Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	faith_n	grace_n	instrumental_a	1,802	5	11.6254	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A51685	A treatise of morality in two parts / written in French by F. Malbranch, author of The search after truth ; and translated into English, by James Shipton, M.A.; Traité de morale. English	Malebranche, Nicolas, 1638-1715.; Shipton, James, M.A.	1699 (1699)	Wing M319; ESTC R10000	190,929	258

naturally Habits are got and maintain'd by Acts But we cannot frame a resolution of Sacrificing our predominant Passion without a lively Faith and a firm Hope especially when this Passion appears with all its Charms and Allurements And therefore since it is Light and Understanding which illuminates Faith strengthens Hope and discovers to the Mind the ridiculousness and deformity of the Passions we should continually meditate on the true Goods and seek and carefully lay up in our Memory the Motives which may induce us to love them and to despise transient Enjoyments and that with so much the greater diligence because the Light is subject to our Wills and if we live in Darkness it is most commonly our own fault I think I have sufficiently prov'd these Truths II. But when our Faith is not lively nor our Hope strong enough to make us resolve to Sacrifice a Passion which hath got such a Dominion over our Heart that it corrupts our Mind every Moment and draws it to its Party the only thing we ought to do and perhaps the only thing we can do in this Case is to seek for that in the fear of Hell and the just Indignation of an avenging God which we cannot find in the hope of an eternal Happiness and in the Motion which that Fear excites in us to pray to the Saviour of Sinners that he would encrease our Faith and Confidence in him not ceasing in the mean time to meditate on the Truths of Religion and Morality and on the Vanity of transitory Enjoyments for without this we cannot be sensible of our Miseries nor call upon our Deliverer Now when we find in our selves st●●ngth enough to form an actual resolution of Sacrificing our Passions to the Love of Order then tho' according to the Principles which I have laid down in the foregoing Chapters we may through the assistance of Grace by repeating the like Acts absolutely acquire Charity or the habitual and ruling Love of the immutable Order yet it is better without delay to come to the Sacraments and in that actual Motion which the Holy Ghost inspires in us to wash away our Sins by Penance This is undoubtedly the most compendious and certain way to change the Act into a Habit the Act I say which is transient and doth not work Conversion into a Habit which remains and which justifies For God doth not Judge us according to that which is actual and transitory but according to habitual and permanent Dispositions and by the Sacraments of the New Testament we receive justifying Charity which gives us a Right to the true Goods and the assistances necessary for the obtaining of them These Truths I shall here explain either by certain Principles or by Evidence or by Faith III. I think I have shewn in several places and by several ways That God always executes his Designs by general Laws the Efficacy of which is determin'd by the action of occasional Causes I have prov'd this Truth by the Effects of those second Causes which are known to us and I think I have demonstrated it from the Idea of God himself because his Action ought to bear the Character of his Attributes And therefore I refer the Reader for this Matter to my other Writings But if Reason could not lead us to this Truth yet the Holy Scripture would not suffer us to doubt of it in relation to the Subject which I now treat of For the Scripture teaches us that Jesus Christ as Man is not only the meritorious but also the distributive or occasional Cause of all Graces that by his Sacrifice of himself he hath gain'd a Right over all the Nations of the World to make use of them as Materials in building the Spiritual Temple of the Church of which the stately Temple of Solomon was but a Shadow and a Figure and that now and ever since the day of his Ascension he makes use of that Right and raises that eternal Temple to the glory of his Father by the Power which he receiv'd from him in the day of his Victories when he was made High Priest of the true Goods after the irrevocable Order of Melchisedech Eph. 4.15 16. Christ is the Head of the Church he continually infuses into the Members of which it is compos'd 1 Joh. 2.1 1 T●m 2.5 Eph. 5.23 Heb. 7.25 Joh. 11.42 Mat. 28.18 Joh. 13.5 the Spirit which gives it Life and Holiness He is the Advocate the Mediator the Saviour of Sinners He is in the Holy of Holies always Living to make intercession for us and all his Prayers and Desires are heard In a word he himself tells us That all Power was given to him in Heaven and in Earth Now he did not receive this Power as God equal to the Father but as Man like unto us and God communicates his Power to the Creatures no farther than as he executes their Wills and by them his own Designs for God alone is the true Cause of every thing that is done both in Nature and Grace Thus it is certain from the Scripture that Jesus Christ as Man is the occasional cavse which determines the efficacy of that general Law whereby God would Save all Men in and by his Son IV. It is necessary that we should be well convinc'd of this Truth which is essential to Religion by reading the New Testament and particularly the Epistle to the Hebrews And having as I think sufficiently prov'd it in my Treatise of Nature and Grace and in my Christian Meditations I shall not insist any longer upon it I write for Philosophers but they are Christian Philosophers such as receive the Scripture and the infallible Tradition of the Universal Church and I endeavour to explain the Truths of Faith by clear and unequivocal Terms This makes me say that Jesus Christ as Man and High Priest of the true Goods is the occasional cause of Grace I might have call'd him the natural instrumental second distributive Cause or have made use of some other more common Term But the commonest Terms are not always the clearest Tho' People fancy they understand them perfectly yet commonly they scarce know what they say when they use them and if they would take the pains to examine these which I have mention'd they would find that the Term of natural Cause raises a false Idea that that of instrumental is obscure that of second so general that it gives no distinct Idea to the Mind and that of distributive at least equivocal and confus'd Whereas this which I have made use of the occasional cause of Grace hath I think none of these defects at least as to those Persons for whom alone I writ the Treatise of Nature and Grace tho' many others have taken upon them to judge of it who scarce understand the Principles which I have there laid down For this Term denotes precisely that God who doth every thing as the true cause which I think I have prov'd in several places imparts his

indirectly and which we are almost always concern'd to avoid that we may preserve in our Soul the Power and Liberty of loving the true Good and living according to Order For the different ways by which we avoid these Sensations make one of the principal parts of Morality and most of the Names of Vertue were invented only to express the acquir'd Dispositions of avoiding them CHAP. V. Of the Strength of the Mind Our Desires are the occasional Causes of our Knowledge The Contemplation of abstract Ideas is difficult The Strength of the Mind consists in an acquir'd Habit of enduring the Labour of Attention The way to acquire it is to Silence our Senses Imagination and Passions to Regulate our Studies and to Meditate only on clear Ideas I. WE are assur'd both by Faith and Reason That God alone is the true Cause of all Things But Experience teaches us That he never acts but according to certain Laws which he hath prescrib'd to himself and which he constantly observes For instance it is God alone that moves all Bodies which perhaps would require a great many Words to convince some People of But this being suppos'd as having been prov'd elsewhere it is evident from Experience that God never moves Bodies but when they strike against one another So that this Impulse of Bodies may be said to be the Occasional Cause which infallibly determines the Efficacy of that general Law by which God produces a vast Variety of Motions in his Workmanship II. Again it is God alone that diffuses Light in all spiritual Substances this is a Truth which I have sufficiently explain'd already But for the Occasional Cause which determines him to communicate it to us we must search no where but in our selves God by a general Law which he constantly observes and of which he hath foreseen all the consequences hath annex'd the presence of Ideas to the Attention of our Mind so that when we can command our Attention and make use of it the Light never fails to diffuse it self in us proportionably to our Labour This is so true that ungrateful and stupid Man makes it a ground of his Vanity he imagins himself to be the Cause of his Knowledge because God always answers his Desires so faithfully and constantly For having an inward Sense of his own Attention and no Knowledge of the operation of God he looks upon the endeavour of his desires Page 9. which should convince him of his Impotence as the true cause of those Ideas which accompany that endeavour III. Now God must have plac'd the occasional causes of our Knowledge in our selves for several Reasons the chief of which is that otherwise we should not have been Masters of our Wills For since our Wills must be enlightned before they can be mov'd if it were not in our power to Think it would not be in our power to Will We should not be perfectly free nor consequently in a condition to merit the true Goods for which we are Created IV. The attention of the Mind then is a kind of natural Prayer by which we obtain the illumination of Reason But since Sin enter'd into the World the Mind often finds it self in the midst of barren and dismal Solitudes it cannot Pray the labour of Attention wearies and disheartens it Indeed the Labour is at first very great and the recompense but small and besides we find our selves continually sollicited press'd and agitated by the Imagination and Passions whose inspiration and motions we follow with Pleasure However there is a necessity for it we must call upon Reason if we will be enlightned by it There is no other way to obtain Light and Understanding but by the labour of Attention Faith is a Gift of God which we cannot merit but Understanding is generally given only to merit Faith is purely Grace in all Senses But the understanding of Truth is Grace only in such a Sense that we must merit it by our own Labour or by cooperating with Grace V. Now those who are fitted to undergo this Labour and are always attentive to the Truth that should guide them have such a disposition as without doubt deserves a more magnificent Name than any of those that are given to the most splendid Vertues But tho' this Habit or Vertue be inseparably joyn'd to the love of Order it is so little known among us that I know not whether we have given it the honour of a particular Name I shall therefore take the liberty to call it by an equivocal Name Strength of Mind VI. For the obtaining this true Strength whereby the Mind is enabled to bear the Labour of Attention we must begin to Labour betimes for naturally we cannot acquire any Habits but by Acts we cannot gain Strength but by Exercise But perhaps the great difficulty lies in beginning We remember that we have begun and have been forc'd to leave off This disheartens us we think our selves incapable of Meditation and renounce Reason If this be the case whatever we can say to excuse our Sloth and Negligence we must also renounce Vertue at least in part For without the Labour of Attention we can never comprehend the greatness of Religion the sanctity of Morality the littleness of every thing but God the ridiculousness of our Passions and all our inward Miseries Without this Labour the Soul will be in continual Darkness and Disorder for there is naturally no other way to obtain the Light which should guide us we shall be eternally disquieted and strangly perplex'd for we are afraid of every thing when we walk in the Dark and think our selves environ'd with Precipices Faith indeed doth guide and support us but that is because it always produces some Light by the Attention which it stirs up in us For there is nothing but Light that can give us Courage and Assurance when we have so many Enemies to fear VII What must we do then to set about our Work without being discourag'd Let us see what it is that puts us out of Heart We meditate with Pain and without recompense The Pain on one side disheartens us and on the other the Reward does not sufficiently encourage us We must then make the Pain less and the Reward greater This is plain But there is nothing more difficult Nay it is impossible for the greatest part of Mankind And for this Reason it is that we need a more compendious way to be assur'd of the Truth and that the visible Authority of the Church is necessary for our Conduct For even those of the greatest Genius if they deviate from Faith or abandon the Analogy of Faith wander out of the way which leads to Understanding they break the Chain of Truths which are all link'd together in such a manner that one single Falshood being granted for truth a Man may overthrow all the Sciences if he knows how to argue by a deduction of Consequences VIII To lessen the Pain which we find in Meditation we