernment to meet with some satisfaction in the Matter for the sad Experience I believe of many especially hypocondraick Persons tells us the darkness of whose humor is best fitted to receive such black Impressions how apt the grand Enemy of our peace is to throw these fiery Darts into our Hearts and then to accuse us of their burning within us to commit a rape upon our Spirits and then lay the Child at our Doors whereby he many times creates such infinite Disquiet of Thought Horror of Conscience and Astonishment of all the Powers and Faculties of tendor Minds that they are apt to look upon themselves as rejected of God deliver'd up to Satan and in such a desperate and forlorn Condition that the violent hand perhaps is sometimes thought of to put a Period to the comfortless and wretched Life and therefore I say it may be of excellent Use on this Argument for the Support and Encouragement of these unhappy Persons to point out such criterious and characteristies whereby the buffetings of Satan as we render it 2 Cor. 12 7. may be in some measure distinguished from the genuine productions of our own Minds and those generally assign'd by Divines are such as follow I. THEY are the Devil's Thoughts not ours when the matter of them surpasses the suggestions of our natural Corruption for Nature her self unless turn'd perfectly Diabolical shrinks and gives back at those outragiously wicked Motions that pass now and then in some Men's Minds and there to be sure they are the assaults of the Devil upon them to Vex Disquiet and Confuse their Spirits tho he chance to prove unable to prevail with them An evil Heart 't is true may through its own inherent Wickedness conjure up those frightful Spectres of Thoughts that would scare and amaze other Persons but that