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	will_n	3,297	5	6.8462	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A39789	A treatise of the bulk and selvedge of the world wherein the greatness, littleness, and lastingness of bodies are freely handled : with an answer to Tentamine [sic] de Deo by S.P. ... / by N. Fairfax ...	Fairfax, Nathaniel, 1637-1690.	1674 (1674)	Wing F131; ESTC R6759	116,406	248

be so when it no longer abides in the World but a moral being skills not the world but is such only from its closing with or swerving from the Law 't is laid to whilst 't is it is indeed nothing in the World nor is any thing else of it self rightly speaking unless it takes up room there Had there been as much of the will of God as there might be of the will of man in those two odd wishes of two holy hearts in the holiest of Books blotting out of the Book of God would have been a good and accursedness from Christ a blessedness For then a being grows up to its full ripe happiness when it fully reaches all that bliss which God aims at for its utmost good which whether it abides Physically or not is neither here nor there it being a weakness of understanding to say that a made being is more happy in its natural life which God wills not than in its being nothing when God wills it so for then either we could never have bin fully happy unless we were as well from everlasting as to it or at least those that go to heaven at the end of the World would not be so blissful as those that went in the beginning the former having an happy being while the latter had neither happiness nor being whereas both standing even in the love of God they should do so too in their own bliss I think we do respect or look towards Gods glory and our own happiness more by what we have in us of Ens morale than by what we have of Ens Physicum Notwithstanding all which there would follow nothing to make us think that sin should be any whit long of God for why all that he does towards it is to leave us to our selves to bring it forth if we will and instead of driving on to it as a fellow helper or procatarctick cause he draws from it and towards the good with unspeakable endearments of woing and drives from it by forbidding the evil with all that earnestness of threatning that may beget in man the utmostness of dread nor is he any nearer the Physical cause of it than to give that good power which is not the cause at all as it looks towards him for by giving this power he is at the same time the evil thing is done as much the cause of the gainstanding good that is not done now if he be no more the cause of it than he is of that which is not at all then he is not the cause at all Besides this power is not only good but also needful for though the fulfilledness or perfection of the will in the next life will not be in a standing at jar and wavering alike towards good and evil but only in a self-willingness to good yet in this life I think it mainly does and must for this is a life of doing or believing as it looks on to reward in that to come that a lie of rewarding as it looks back to doing or believing here Now if we do but allow God to deal with us who are reasonable beings in wayes bearing an evenliness with our kind as he does with lower beings in wayes agreeable to theirs then must he needs bestow upon us this freedom to sin that we are speaking of for it seems not so much of right reason to reward that in man which though he did willingly yet he could not for his life do otherwise least then a stock or a stone should put in too for reward for its deeds of kind which it does not unwillingly but yet must needs do In like manner Heaven being a life not of earning wages but of taking pay 't is enough there for the freedom of the will to stand alone in spontaneitate ad bonum or self-willingness to good Hence likewise we are in a fair way to answer that thread-bare Question which did so much gravel the ungospel'd world to wit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For inasmuch as sin is a moral thing we are well enough on 't if we can but track it up to a spring of its kind without looking after any other riste Now unbounded wisdom and goodness having laid out endless happiness as reward for obedience and the same wisdom and rightwiseness allotted endless wretchedness as punishment for sin without this obedience there could be no heaven without sin no Hell and without a power not to do in both there could be neither So then that God may have leave to make man happy for holiness man must needs have power to make himself wretched for sin That evil should alwayes flow from evil in a chain of breeders is a great mis-understanding for as fire arises from that which is no fire by a smart stroke upon a flint so evil springs from that which is not evil by a cross blow given the Law If it be gainsaid Then man may thank himself too for all the good he does that being as much long of him as the other while the thing done forbears to be denominated from God at the freeness of the power in man and so to make God not the spring or Author of good would be much at one with the making of him the Author of evil I answer it follows not For in the first place of all the good that man does God is still the Moral cause egging on to it by all those sweetnesses of entreaty that the will can any way be wrought upon by and though mans being free to it makes it his deed at second hand at least both which even holy writ and reason speak aloud yet inasmuch as the stream of goodness by the putting forth of freeness is not damm'd up but left to run on to the thing done and again the same Almighty hand that barely upheld while sin was done does over and above further the thing that good is by enlightning the mind renewing the will healing the spring in man of that a●l which inbred sin had brought upon it and in a word making it every way more it self God must be more an owner there than man and thence the thing done falls in with the divine will because it flow'd from divine goodness all that which is good in man by way of off-spring being so in God by way of well-spring Once more by the medly of Ens Mathematicum and Physicum the Question De compositione continui or the making up of a bulky being has been overwhelmed and lost in the finenesses of words and the airiness of tattle beyond all helps of freedom to a right understanding whereas by dealing the dole evenly between both we hope further on to make it likely at least that the doctrine of atoms is not wound up in those darknesses that some mens understandings have may-hap over-weened And lastly whereas Ens Physicum or naturale is either materiale or immateriale body and ghost or body and not body by bewedding to body the things