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	necessary_a	work_n	3,482	5	6.7895	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A45396	Hagieā theoū krisis Iudgment worthy of God, or, An assertion of the existence and duration of hell torments, in two occasional letters, written several years since / by ... Henry Hammond ; to which is added an accordance of St. Paul with St. James, in the great point of faith and works by the same author.	Hammond, Henry, 1605-1660.	1665 (1665)	Wing H515; ESTC R15162	47,364	178

certainly is the truth then first I must admonish him that his fiducial assent by which he defines faith must not signify a believing with reliance that he is one of them that shall be partakers of what is promised which they are wont to call special faith or particular application for that must either suppose them to have performed the condition and so good works in them yea and faith must be before faith or else it is the believing confidently of a lye it being absolutely false that the thing promised belongs to any that hath not performed the condition But his fiducial assent if it be a tolerable definition of faith must be answerable to the promises only this a believing and relying conditional that he shall be partaker of what is promised that is a believing and depending on it that God will not fail him if he fail not God that God will give him heaven if he perform sincere obedience and rely upon the gift of Christ not on any merit of his obedience for the attaining of it Now to say the truth this fiducial assent thus express'd and none but this may truly be affirm'd to be a most powerful motive to me to produce good works but then it is as true that it is as powerful a motive to me to rely on the gift of Christ and so in that respect faith may be said to produce good works faith may also be said to produce that which they call faith i. e. the believing that if I obey and rely I shall be saved is a motive thus to produce actual relying and in this sence I will acknowledg both if he with whom I dispute will thank me for it But then secondly it follows not that that which is a powerful motive is a cause necessarily producing because that motive is but a moral motive perswading not enforcing and man by corruption or by some prevailing temptation may resist that motive and I think 't would be no Paradox to say that some men have made no doubt of the truth of God's conditional promises i. e. have verily perswaded themselves that if they served God sincerely they shall be saved and yet quite neglected God's service and if it be objected that they want the fiduciall though they have the assent and that if they had the affiance they would assuredly produce good works I answer that by that affiance they mean either absolute assurance that they shall be saved and that if it be not an error supposeth good works if it be produceth them not or else a conditional affiance and then again I affirm of that that it is no more then what I exprest by making no manner of doubt but if they serve God sincerely they shall be saved which though I believe to be a most powerful motive to obedience yet I conceive not a necessary irresistible cause because 't is only a moral motive nay nor that that alwaies produceth the effect First because the foolish virgins had as much of this as the wise for ought we see and after the door is shut come as confidently Lord Lord open to us yet it seems did not watch and make ready their Lamps which was the act of obedience requir'd of them and the want of it forfeited their hopes 2. Because the unprofitable servant that professeth he knew that God reaped where he sowed not yet hid the Talent in a Napkin put it not out to the exchangers 3. Because the exhortations of Christ and the Apostles are generally to good works as well as to faith nay much more frequently which argues to me that faith doth not necessarily produce good works and they that are supposed to have faith are exhorted to adde to their faith virtue 2. Pet. 1.5 which if Faith were a necessary cause of Works were all one as to exhort the Fire to burne the Water to moysten c. 4. Because there is a difference observed in Scripture between a working and a non working Faith and the priviledges are bestowed only on the first by which it is plain that it is possible for it not to worke 5. Because faith is said to be made perfect by works Jam. 2.22 which sure an agent cannot be said to be by producing an effect which it cannot but produce as the act of Humectation adds no degree of perfection to the water Nay 't is a general rule that the producing of what effect soever adds no perfection to the cause save only relative as the begetting of a Sonne adds only the relation of a Father but nothing else more then he was before it rather supposeth him perfect before which is the importance of the Logick axiom effectus est extra naturam causae All that can truly and in propriety of speech be said of Faith in this matter is this that Faith is so strong a motive to obedience that if it be drawn as a Weapon to the purpose and used as it should it would in reason out-ballance all the contrary temptations to disobedience if the will which hath the casting voice give its suffrage as in reason it ought it shall then infallibly produce obedience but yet not irresistibly because that will being still a free faculty at least to evill may after all the proposal of motives either suspend its Action or else do that which it should not For sure it is an error of Socinus to affirme cognitionem rerum pulchrarum aut turpium quales praeter alias sunt res honestae vitiosae harum odium illarum amorem necessariò gignere and that Socrate's speech praesente scientia fieri non posse ut quis incontinens sit was true with this Caution ut quis sciat res honestas eas facienti magnum commodum allaturas def disp de loco c. 7. ad Rom. in 1 Joh. 4.8 If by amor and odium he mean prosecutio and aversatio as 't is plaine he doth by that which followes For sure Medea was not deceived in her self when she said video meliora proboque deteriora sequor And so many who make no doubt of an Heaven to belong to all penitent reformed Servants of Christs and that that Heaven conteines joyes above all that the World can afford do yet choose the pleasures of sin for the present season like Ephraim that is likened to an heifer that loved to tread out the Corn betook her self to that course which for the present yielded some profit as the Heifer being by the Law then unmusselled might eat as she troad it out that had its reward at that minute that she did the Work Whence is all this but from hence that the carnal pleasures of sin for the present obtaine the consent of the will against all the future pleasures and joyes of Heaven joyn'd with the sowernesse of present obedience which could never be if believing the promises allwaies either necessarily or infallibly produced good works FINIS The Socinians opinion of the future state of Souls Mr Hobbs Mr White Resolution concerning Origen

and bound himself to a day of payment should after he hath enjoy'd and spent the Commodity be excus'd from paying the price of it by pretending it was not really worth so much when it appears by his bargaine that he himself thus valued it and willingly took it at this price and hath now chang'd his mind on no other consideration but because the enjoyment for which alone he valued it is past and none but the payment behind which consider'd by it self every man acknowledges to be the ungrateful part and so he did when yet on intuition of the more pleasant he made choice of it I have thus far enlarg'd to give you a clearer view of the force of the option in this matter then I can discerne you to have had of it and consequently to shew you the insufficiency of the reason on which you reject it when you say that upon this Hypothesis it should seem to be concluded that eternal life is owing to Piety ex justitia But to this I reply 1. That it were no newes from St Paul's words That God the righteous Judge shall give the Crown of righteousnesse to all that keep the faith c. to conclude that that Crown is some way due to Piety ex justitia But then Secondly My Argument from the Option hath no least need of so affirming but becomes much the stronger the lesse that be affirm'd For the lesse rewardable in it selfe our Piety is the more mercy and superabundant goodnesse it is in God thus to decree the rewarding it and the more undeserv'd that Mercy and the easier the condition of it the more Criminous is the guilt of those that despise and contemne it and prefer sin and impenitence and eternal death before it An Accordance OF St PAUL with St IAMES in the great point of Faith and Works By The most Learned Reverend and Pious Dr HENRY HAMMOND OXFORD Printed by H. HALL Printer to the University for RIC ROYSTON and RI DAVIS 1665. Of Faith and Works HE that saith with St Paul a man is justified by faith and not by works and to reconcile St James with St Paul affirms that good works are the effect of true faith means either that true faith where e're it is is able to produce good works though it do not alwaies actually produce them or else that it actually and necessarily produceth them If the former be his meaning then I conceive it true in some degree but not pertinent to his purpose of reconciling St. James with St. Paul because faith may be able to produce them and yet never actually produceth them and so the man that is supposed to be justiffied by faith never be able to shew his works which St. James requires of him and consequently his faith be a dead faith i. e. not able to justify But if the latter be his meaning that true faith wheresoever it is actually and necessarily produceth good workes I conceive it false yet can I not dispute against him in those termes by instancing in any particular to the contrary Because he hath a guard or hold for himself to fortify him against any assault by affirming to any such instance of mine where good workes were not produced that that faith was not true faith which yet if he should be put to prove he would have no other reason to confirm it but only because it produceth not good works being ready if it did produce good works to acknowledg it true faith which how guilty it is of those two faults in disputing circulus and petitio principii I think is manifest to any Yet being by this Sophism of his interdicted this way or proceed●ng I have but one way of arguing left me first to demand his definition of true faith and whatsoever definition he gives to prove that faith in that notion of his is the cause of good works at the most but as a man is the cause of a child a true perfect univocal cause of the effect when the effect is produced but yet such a one as might have suspended that action by which it was produced and so might have been as truly a man without the actual producing of that effect as he is now he hath produced it that is that faith is a rational or moral not natural agent working freely not necessarily To bring this operation to practise I will suppose this definition of faith to be given me which by them that affirm good works to be an effect of faith is ordinarily given that it is a fiducial assent to the promises of Christ Where that I may not mistake him I must first demand whether he conceives these promises which are the object of his faith to be absolute or conditional If he affirm them absolute made to mens persons or individual Entityes without respect to their qualifications or demeanors then surely that faith which supposeth all kind of qualifications of the subject so unnecessary will never so much as move me to produce good works because I may as well be saved without them the promises being supposed without condition and therefore he that affirms good works to avail nothing in the business of attaining to salvation cannot without contradicting himself say that his faith must necessarily produce good works if it be a saving faith for sure all that necessity proceeds from a believing that without good works there is no salvation to be had which if it be not believed that necessity ceaseth But if he affirm the promises which are the object of his faith to be conditional then I must ask what he takes this condition to be either faith alone or good works alone or faith and good works together if faith alone then beside the ridiculousness of that in making the believing that I shall be saved the only ground of my believing I shall be saved the former inconvenience recurrs again that that faith which supposeth faith only to be a condition of the promises will find good works as unnecessary as that faith which suppos'd the promises to be absolute and so will never incline me to them neither If he affirm the condition of the promises to be good works alone I mean by good works all other graces besides faith contrition amendment of life charity holynesse c. then he acknowledgeth that these good works are of themselves simply requir'd of a man that is or will be a believer and so that they are no necessary effect of faith for if they were it would be enough to require faith alone and they would undoubtedly follow without requiring For I conceive it ridiculous to make the condition of an Indenture something that is necessarily annext to the possession of the demise If he affirm faith and good works neither single but both together to be the total adaequate condition of the promises which St. Paul calls faith consummate by charity St. James faith made perfect by works St. Paul again 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which