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	justification_n	work_n	9,756	5	6.9844	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A56659	Falsehood unmaskt in answer to a book called Truth unveil'd, which vainly pretends to justify the charge of Mr. Standish against some persons in the Church of England / by a dutiful son of that church.	Patrick, Simon, 1626-1707.	1676 (1676)	Wing P796; ESTC R11930	17,061	28

we are one Body so were indeed all One the best Christians are nor which Principles are apt to make the best Let us all sincerely endeavour to excell in Vertue and be glad that any can outstrip us though they be not in all things of our mind which will be far better than contending about precedency or about any thing else whatsoever Here now we might fairly part but that I believe you will be apt to think either I have nothing to say or dare say nothing of that about which you make so many sad complaints if I should wholly pass by the points of justification by Faith and the imputed Righteousness of Christ With the same provision therefore that you will not accuse me for medling with that which did not concern me I will add a few words about those matters And I assure you I abhorr the man as much as you can do who shall teach me otherwise than our Church doth Artic. XI that we are accounted righteous before God only for the merits of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by Faith and not for our own Works or Deservings And therefore it is a most wholesome Doctrine and full af Comfort that we are justified by Faith only But I verily think there are none that teach otherwise but you have wholly mistaken those Persons whose Writings have given you the trouble of making this Book For though we are justified by Faith only yet you acknowledge p. 37. that all Christian Vertues are connate with that Faith Which grants all that Mr. Bull contends for whose position is that the Faith which justifies contains in it a sincere purpose of a new life O but none of those vertues you add pass into the cause of justification No nor is Faith it self any cause of it not so much as an instrumental cause and therefore you ought not to have quarrelled with Mr. Bull about this matter who detests any such thoughts as you impose on him that our good Works are required casually and antecedently to our justification p. 39. No such absurd Notion is to be found I will stand to it in his Book nor lyes I am sure in his Head He is not so weak so unstudied a Divine as to make any thing that we can do the cause of that which God alone can bestow upon us He doth not so much as require good Works antecedently to our entrance into the state or Justification but only the purpose of them which you your self acknowledge to be included together with all Christian Vertues in that Faith which justifies And indeed Bishop Davenant whom you deservedly applaud affirms as he shows that those internal good Works are necessary to our justification though not as efficient or meritorious causes yet as concurring or previous conditions There is but one clause which can bring you off and excuse you in this business which you wisely insert when you speak of Mr. Bulls Doctrine if at least say you I can understand him I know not what you can do but I am sure you do not understand him And therefore ought to have suspected also that you did not rightly understand Bishop Nicholson's Books rather than have said so confidently as you do doubtless Mr. Bull imposes very far upon the Bishop when he saith the Bishop read approved commended his Book and wish'd him to publish it This is very uncivil and hardly to be reconciled with Christian Charity which teaches us to think no evil to believe all things and to hope all things when the contrary doth not evidently appear It would have been but bare modesty in you to have thought you did not apprehend the meaning of a Writer in matters of controversie about Faith rather than have accused a Divine of no mean credit I assure you in his Countrey of falsifying so impudently in a matter of Fact which he avows to the world and to the Bishop himself to whom he dedicates his Work to be a most real Truth When you consider it you will acknowledge I hope between God and your own Soul this was too rash and peremptory to speak gently and not becoming one of the best sort of Christians Which if you and I too will both of us study to be I think verily it is best for us not to trouble our selves with nice disquisitions about these matters wherein we find Divines cannot well agree about the way I mean of Faith's justifying us It may suffice us I should think to know what our Liturgy teaches us plainly in both the Absolutions that God pardoneth and absolveth all them that truely repent and unfeignedly believe his Holy Gospel as it is in the Absolution pronounced every day having promised forgiveness of sins to all them that with hearty repentance and true Faith turn to him as it is in that at the Holy Communion Let us receive this glad tidings upon our bended knees and with most joyful hearts thankfully devoted to his service and leave those that list to dispute about the particular act of Faith that justifies and how it is instrumental as they speak in the business of Justification and whether there be such a thing as a passive Instrument and what Repentance hath to do in this matter No body shall ever perswade me but we shall have the benefit of the Absolution though we be not able to resolve these questions or though we never think of them If we truely repent and unfeignedly believe Christs Holy Gospel or which is the same With hearty Repentance and true Faith turn to him And in like manner to speak a word or two in the other point we are sufficiently instructed in our Litanie as I understand it to expect to be delivered from our sins I suppose and the punishment due to them by the whole Humiliation and exaltation of our Lord Jesus Christ when it teaches us to pray By the mystery of thy Holy Incarnation by thy Holy Nativity and Circumcision by thy Baptisme Fasting and Temptation by thine Agony and Bloudy sweat by thy Cross and Passion by thy precious Death and Burial by thy Glorious Resurrection and Ascension and by the coming of the Holy Ghost Good Lord deliver us It is plain that whosoever minds what he prays trusts to be delivered by Christ alone who impetrated this Mercy for us and bestows it on us by his Incarnation Nativity Circumcision and all the rest now mentioned But what hand each of these hath distinct from the other in procuring our deliverance and how each of them merits for us and makes us to be accounted righteous before God and wherein the merit of his life differs from that of his Death and Passion and is applied to us by his Resurrection Ascension and coming of the Holy Ghost we need not I hope very solicitously enquire For Justification is not a Blessing that belongs only to Scholars and subtil Wits but to the plainest Countreyman of us all who pray and hope to be delivered by all that

presumptions of some one man delighting commonly to oppose and thwart the stream of antiquity but according to the sense and meaning of those times that drew water nearer unto the Well-head that is to the Apostles and their successors immediately Upon which score it is certain that the Doctrine of this Church cannot be Calvinian For the first and purest ages by which it is guided you your self are sensible was not so only you think it sufficient to smile at those who pretend their Authority and say It is little less than ridiculous to talk of the Fathers before St. Austin's time in reference to those questions p. 25. Why so I beseech you Because they lived say you before the Controversie was started and so did not nor could intend to speak appositely to the points of Original sin the power of Grace c By which reason we must not appeal to them in the points about Popery for then the pretences of St. Peter were not on foot c. and then they could not intend to speak appositely to such matters I should think those great Lights of the Church ought not to be thus slighted in a matter of such moment And an indifferent person would for your reason conclude the quite contiany that they are the more to be heeded because they are the more likely to have delivered purely their sense without any bias when they were not engaged among themselves in the heats of controversy which too oft pervert the understanding And those Doctrines which subvert Mr. Calvins Systeme were so certainly believed by them that they made no controversy of them but with one consent rejected the Doctrine of Fate which was then no less rife among the Pagans against whom they were careful no doubt to write appositely than the absolute irrespective Decrees are now among Christians But besides this I am also certain that the Sons and Fathers of the Church of England have opposed this Doctrine long before Mr. Hoord appeared who you say was the first that ventured to give our Brittish world new notions of Gods love to Mankind This is so palpable an untruth that Bishop Hoopers Works shew these notions which you call New are as Old as the Reformation And a Sermon Preached at St. Pauls Cross PLACE = marg See Mr. Bull. on the 27 of October as the Title Page informs me Anno Reginae Elizabethae 26. by Samuel Harsnet is such an illustrious testimony against you that there cannot be a greater He was then but Fellow of Pembroke-Hall in Cambridge but afterward promoted to be one of the Fathers of the Church in King James his time and at last advanced to be one of our Primates for he dyed Arch-Bishop of York I supose Sir a Person of your Reading who undertakes to trace the crooked muddy stream as you call it to its first weak ebullitions cannot be ignorant of the strong efforts to use your own word made by this Preacher Who expressly makes the Doctrine which Mr. Hoord long after opposed a daring enemy risen up against our Israel For he expresly calls it a Goliah which was grown huge and monstrous reviling not the Host of the living God but the Lord of Hosts And mentioning those words of St. Paul God would have all men to be saved tells that numerous Auditory the Genevian conceit hath dealt with this Gracious bounty of God and this blessed saying God would have all men to be saved as Hanun did with the Ambassadors of David He cut off their Garments to the Hips and this hath curtail'd the Grace of God to the stumps For it saith it must not be meant that God would have every living soul to come to Heaven but one or two perhaps out of every order and occupation But the Spirit of St. Peter a great deal wiser than that of Geneva saith plainly God would not have any one perish c. I trust we shall have Grace to believe him since himself can better tell what himself would have than the men of Geneva can What think you now after this downright Declaration which I have transcribed a small scrap of out of that Sermon on 33 Ezek. 11. was Mr. Hoord the first man that ventured to teach Gods love to Mankind in a way quite opposite to that of the Calvinians Is not here a man that boldly tells the British world in the greatest Assembly it had that your beloved Doctrine is a stranger nay an enemy to our Church strutting indeed about at that time and bearing it self high as you speak of Dr. Heylins Arminianisme so that Men trembled and shak'd at it but by him resolutely endeavoured to be cast down as a forreign conceit which ought not to be admitted here We know very well how it came to spread and grow so huge and monstrous but it was then no more the sense of the Church of England than Arianisme was the sense of the Church Catholique when all places were over-run with it There were still more than one who had the same resolution with Athanasius to bear witness against it as I could show out of good Authors And I can see no cause why Bishop Mountague whom as becomes a true course Calvinian you call bare Mountague and therefore the rest by the way need not take it ill they are no better treated should be quite struck out of the number of those from whom we may learn the notions of our Church in his dayes For I can find no State-Politicks in his Book which you pretend for his rejection but as he assures us the proper true and antient tenents of the Church of England such as be without any doubt or question legitimate and genuine such as she will both acknowledge and maintain for her own So he avows in his Epistle Dedicatory to His late Majesty before his Apello Caesarem And there is no reason to think him partial in this case since Dr. Francis White then Dean of Carlisle no mean Champion sure of our Church testified as much after he had been authorized by King James to read that Book over duely and give his judgement of it which is this as you may see in his Approbation or License of it for the Press 1624. that having diligently perused it he found nothing therein but what is agreeable to the Publique Faith Doctrine and Discipline established in the Church of England Now mark what this Writer saith to those that informed against him You would make the world believe as you Sir indeavour also to do That the Church of England Calvinizes shew me good warrant for it and I yield I may rather say that the Church of England hath opposed this Doctrine because that many of the Learned your selves will not deny in that Church and most conformable unto the Discipline and Doctrine of the Church have mainly opposed it You may find this lively testimony against you in the First Part the Seventh Chapter towards the conclusion of which he