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	true_a	2,848	5	3.8360	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A04168	The humiliation of the Sonne of God by his becomming the Son of man, by taking the forme of a servant, and by his sufferings under Pontius Pilat, &c. Or The eighth book of commentaries vpon the Apostles Creed: continued by Thomas Jackson Dr. in Divinitie, chaplaine to his Majestie in ordinarie, and president of Corpus Christi Colledge in Oxford. Divided into foure sections.; Commentaries upon the Apostles Creed. Book 8	Jackson, Thomas, 1579-1640.	1635 (1635)	STC 14309; ESTC S107480	214,666	423

busie himselfe about small matters It must be a thing either visible or invisible and if it bee comprehended under either part of this division why are wee taught to beleeve that God the Father Almighty is the Maker not onely of heaven and earth but of all things visible and invisible in them If all things were made by him what could be left for Satan to work or make The apparance of this difficulty moved that acute and learned Father S. Austin sometime to say that sinne was nothing and oftentimes to allot it a cause deficient onely denying it any true positive efficient And many good Writers since his time in our dayes especially overswaid with this Fathers bare authority will have sinnes of what kinde soever to be privations onely no positive entities But they consider not that the selfe same difficulties besides other greater more inevitable inconveniences will presse them no lesse who make sinne to bee a meere privation or to have a cause deficient onely than they doe others who acknowledge it to have a positive efficient cause and a being more then meerly privation 6. What then bee the speciall inconveniencies wherewith their opinions are charged which make sinne either nothing or but a meere privation First wee account it a folly in man a folly incident to no man but an Heautontimorymenon to bee angry or chasing hot for nothing Hence seeing the Almighty Judge doth never punish either man or Devill but for sinne we shall cast a foule aspersion on his wisdome and Justice by maintaining sinne to bee nothing But fewer in our times there be though some I have heard out of the Pulpit which under pretence of St. Augustins authority make sinne to bee meere nothing But many there bee who hold it to be a meere privation which is a meane betweene meere nothing and a positive entitie Yet admitting not granting the nature of sinne to consist formally in privation meere privations for the most part have causes truely efficient fewer causes merely deficient if there can bee any causality in deficiencie Blindnesse deafenesse dumbnesse are privations and yet more men lose the sense of hearing sight or feeling in some particular members by violent blowes or by oppression of raging humours than by meere defect or decaying of spirits And where one man drops into his grave for meere age as ripe apples doe from the trees they grow on to the ground without blasts of winde or shaking a thousand die a violent or untimely death by true and positive efficient causes either externall or internall 7. That which either hath deceived or emboldned many Divines to allot sinne a being onely privative is a Philosophicall or metaphysicall Maxime most true in it selfe or in its proper sphere but most impertinently applied to the point now in question The Maxime is Omne ens quà ens est bonum Every entity in that it hath a being is good Most true if wee speake of transcendentall goodnesse or bonum entis for every thing which hath a true being is accompanied with a goodnesse entitative But the question amongst Divines is or should be about moral goodnesse or that goodnesse which is opposed to malum culpae that evill which wee call sinne Now if every positive entitie or nature were necessarily good according to this notion of goodnesse every intelligent rationall creature should be as impeccable as his Creator and wee should truely sinne if to speake untruly bee a sinne when wee say the Devill is a knave or any man dishonest For if every nature or entity as such were morally good it were impossible any nature or positive entity should bee evill qualified should be laden with sinne that is with that evill which is opposed to goodnesse moral or to holinesse whether this evill be a meere privation or positive entitie For in as much as the sight or visive facultie is the property of the eye or in as much as this proposition is true Oculus quà oculus videt this conclusion is most necessary when the eye hath lost the sight or visive facultie it is no more an eye unlesse in such an equivocall sense as wee say a picture hath eyes though not so properly If a man cannot see as we say stime but with one eye we account it no solecisme to say hee hath lost the other The case in the former instances is more cleare If Satan or man were morally good because they have a positive entity or nature neither of them could possibly be morally evill neither of them sinfull creatures albeit wee should grant sinne to bee as meere a privation as blindnesse is 8. It is a maxime in true Logick that is in the faculty or science of reasoning absolutely true and therefore true in Divinity also for truth is but one and it is her property not to contradict her selfe though examined in severall subjects Quicquid convenit subjecto quà tale non potest abesse sine subjecti interitu No naturall property can cease to bee or perish but together with the subject which supports it Whence if that Angel which is now the Devill had been truely good quà Angelus or if goodnesse moral had belonged unto him as he was a positive entitie or rationall creature hee had ceased to be either a rationall creature or any thing else when hee lost his goodnesse 9. Of sinnes of omission it is most true that they finde place in our nature rather by deficiency than efficiency and yet even this deficiencie for the most part is occasioned by some formall positive act or habit For this cause it is questioned among Schoolemen Whether there is or can bee any sinne of meere omission that is not occasioned by the commission of some other sinfull acts precedent or linked with some such act present To deny all sinnes of meere emission in nature already corrupted would bee more probable than in the first sinne whether of man or Angel Neither of them could possibly have committed sinne or done that which they ought not to have done without some precedent omission of that which they ought to have done But of this elswhere more at large and somewhat of it briefly in the next Chapter 10. Sure I am that the work which Satan wrought in our first Parents and in our nature had a cause truely efficient hath a being more than meerely privative For it was a work so really great and so cunningly contrived that the strength and wisdome of the Sonne of God was required as being onely all-sufficient to dissolve or destroy it and is it possible that any so great a work could be wrought by deficiencie or a defective worker Not Satan onely but his instruments are as positive as industrious efficients as effectuall workers of iniquity as the best man which ever lived the man CHRIST JESUS onely excepted was or is of righteousnesse But it is true againe that neither Satan nor his instruments can produce or make any substances or subjects these

before the ordinary time of expiration by the ordinary course of nature in such as die that unnaturall and accursed death which he sought after But the Psalmist had thus prophecied and prayed against him Psalme 109.17 As he loved cursing so let it come unto him as hee delighted not in blessing so let it bee farre from him As hee clothed himself with cursing like as with his garment so let it come into his bowels like water and like oile into his bones Yet do we not reade nor have we any occasion to suspect that Iudas being a Companion of the blessed Apostles till his death and a continuall follower of Christ the blessed whilst hee lived on earth was accustomed to sweare curse or blaspheme His demeanor amongst them doubtlesse was civill not prophane How then were the Psalmists words punctually verified of him He loved cursing he delighted not in blessing The meaning is as in many other places of the Psalmists that however hee did not openly sweare curse or blaspheme or bewray his hate to goodnesse yet in his heart hee did abhorre the wayes which tend to peace and happinesse and set himself not immediatly or directly to cursednesse How then is he said to have loved cursing Because through avarice and stiffe adherence to sinister privat ends which hee had secretly proposed unto himself hee was diverted from the wayes of peace and happinesse which is the end that all men in the generall seek and wish for unto the crooked paths which winde to cursednesse and malediction As his addiction to these paths was secret and hid so was the disease whereof he died It gathered secretly though suddenly within his body It soaked like oile into his bones and into his bowells like water And as a good Author whose words and name I now remember not hath conjectured he died of a dropsie more acute and sudden then that disease naturally is Yet however it bred within him by causes naturall or supernaturall it might be the true and naturall cause of his bursting in the middle and of the gushing out of his bowels Of his sudden disease and destruction other Psalmists had likewise prophecied Now that these and the like Propheticall imprecations might be exactly and remarkably fulfilled in him the righteous Lord would not suffer him to die meerely of strangling or suffocation but smote him with these secret and sudden diseases of what kind soever they were CHAP. XXIX Of the Harmony betwixt the Evangelists narrations or historie from the time our Saviour was sentenced to death untill his expiration upon the Crosse and the Mosaicall prefigurations or Prophecies concerning his death and sufferings 1 THere is no knowledge comparable to the knowledge of CHRIST nor is there any other part of this knowledge more usefull then the contemplation of his Crosse A Theame of which no private Christian can meditate too often or too much so he follow the directions of the learned for his practice Of this argument a great many Interpreters have writ very much and a good many very well both for the doctrinall part and for the usefull which must bee grounded upon the doctrinall The expressions of my meditations upon this point or which is all one the use or application of this grand Article of belief for whom he died or what is to bee done by them who intend to be true partakers of this common salvation purchased by his Crosse These and the like I must deferre untill I have set downe as God shall enable me the doctrinall points of his humiliation whereof the Crosse is the period and his exaltation which was accomplisht by his ascension That which must confirme and cherish our belief as well of his crosse as of his resurrection and ascension is the cleare harmony betweene the Evangelicall histories themselves and the predictions or prefigurations of what they jointly or severally relate recorded in the books of Moses and the Prophets or the historicall volumes of the old Testament 2. Hee bearing his Crosse saith S. Iohn went forth unto a place called in the Hebrew Golgotha Chap. 19.17 When they had mocked him saith S. Mark they took off the purple from him and put his owne clothes on him and led him out to crucifie him and they compell one Simon a Cyrenian who passed by comming out of the Countrey the father of Alexander and Rufus to beare his Crosse Chap. 15.20 Betwixt these two relations of S. Iohn and S. Mark there is some variation no contradiction no such appearance of contradiction as might bee pickt betweene S. Matthew and the other Evangelists about his riding unto Jerusalem upon the Asse and the Colt as S. Matthew saith or as the others expresse upon the Colt onely But that appearance of contradiction as hath been set downe before will easily vanish to him that peruseth the Prophet Zachariah the Evangelists with an observant and cleare eye For he might ride part of the way upon the one and part upon the other In like manner seeing his progresse from the Common hall unto Golgotha was divisible as the locall distance between them was our Saviour himself might beare his Crosse some part of the way or for a while and Simon the Cyrenian perhaps a greater part of the way or for a longer time Againe seeing the Crosse it selfe was not onely divisible but actually divided our Saviour might beare one part of it all the way and Simon another for the most part of the way betweene the Praetorium and Golgotha Nor is it probable that either of them should for any time or for any portion of the way beare both the whole Crosse and the Chapiter whereon the title of his accusation was engrost by Pilar Iesus of Nazareth King of the Iews That our Saviour did beare his Crosse out of the Praetorium or place of Judicature is cleare from the forecited place of S. Iohn And it is more then probable that he did beare it all along the City till he came to the publique gate where the Souldiers meeting with Simon comming out of the Countrey compell him to goe back againe with them and beare the Crosse to Golgotha And as they came out saith S. Matthew or rather as they were comming forth not from the Praetorium or Common-hall but from the gates of the City they found a man of Cyrene him they compeld to beare his Crosse It is cleare againe frome S. Luke 23.26 that Simon did beare the Crosse JESUS going before him Whether our Saviour did faint under it at the gate through feeblenesse of body or by long watching I will not dispute much lesse determine though some good Writers give this reason why Simon was compeld to beare it being first laid upon our Saviour But whether for this reason or some other they took it from our Saviours shoulders and laid it upon Simons there was a mysterie in it and at least an Emblematicall expression of what our Saviour before had said If any man