Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	father_n	person_n	son_n	3,185	5	5.8825	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A51177	The coppy of a letter sent from France by Mr. Walter Mountagu to his father the Lord Privie Seale, with his answere thereunto also a second answere to the same letter by the Faukland.	Montagu, Walter, 1603?-1677.; Falkland, Lucius Cary, Viscount, 1610?-1643.; Manchester, Henry Montagu, Earl of, 1563?-1642.	1641 (1641)	Wing M2472; ESTC R6266	23,462	40

those that have had the honour to have been bred with approbation of fidelitie in his service nor can I feare that your Lordship should apprehend any change in my duty even your displeasure which I may apprehend upon this mis-interpreted occasion shall never give me any of the least recession from my duty in which profession I humbly aske your blessing as Your Lordships obedient Sonne W. Mountagu The Answer Walter YOur Letter sent from Paris tels mee how much debate you had with your selfe whether with silence to suspend my beliefe or by a cleere profession to assure mee what you feared to present mee but what was most satisfactory to the first dutie to GOD that you thought most justifiable to your derivative dutie to nature therefore resolved to give me an ingenuous accompt of the declaration you had made then had you asked my counsell before you signified the resolution it would have shewed more dutie in you and bred lesse discontent in me but think how welcome that Letter could bee that at once tels of the intention and signifies the resolution Say you could not expect from me so much Theologicall Learning as to satisfie your scruples yet it had beene a fair addresse of a sonne to a Father in a matter of that importance nor are you ignorant of my care I dare say knowledge studied for the settlement of my children in that true faith which their father professed and the Church of England hath established Therefore it would have beene your greater justification and my lesse sorrow so to have lost your selfe with love that I could not have held you in with religious reason Happily you will returne upon me the misconstruction of that speech If any man come to mee and hate not his father he cannot be my Disciple But I must tell you that by this post-dated duty you have trespassed upon loves duty for you have robbed mee of the meanes of helping you with mine advise which as it is the best part of a fathers portion to give so it is not the least testimonie of filiall duty to aske Now to lay such a blemish upon all the cares of your former education as not to think mee worthy to see the ayme untill you have set up your rest is such a neglect that without over-much fatherly candor cannot be forced into an excusable interpretation It makes me suspect that some politike respects or private seducements if not discontentments have wrought upon you Policie and Religion as they do well together so doe they as ill asunder the one being too cunning to be good the other being too simple to be safe But upon policie to change Religion there is no warrant for that lesse for discontentments or upon seducements When I looke upon your Letter which you termed an ingenuous account of your self it seemes to mee not an account of your new professed Religion but rather an exprobration of mine and so of ours of the Church of England Had I knowne the doubts before I might have beene an adviser but objecting them after you had resolved you call mee up now to be a Disputer although I be of his opinion who thought that truth did oftentimes suffer by too much altercation it being a common errour amongst great Clerks to contend more for victory than for veritie yet since you have so punctually led me into it though it be contrary to my first resolution of silence else you had heard from me sooner and finding that the Letter you sent mee had a farther reach then to give me satisfaction else the copies of it would have not beene divulged before I came to receive it and uses made of it to my discomfort I therefore thought my selfe tied to give you an answer lest those of your new profession should think as some of them say that a new lapsorian was more able by a few days discipline to oppose our Religion then an old Father and long professor was able to defend it Having this tie upon me I hope on the one side our learned Divines will pardon mee if for my sonnes sake I dip my pen in their inke and you on the other side will lay mine arguments more to heart as proceeding from the bowels of a Father then if they had been framed by the brains of a learned Divine In this case also I have some advantage of other men who though they might write more learnedly yet cannot doe it so feelingly for mine interest is not only in the cause but in the person for whom I might give an account if there be fayling in my part to reduce him to truth A person whose Letter I take into mine hands as he did the Urne of his sonnes ashes to shed over it veras lachrymas as arguments of the truth both which I hope shall perswade forceably if there be any of that bloud left in you that I gave you It is true affection is not to rule Religion yet in this way nature may co-operate with grace Your Letter sayes truly the greatest part of your life capable of distinctions of Religions hath beene in places and conversant with persons opposite to the faith I bred you in therefore you say it had beene strange if naturall curiositie without any spirituall provocation had not invited you with desire of looking upon the foundation I trode on rather then holding fast blind-fold by your education to be alwayes carried away after it In your education God knows my first care was to season you with true Religion wherein from a boy you attained unto such knowledge as Spaine will witnesse when you were but a youth how strong a champion you were for the Protestant profession The Court of France nor yet all the Princes Courts of Christendome most of which you have visited could never till now taint your faith but always rendred you sound in the Religion which you carried with you hence But now Italy hath turned you because England hath discontented you In the last journey into Italy as you said you applyed all your leisure to confirme your judgement in the doctrine introduced by your education which if you had done seriously you could not so soon nor would not at all upon so weake motives have let goe your hold for of all other their tenents the two you mentioned are the weakest and have received cleerest satisfaction whereby it appeares that you were resolved to give up the cause before you came at it and what you would not hold blind-fold to give up blind-fold which is worst Could that be a motive to your desertion of our Church as perswaded that Luther was the Father of our faith your selfe cannot forget but how that wee build our faith upon Christ not upon Luther upon the doctrine of the Scriptures not upon the inventions of men Could it be proved against us that Luther or any other man how gray-headed soever were the inventor of our faith there needed no more to be said we would

providence and goodnesse which Saint Augustine affirmes for his opinion directly in his Booke de vtil cred. cap. 16. saying if divine providence does preside over our humane affairs it is not to be doubted but that there is some authority constituted by the same God upon which going as upon certain steps we are carried to God Nor can it bee said hee meant the Scripture onely by these steps since experience shewes us by the continuall altercation about the right sense of severall of the most important places of it that what is contained there cannot be a competent rule to mankind which consisteth more of simple then learned men and besides the Scripture must have supposed to have beene kept in some hands whose authority must beget our acceptance of them which being no other then the Church of all ages we have no more reason to beleeve that it hath preserved the Scripture free from all corruption then that it hath maintained it selfe in a continua●● 〈…〉 isibility which Saint Augustine concludeth to be a marke of the true Church in these words in his booke contra Cecill 104. The true Church hath this certain signe that it cannot bee hid therefore it must bee knowne to all Nations but that part of the Protestant Donatist is unknown to many therefore cannot bee the true No inference can be stronger then from hence that the concealment of a Church disproves the truth of it Lastly not to insist upon the allegation of the sense of all the Fathers of the Church in severall ages which seemed to mee most cleere that which in this cause weighed much with mee was the Confession and Testimony of the approved Doctors themselves of the Protestant Church as Hooker in his booke of Eccles. Pol. pag. 126. God always had and must have some visible Church upon earth And Doctor Field the first of Eccle. cap. 10. It cannot bee but those that are the true Church must be knowne by the Profession and further the same Doctor saies how should the Church bee in the World and no body professe openly the saving truth of God And Doctor White in his defence of the way cap. 4. pag. 790. The providence of God hath left monuments and stories for the confirmation of our Faith and I confesse truly that our Religion is false if a continuall descent of it cannot be demonstrated by these monuments downe from Christs time this appeareth unto mee a direct submission of themselves to produce those apparent testimonies of the publique profession of their faith as the Catholikes demand but this I could never read nor know of any that performed For D. White himself for want of proof of this is fain to say in another place in his way to the Church p. 520. The Doctors of our faith have had a cōtinual succession though not visible to the world so that he flies from his undertaking of a conspicuous demonstration of the monuments of his faith to an invisible subterfuge or a beleefe without appearance for hee saith in the same Book in an other place pag. 4. All the externall government of the Church may faile so as a locall and personall succession of Pastors may be interrupted and pag. 40● We doe not contest for an externall succession it suffiseth ●hat they succeed in the Doctrine of the Apostles and faithfull who in all ages did embrace the same truth so as here hee removeth absolutely all externall proofes of succession which before hee consented to be guided by I cannot say I have verbally cited these Authors because I have translated these places though the Originall be in English yet I am sure their sense is no way injured and I have chosen to alleadge Doctor Whites authority because he is an Orthodox professor of the Protestant Church the reflection of the state of this question wherein I found the Protestants defend themselves onely by flying out of sight by confessing a long invisibility in their Church in apparence of Pastors and Doctors left mee much loosened from the fastnesse of my professed Religion but had not yet transported me to the Catholike Church for I had an opinion that our Divines might yet fill up this vacuitie with some more substantiall matter then I could meet with so I came back into England with a purpose of seeking nothing so intentively as this satisfaction and to this purpose I did covertly under another mans name send this my scruple to one in whose learning sufficiencie I had much affiance in these termes Whether there was no visible succession to be proved in the Protestant Church since the Apostles time downe to Luther and what was to be answered to that objection Besides the confession of invisibilitie for so many ages to this I could get no other answer but that the point had been largely and learnedly handled by Doctor White and many others of our Church upon this I resolved to informe my selfe in some other points which seemed to mee unwarrantable and superstitious in the Ceremónies of the Church of Rome since I had such an inducement so little satisfaction in a point which seemed to mee so essentiall and in all these scruples I found mine owne mistake in the belief of the Tenets of the Roman Church gave me the onely occasion of scandall not the practice of their doctrine and to confirme mee in the satisfaction of all them I found the practice and authority of most of the ancient Fathers and in the Protestant Refutation of these Doctrines the Recusation of their Authorities as men that might erre so that the question seemed then to me whether I would rather hazard the erring with them then with the later Reformers which consequently might erre also in dissenting from them since then my resolution of reconciling my selfe to the Roman Church is not lyable to any suspition of too forward or precipitate resignation of my selfe my judgment may perchance be censured of seducement my affection cannot bee of corruption Upon these Reasons I did soone after my returne last into England reconcile my selfe to the Roman Catholike Church in the belief and convincement of it to be the true ancient and Apostolicall Church by her externall marks and her internall objects of faith and doctrine and in her I resolve to live and die as the best way to salvation when I was in England I did not studie dissimulation so dexterously as if my fortune had read it to me nor doe I now professe it so desperatly as if it were my fortunes Legacie for I doe not believe it so dangerous but it may recover for I know the Kings wisdome is rightly informed that the Catholike Faith doth not tend to the alienation of the subject it rather super-infuseth a reverence and obedience to Monarchie and strengtheneth the bands of our obedience to our naturall Prince and his grace and goodnesse shall never finde any other occasion of diversion of them from the naturall and usuall exercise of themselves upon