Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	good_a	great_a	speak_v	2,685	5	4.1963	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A42228	The mourner comforted an epistle consolatory / written by Hugo Grotius to Monsieur Du Maurier the French embassadour at the Hague ; translated on a sad occasion by C.B.; Epistola consolatoria ad Benjaminum Auberium Maurerium, Regis Christianissimi apud Foederatas Belgii Provincias legatum illustrissimum. English	Grotius, Hugo, 1583-1645.; Barksdale, Clement, 1609-1687.	1652 (1652)	Wing G2114; ESTC R1086	13,310	35

force to hurt himself might do somewhat if it pleased for his own ease That sorrow is an enemy to us we cannot deny The leannesse of an exhausted body paleness of countenance dejection of minde causes of grief for the most part more just then that for which we grieve shew it to be an enemy In the dealing with an enemy what are we wont to do If he be strong and at the first onset violent whilst your forces are not yet come together the first caution is to decline the battell afterward when you are assured and confident in your strength you shall march into the field and display your colours Even so the appearance of your loss being fresh and your minde tender it is best to bend your thoughts another way None may do it more easily excellent Sir then you who need not seek for employment you have in your charge affairs of so great weight and labour that they may very take up all your thoughts The King whom you serve the greatest and most Christian the difficult times the many and various businesses of your Office what else do they all say unto you but Attend your work you are not at leasure to be a Mourner Most true is that old saying The minde is prevalent where you put it forth and use it Certainly it is there to be used where our labour may be to good purpose that is not in mourning but in the service of your King and Country It is no more then ordinary common sense which the Greek Poet hath adorned with elegant expressions to this effect If ills were cured by our weeping eyes And tears could wash away our miseries Thy tears were worth gold which I now must blame For weep or weep not evils are the same I know that said Solon and I weep the more because I can do no good by weeping This very foolish saying of so wise a man may be an example to us how much sorrow darkneth the judgement that made Solon himself to speak unwisely For in those things wherein care and industry is of any force among which things sorrow is one as we have said we must observe not whence the passion comes but whither it goes 'T is the office of reason to look forward not backward Wherefore he that doth any thing ought often to put the question to himself Why do I do this What do I hope What do I desire This if one ask himself who cherisheth his grief and endeavoureth not to correct it he shall see how nothing can be answered But you may object It is hard and inhumane to expell out of your heart the thought of her you lov'd so dearly and so deservedly not less for her vertues then because she was your wife Remember 't is requir'd but for a time and as in a labyrinth this way leads you to a place contrary unto it So doth a short abstinence conduce to the better concoction and digestion of the food you shall eat I would have her live in your thoughts perpetually but so that the memory of her may delight not torment you 'T is an injury to her when she is called into your minde to create her husband sorrow Let her come then when she may come in the quality she was wont to come fair kinde and cheerfull This image of her which now occurrs to your minde sorrowfull and leaving a troublesome remembrance of her is false and resembles her not I do now foresee the time when that sweetness of manners that love and reverence of you that unwearied care in the good education of her children that sincere piety toward God and whatsoever in many of that sex is wanting in some few is most praise-worthy will offer it self to your minde not only without danger but with much sense of joy when it will delight you to remember her and to set before your childrens eyes all her actions as the best Samplar for their life Only for a little while put by the thought of her which you shall afterward resume with advantage To this end as I was saying will avail these many weighty affairs which being enough to oppresse another sit lightly upon you Now is the time if ever to be immersed in publick cares and suffer no room at all in the minde to be unpossest Nor are the conferences of friends unprofitable provided they be men of courage and wisdom not such as commend themselves by the imitation of your sadnesse Conferre with the dead also and turn over Books with greater diligence now then ever and let that which was but your recreation before now become a part of your labour Books will not only give you a safe retreat from the enemies fury but arms also against the enemy For whether you contemplate with your most capacious soul the nature of things you will see how nothing is without the empire of death no not the elements themselves It is the most universal law which condemns every thing that is born to dye and it were great ignorance to think one person can be exempted from the common ruine Or whether you turn to the Morals among that fair company of vertues you shall behold Fortitude of a firm body a head lifted up a chearfull countenance but among the vices Sorrow macilent pale of a cloudy brow and down-cast looks Or whether you search the Animals you shall finde examples of men who have born the deaths of Parents Children Wives with a minde lesse mov'd then ours is at the reading of the story Now having by these Arts escaped the dangers of the first time and withall gotten strength let the soul at length come forth into the field as it were and prepare to fight But here also I think it fit to imitate wise Commanders who as much as they can sever the enemies forces that fighting with the severall parties they may more easily conquer all Mourning is a confused thing it objects unto the minde many things at once and in a heap which being joyned terrific but vanish being divided All the assaults it makes against you are either in respect of Her whom you lament or of your self the Mourner or of your children with whom and for whom you mourn Weigh these particulars severally you will finde partly that there is no cause of grief partly that the incommodity is much overbalanced by greater good I will begin with Her It is in all mens mouths which we read every where in Christian Writers but in Antiphanes too which you may more admire a heathen Poet speaking in words of this sense Lament your friends with sorrow moderate They are not lost but gone before where Fate Disposeth all And we in order must One after one be turn'd to the same dust And meet at the same Inn by several waies And in another world shall see new daies We must dwell the longer upon this place because it alone without the rest if it be rightly considered is sufficient for consolation I

unto my self I have seen Him shining with divine Majesty and by his immediate authority was converted and vowed to be his servant whom before I had persecuted And can any one yet be doubtfull Certainly never did any equall Judge reject so many witnesses men of integrity and such as had no temptation to make a lye This testimony is so farre from being gainfull to us that we must pay for it with the losse of all things for the saving whereof lyes are wont to be invented Therefore doe we incurre the hatred even of our nearest Relatives we are dispossest of our Estates we are banisht from our Countrey we are in hazard of our life every day No man at so dear a price doth buy the pleasure of deceiving another Now if our testimony be received by amost evident example it is manifest that God can restore life to a dead body And by the same Argument it is evinced that this shall be done for all the Disciples of Christs institution if that be certain which was certainly heard by many thousands that Christ hath promised it For the Resurrection of our bodies is assured by Christs testimony the veracity of Christ is witnessed by his Resurrection Neither could it stand with the equity of God to give that honour to one that spake not the truth especially when himself before the event had set it for a sign Wherefore beleeve us that Christ is risen and beleeve Christ that all shall rise to immortall blessednesse and blessed immortality who die his Disciples He shall present us to the Father who hath once obtained such grace with the Father that no request of his can ever be in vain He shall make us partakers of his glory and bring us into those places where dwels an undisturbed peace where neither diseases shall approach the body nor vices have accesse unto the minde where shall be life without fear of death and joys without mixture of sorrow Some taste of this supper have the souls already that are departed hence in the faith of Christ in most sweet tranquillity waiting for the consummation of their felicity together with the bodies He that heartily beleeves these things must needs be so far from lamenting that he will congratulate their happy condition whom he hath sent away before him to the enjoyment of our common hopes For in a true judgement they are not dead but freed now at last from their mortality This place of Paul hath carried me farther then I intended whilest I endeavour to examine every one of his words and the force of them For I am assured there can be no better remedy applied to sorrow then that which the great Physician of souls among the infinite treasures of saving wisedome hath brought down from Heaven And yet how many things have I omitted which might be drawn from the fame fountain But those considerations that we have deduced thence if they be taken to heart and received throughly will be sufficient Beleeve it excellent Sir as if you saw it the soul of your wife for many reasons most beloved begins already to enjoy the sweet fruits of her virtues and tasteth the rewards promised to sincere piety The end and consummation of so many ages when she shall be wholly restored to her self that immense accumulation of all good things to which all that can be imagined is far inferiour is not expected afar off as by us but lookt upon by her at the nearest distance What she hath in possession is so great that she wanteth nothing and yet that is more which she seeth she shall possesse Nor have you any reason to say She might have stayed longer before she went thither Time is some advantage and it is a great felicity to be quickly happy How many evils partly certain partly uncertain doth he escape who is called hence betimes How many are the examples of men that have paid dear for the lengthening of their life I might here relate the torments of diseases and the affronts of fortune never more to be feared then when she flattereth and the incommodities of old age which every man that lives long shall be sure of This one thing seemeth to me a sufficient benefit of an early death to be put out of danger of sinning any more It remains that you say I am not sorry for her sake but my own And to this I was now coming for that is wont to be said but how unjustly any one may easily understand whose ejulations have not made him deaf to the voice of reason He that flyes to this refuge manifestly shews himself an offender against the laws of friendship For they that fetcht the originall of friendship from indigence were entertained with the hisses of almost all Philosophers nor among the common people whose manner is to measure most things by profit could they make good their cause In friendship the Affection goes abroad and without self-respect seeks the good of another Applauses fill the Theater as oft as any Pilades derives upon himself the dangers of Orestes so prone is the consent of men to esteem it the office of a friend in an equall matter to prefer his friends safety before his own How much more ought the sense of our own incommodity and losse be swallowed up by the felicity of one we professe to love when we consider here is much more of good then there of evill Zopyrus is commended in the story because he cut and dismembred his own body to the end his King might obtain a great yet but one City In this case there was some comparison but in yours if in the one scale you put your wife advanced to the very gates of Eternity enjoying the society of Christ and the blessed souls free from every thing that may occasion either grief or fear in the other scale place your self destitute of those commodities which a happy matrimony prolonged for some more years might adde unto you there will be found no weight in your part of the balance the beam will not stand at all but speedily turn with the great weight on the other side as if on yours were nothing What if I acquit you from this comparison and convince you that your incommodities weighed by themselves are nothing really but only in opinion For wherein is he more unhappy who hath lost a wife then he who never had one In opinion there is some difference for the memory of the thing once possessed represents the image the image excites the desire but this is the judgement of the lower bench we may appeal Let your Reason aided by so much experience and instructed by so much reading sit in the Judgement-seat and pronounce the sentence That which is past is not and therefore can have no efficiency nothing is ours but whilest we have it afterward it pertains no more unto us then that which is farthest from us Really then He that never had and he that now hath not are in the