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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	good_a	great_a	think_v	4,338	5	3.9369	3	true

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A45642	Immorality and pride, the great causes of atheism a sermon preach'd at the cathedral-church of St. Paul, January the 8th 1697/8 : the first of the lecture for that year, founded by the Honourable Robert Boyle, Esq. / by John Harris ...	Harris, John, 1667?-1719.	1698 (1698)	Wing H850; ESTC R15170	14,121	30

Mr. HARRIS's First Sermon AT Mr. BOYLE's Lecture 1698. Immorality and Pride The Great Causes of ATHEISM A SERMON Preach'd at the CATHEDRAL-CHURCH of St. Paul January the 3 d. 1697 8. BEING The First of the LECTURE for that Year Founded by the Honourable Robert Boyle Esq By JOHN HARRIS M. A. and Fellow of the ROYAL-SOCIETY LONDON Printed by J. L. for Richard Wilkin at the King 's Head in St. Paul's Church-Yard 1698. TO THE Most Reverend Father in God THOMAS Lord Archbishop of Canterbury Sir HENRY ASHURST Baronet Sir JOHN ROTHERAM Serjeant at Law JOHN EVELYN Senior Esquire Trustees appointed by the Will of the Honorable ROBERT BOYLE Esquire Most Reverend and Honoured AS I had the Honour to Preach this Sermon by your Kind and Generous Appointment so I now Publish it in Obedience to your Commands and humbly offer it as also my ensuing Discourses to your Candid Patronage and Acceptance I have in pursuance of Your Grace's direction studied to be as Plain and Intelligible as possibly I could and shall by the Divine Assistance prosecute my whole Design after the same manner which Method of Treating this Subject appears very Suitable to the Pious and Excellent Design of Our Noble and Honourable Founder I humbly desire your Prayers to Almighty God that He will vouchsafe to render my weak Endeavours effectual to shew the Ground●essness and Inconclusiveness of those Objections which Atheistical Men usually bring ●gainst the great and Important Truths of ●eligion which is the End they are sincerely ●irected to by Most Reverend and Honoured Your most obliged humble Servant HARRIS PSALM X. 4. The Wicked through the Pride of his Countenance will not seek after God Neither is God in all his Thoughts IN this Psalm is Contained a very lively Description of the Insolence of Atheistical and Wicked Men when once they grow Powerful and Numerous for then as we read at the Third Verse they will proceed so far as openly to boast of and glory in their Impiety They will boldly defie and contemn the great God of Heaven and Earth v. 13. They will deny his Providence v. 11. and despise his Vengeance And as we are told in these words of my Text They will grow so Proud and high as to scorn to pay him any Honour or Worship to Pray to him or Call upon him but will endeavour to banish the very Thoughts of his Being out of their Minds The Wicked through the Pride of his c. In which words we have an Account more particularly by what Methods and Steps Men advance to such an Exorbitant height of Wickedness as to set up for Atheism and to deny the Existence of a God for there are in them these Three Particulars which I shall consider in their Order I. Here is the general Character or Qualifications of the Person the Psalmist speaks of which is That he is a Wicked Man The Wicked through the Pride c. II. The particular kind of Wickedness or the Origin from whence the Spirit of Atheism and Irreligion doth chiefly proceed And That is Pride The Wicked through the Pride of his Countenance c. And III. Here is the great Charge that is brought against this Wicked and Proud Man viz. Wilful Atheism and Infidelity He will not seek after God Neither is God in all his Thoughts Or as it is in the Margin of our Bibles with good Warrant from the Hebr. All his Thoughts are there is no God In discoursing on the two First of these Heads I shall endeavour to shew that Immorality and Pride are the great Causes of the Growth of Atheism amongst us And on the Third I shall consider the Objections that Atheistical Men usually bring against the being of a Deity and shew how very weak and invalid they are And first I think it very Necessary to say something of the Causes of Infidelity and Atheism and to shew how it comes to pass that Men can possibly arrive to so great a height of Impiety This my Text naturally leads me to before I can come to the great Subject I design to Discourse upon and I hope it may be of very good use to discover the Grounds of this heinous Sin and the Methods and Steps by which Men advance to it that so those who are not yet hardened in it nor quite given up to a Reprobate Mind may by the Blessing of God take heed and avoid being engaged in such Courses as do naturally lead into it I. Therefore let us consider the general Character or Qualifications of the Person here spoken of in my Text And that is that he is a Wicked Man The wicked through the Pride c. And this is every where the Language of the Sacred Scripture when it speaks of Atheistical Men. David tells us Psal. 14. 1. and 51. 1 that 't is the Fool i. e. the Wicked Man for so the word Nabal often signifies and is so here to be understood 'T is he that hath said in his heart there is no God 'T is such an one as is a Fool by his own fault one stupified and dull'd by Vice and Lust as he sufficiently explains it afterwards one that is corrupt and become filthy and that hath done abominable works So the Apostle St. Paul supposes that those Men will have in them an evil heart of unbelief who do depart from the living God and live without him in the world And indeed it is very Natural to conclude That those which are once debauched in their Practices may easily grow so in their Principles For when once 't is a Man's Interest that there should be no God he will readily enough disbelieve his Existence We always give our assent very precipitantly to what we wish for and would have to be true A Man oppressed with a Load of Guilt and conscious to himself that he is daily obnoxious to the Divine Vengeance will be often very uneasie restless and dissatisfied with himself and his Mind must be filled with Dismal and Ill-boding Thoughts He is unwilling to leave his Sins and to forego the present Advantage of Sensual Pleasure and yet he cannot but be fearful too of the Punishments of a Future State and vehemently disturbed now and then about the account that he must one day give of his Actions Now 't is very Natural for a Man under such Circumstances to catch at any thing that doth but seem to offer him a little Ease and Quiet and that can help him to shake off his melancholy Apprehension of impending Punishment and Misery Some therefore bear down all Thought and Consideration of their Condition in an uninterrupted enjoyment of Sensual Delights and quite stupifie and drown their Conscience and Reason in continual Excesses and Debauchery and thus very many commence Atheists out of downright Sottishness and Stupidity and come at last to believe nothing of the Truths of Religion because they never think any thing about it nor understand any thing of it Others

Notions and finding by this means quiet and ease in the Practice of their Sins they at last degenerate so far as firmly to believe the Truth of what they perhaps at first advanced and talk'd only from a Spirit of Contradiction and become so stupid and blind as like great Liars to believe their own Figments and Inventions To such any Extravagant and Inconsistent Hypothesis so it do but clash with Sacred Scripture shall be no less than a real Demonstration a Bold and daring Falsity shall pass for undoubted Truth and a Prophane Jest or a Scurrilous Reflection on the Character or Person of one in Holy Orders shall be a sufficient Refutation of the plainest Demonstration he can bring against their Principles and Practices For it is most certain that though a Proud Man always think himself in the right and arrogate to himself an Exemption from the common Frailties and Errours of Mankind yet there is no body so frequently deceived and mistaken as he for he doth so over-estimate all his Faculties and Endowments and is so much enamoured of and Trusts so much to his own Quickness and Penetration that he usually Imagines his Great Genius able to Master any thing without the servile fatigue of Pains and Study and therefore he will never give himself Time seriously to examine into things he scorns and hates the Drudgery of deeply revolving and comparing the Idaeas of things in his Mind but rashly proceeds to Judgment and Determination on a very Transient and Superficial View And there will he stick be the Resolution he is come to never so absurd and Unaccountable for he is as much above confessing an Errour in Judgment as he is of Repenting of a Fault in Practice And indeed as the absurd and ridiculous Paradoxes which Atheistical Writers maintain shew their shallow insight into things and their Precipitancy in forming a Determination about them so the Pride and Haughtiness with which they deliver them abundantly demonstrates the True Spirit of such Authors and the Real Ground both of their Embracing and Maintaining their Opinions Plato describes the Atheists of his Age to be a Proud Insolent and Haughty sort of Men the Ground of whose Opinion was he saith 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in reality a very mischievous Ignorance though to the conceited Venders and Embracers of it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It appeared to be the greatest Wisdom and the Wisest of all Opinions Lactantius tells us in his Discourse De Ira Dei p. 729. Oxon. that the true Reason why Diagoras Melius and Theodorus two of the Ancient Atheists denied a Deity was That they might gain the Glory of being the Authors of some new Opinion contradictory to the common Notions of Mankind And of the former of these Diagoras Sextus Empiricus acquaints us That because a certain perjured Person who had wrong'd him lived unpunished by the Gods he was so enraged at it that he undertook to maintain there were no Gods at all Lib. Adr. Mathem Edit Genev. 1621. The like Pride and Arrogance Lactantius tells us he found in the two great Writers that appeared against Christianity in his time in Bithynia The former of these who 't is probable was the famous Porphyry called himself Antistes Philosophiae the Chief or Prince of Philosophers and saith Lactantius Nescio utrum Superbius an Importunius pretended to correct the blind Errors of Mankind and to guide Men into the True Way He could not bear that Unskilful and Innocent Persons should be enslaved by the Cheats of and become a Prey to Crafty and Designing Men. Lib. de Justit p. 420 421. Oxon. With the like Assurance do the Modern Writers of this kind express themselves And though they have in reality very little or nothing New but only the Arguments of the Ancients a little varied and embelished as I shall have occasion to observe hereafter more at large yet they all set up for new Lights and mighty Discoverers of the Secrets of Nature and Philosophy and all of the assume the Glory of first leading Men into the way of Truth and delivering them out of the dark mazes of Vulgar Errors This was the pretence of Vanini who was burnt for Atheism at Tholouse A. D. 1619. whose Mind he says grew more and more strong healthful and robust as he exercised it in searching out the Secrets of that Supreme Philosophy which is wholly unknown to the common and ordinary Rank of Philosophers And this he saith will soon be discovered by the perusal of his Physico-Magicum which was now to see the Light Vid. Vanini Amphitheatr in Epist. Dedicat. After the same manner do Machiavel Spinoza Hobbs Blount and all the late Atheistical Writers deliver themselves Instances of which I think I need not stay to give since 't is conspicuous through the whole course of their Writings and no doubt taken notice of by every Reader only of the first of these viz. Machiavel I cannot but take notice that Vanini himself saith that 't was his Pride and Covetousness that made him deny the Truth of the Miracles recorded in Sacred Scripture Amphitheatr p. 51. Edit Lugduni 1615. And as the Writings so the Discourses of these Gentlemen do equally discover this Pride and Vanity for they do usually deliver themselves with such a scornful and contemptuous Air when they either endeavour to establish their own or to overthrow their Adversaries Arguments as sufficiently shews the Propriety and Truth of the Psalmist's Observation here that 't is through the pride of his countenance that the wicked will not seek after God The LXXII indeed render it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Through the abundance of his wrath and therein they are followed by the vulgar Latin As if the Wicked were angry against God and enraged at his Presidency over Humane Affairs as if they fretted under and quarrelled at the Severity of his Laws and Government and scorned to apply themselves to him by Prayer and to submit to him by Obedience But though this may be a good sence of the words and though I doubt not a stubborn Frowardness and Perverseness of our Wills against the Will of God may be a frequent cause and ground of Infidelity yet our English Translation appears to me to be much better warranted from the Hebrew for there it is properly through the Elevation of his Nose or Face Which truly is very emphatical and expresses such a proud and scornful gesture of Face as is the natural Indication of the Internal Haughtiness of a Man's Mind or as the Targum on this place render it of the arrogance of his Spirit Such a Turn and Air of Countenance as argues a proud contempt of all the rest of Mankind who trot on in the common road believe and worship a God and poorly submit to be governed by his Laws and Precepts And thus having dispatched my Two first Particulars and shewed That Wickedness and Pride are two great Causes of Infidelity and Atheism