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	think_v	4,338	5	3.9369	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A66900	Pulpit-conceptions, popular-deceptions, or, The grand debate resumed, in the point of prayer wherein it appears that those free prayers so earnestly contended for have no advantage above the prescribed liturgie in publick administrations : being an answer to the Presbyterian papers presented to the most reverend the ls. bishops at the Savoy upon that subject.	Womock, Laurence, 1612-1685.	1662 (1662)	Wing W3347; ESTC R25192	47,855	72

God himself to whom he is dedicated as Chrysostome and Theophylact In 1 ad Tim. 2. ad haec verba Obsecro primum omnium fieri obsecrationes c. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. have it I shall take notice but of one mistake more and that is of making God a Liar If we contradict what God hath said St John tells us we make God a liar 1 Joh. 1. 10. but we doe not so when we impose upon him what he said not though this likewise be a very high indignity and abominable The Preacher shall shut up this part of our discourse and he will determine the point for us Eccles 5. 1 2. Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God Be not rash with thy mouth and let not thy heart be hasty to utter any thing before God and be more ready to hear then to give the sacrifice of fools for they consider not that they doe evil nor the distance betwixt themselves and his Majesty whom they do adore for he is in heaven and they on earth And now we hope it doth appear that as yet we have no reason to repent us of these desires Indeed if you can make it good as you pretend in your next words that to avoid a lesser evil we bring a far greater upon the Churches we shall have cause enough to repent of our desires But what is that greater evil Why even such as is like to strip these Nations of the glory in which they have excelled the rest of the world even a Learned able holy Ministry and a people sincere and serious and understanding in the matters of their Salvation But stay do all these glorious things flow immediately from your Liberty of venting your Conceptions of Prayer in the Pulpit suitable to the variety of Subjects and Occasions and are there none Learned able and holy amongst the Clergie none sincere serious and understanding amongst the Laity but such as are addicted to the Liberty you plead for You must needs if you have any modesty in you blush at such an assertion But because you boast so much of your Gifts and attribute that Glory wherein you presume your own Party doth excell the rest of the world to nothing else but your Inspirations or abilities for occasional prayers I shall introduce an adversary as well to us as you to vie with you in this kind and having committed you together shall leave it to the judgment of the Reader to pronounce sentence and award the prize First then that Person acknowledging both that there are Inspirations Sancta Sophia in the Preface §. 31. and that we are obliged to correspond unto them and reckoning you and your Confederates among the frantick Spirits of this Age which made pretended Inspirations or we may call them by your own name Extemporary Conceptions of prayers suitable to the variety of subjects and occasions the cause and ground of all our late Miseries He sets down what course is to be taken to prevent such mischiefs in these words We should saith he inform those unhappy souls how to dispose themselves so as to be out of danger of Diabolical illusions and to be in a capacity of receiving Inspirations truly Divine As likewise with what Caution and Prudence but withall what Fidelity they ought to comply with them But especially we ought to demonstrate and inculcate this fundamental verity That the general and most certain Precepts of Humility Obedience Unity and Peace must never receive any prejudice by any pretended Inspirations or Illuminations since those which are truly from God do establish and encrease all these vertues yea that the External Order Authority and Subordination established by God in his Church by which alone it becomes one Body and not a monstrous heap of unlike unproportionable members fighting and devouring one another must be the Rule by which to examine and judge to pronounce sentence for or against all manner of Inspirations Having laid down this his fundamental Rule he proceeds a little after to compare their Inspirations with yours in several §. 33 c. particulars And in the first place saith he here the only proper Disposition towards the receiving of supernatural Irradiations from God's holy Spirit is an abstraction of life a sequestration from all businesses that concern others and an attendance to God alone in the depth of the Spirit Whereas their Lights come never more frequently then when either being alone they yield to discontented unquiet passions and murmurings a-about the behaviour and actions of others or when in close Meetings and Conspiracies they vent such passions by Invectives against the Governours of the Church or State Secondly The Lights here desired and prayed for are such as do expell all images of Creatures and do calm all manner of Passions to the end that the Soul being in a vacuity may be more capable of receiving and entertaining God in the pure fund of the Spirit Whereas their Lights fill them with all tumults disquieting Images and Phantasms concerning the supposed miscarriages of all others but themselves and not onely heighten their Passions but urge them to most terrible desolating effects Thirdly The Prayer here acknowledged to be the most effectual Instrument to procure Divine Light is a pure recollected intime Prayer of the Spirit Whereas the Prayer that they glory in is onely an acquired ability and sleight to talk earnestly to God before others and oft thereby to communicate their passions and discontents to their Brethren Fourthly Here are no new Speculative Verities or Revelations of Mysteries pretended no private new-found-out interpretations of Scriptures bragg'd of Whereas among them every day produces a new Fancy which must gather new Company Fifthly Here the establish'd Order of God's Church and the Unity essential thereto is not prejudiced yea the Inspirations expected and obtained by pure internal Prayer do more firmly and unalterably fix souls under this Obedience and to this Order and Unity insomuch as whatsoever pretended Lights do endanger the dissolving of Unity or do cross Lawful Authority or shall be rejected by it they are presently suspected and extinguished Whereas those mens Lights teach them nothing so much as to contemn and oppose all external Authority and to dissipate Unity dispersing the Body of Christianity into innumerable Sects and Conventicles Sixthly Our Lights teach us to attend only to God and our own Souls and never to interess our selves in any care or imployment about others till evidently God's Inspirations force us and external Authority obligeth us thereto Whereas their Lights render them incapable of Solitude and thrust them abroad to be Reformers of others being themselves impatient of all Reformation and Contradiction Seventhly Our Lights make us to fear and avoid all Supereminence and Judicature all sensual pleasures defires of wealth Honour c. Whereas their Lights engage them violently and deeply in all these carnal and secular waies and for the attaining of these

where it is resolved That we may easily be deceived by our Enlargements because there are many winds and gales blowing from several quarters which may set the Soul in active going and doing as Popular applause high opinions of the Preacher taking-Expressions in Prayer flourishing Novelties and notions in a Sermon Satanical infusions common and ordinary Inspirations of the Holy Ghost vouchsafed to Reprobates Hebr. 6. 4 5 6. All which or any of which may so draw and delight the heart that as Orpheus 's Pipe they may make the heart dance in a duty and yet for all this it may be possible yea probable the heart may dance after the Devil's pipe And you must give other men leave to have their own experience and observation as well as you And when we see in you more Humility Self-denial Resignation of will and self-conceit and more obedience to Superiours which are under a divine command and of indispensable necessity to Salvation we shall be the more inclinable to believe your pretensions that some proficiency in the way of solid Vertue and Devotion is to be made by the course you plead for But it is not the affirmations of all the men in the world speaking in their own behalf and in favour of their own conceits that can so far unman us as to make us interpret those practices to be the effects of the Holy Spirit which contradict the Principles of Christianity extinguishing both Charity and Obedience But admit the effects you boast of were really the gifts of God and truly tended to the advancement of his pure Love in you would this warrant you to contemn or omit the established Liturgie of the Church All the Masters of Devotion that I have met withall do resolve otherwise To this purpose consider what Augustin Baker Sanct. Soph. ubi suprà cap. 2. saith in his Treatise of Vocal Prayer As for that Vocal Prayer saith he either in Publick or Private which is by the lawes of the Church of obligation no manner of pretences of finding more profit by internal exercises ought to be esteemed a sufficient ground for any to neglect or disparage it For though some Souls of the best disposition might perhaps more advance themselves towards perfection by internal exercises alone yet since generally even in Religion Souls are so tepid and negligent that if they were left to their own voluntary devotions they would scarce ever exercise either Vocal or Mental Prayer therefore inasmuch as a manifest distinction cannot be made between the Particular dispositions of Persons it was requisite and necessary that all should be obliged to a Publick external performance of divine Service praising God with the tongues also which were for that end given us that so an Order and decorum might be observed in God's Church to the end it might imitate the imployment of Angels and glorified Saints in a solemn united joyning of hearts and tongues to glorify God This was necessary also for the edification and invitation of those who are not obliged to the Office who perhaps would never think of God were they not incouraged thereto by seeing good Souls spend the greatest part of their time in such solemn and allmost hourly praying to and praising God Thus he And this perhaps you may be induced to subscribe to if we can get you in a good mood as you now seem to be for you tell us in your next words that some Formes have their laudable use to cure the errour and vice that lyeth on the other extream It seems then there is a Mediocrity and now you are resolved to hit it In good time for hitherto you have done more then insinuate That Formes are not a worship of God in Spirit and truth not effectuall and fervent but a dead Religion that ordinarily they hurt the heart that they are a dose of Opium that doth extinguish understanding-serious-godliness and the life of Religion What could you have said more to load them with contempt yet now you confess some Forms are not only lawful but laudable This looks like Bellarmine's Tutissimum that gave a defeat to his whole designe He writes five Books against Justification by Faith and then concludes the Controversie with a Confutation of all that he had written of it Propter incertitudinem propriae justitiae periculum inanis gloriae Tutissimum est fiduciam totam in sola Dei misericordia benignitate reponere So our Deformalists after a miserable stuctuation are glad to come to an Anchor to their Tutissimum and to take fanctuary from an impendent storm by confessing that some Forms are Lawful Lawfull but for what for nothing but to make a medicine to kill the itch that of pride curiosity and novelty the errour and vice that lyeth on the other extream 'T is well Forms are good for something in your opinion But let a wise and an humble man use them and they will serve very well to entertain and exercise a sound Faith and a sincere Love and a substantial Devotion But by this we see these men can speak truth if they list especially when their reputation and interest is concerned in it witness that Position of Mr Baxter's * In his Unsavoury Volume against Mr. Crandon or his Nosegay presented to Mr. Joseph Caryll page 83. ante finem which if his Party had the conscience to practise it would put an end to our Divisions and settle us in a happy state of Uniformitie for thus he saith Let me be bold to tell my opinion to my Brethren of the Ministry that though I deny them to have either credit or Authority against the known Word of God yet so great is their credit and Authority even as Teachers Guides of the Church in Causes agreeable to the Word And in Causes to the people doubtful and unknown and in Causes left by the Word to their determination the Word determining them but generally that I think the ignorance of this truth hath been the main cause of our sad Confusions and Schisms in England and that the Ministers have been guilty of it partly by an over-modest concealing An important truth falls from the pen of Mr. Baxter if he could say and hold their Authority and partly by an indiscreet opposition to the Papists errour of the Authority of the Church and I think that till we have better taught even our Godly people what credit and obedience is due to their Teachers and Spiritual Guides the Churches of England shall never have peace or any good or establisht Order I say again we are broken for want of the knowledg of this truth and till this be known we shall never be well bound up and healed This is Mr Baxter's sober Concession and he thought it so signal a verity when he wrote it that he set a hand in the margent to remark it and point it out to every Reader as most worthy his observation Let him preach the same Doctrine still and