Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	great_a	king_n	think_v	3,194	5	4.2887	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A28445	Religio laici written in a letter to John Dryden, Esq.	Blount, Charles, 1654-1693.; Dryden, John, 1631-1700. Religio laici.; Herbert of Cherbury, Edward Herbert, Baron, 1583-1648. De religione laici.	1683 (1683)	Wing B3314; ESTC R2743	24,729	118

RELIGIO LAICI Written in a Letter to JOHN DRYDEN Esq. Juvenal Sat. 8. Quod modo proposui non est Sententia verum Credite me vobis folium recitare Sibyllae LONDON Printed for R. Bentley and S. Magnes in Russel street in Covent-garden 1683. TO HIS Much Honoured Friend IOHN DRYDEN Esq. SIR THE Value I have ever had for your Writings makes me impatient to peruse all Treatises that are crown'd with your Name whereof the last that fell into my Hands was your Religio Laici whieh expresses as well your great Judgment in as Value for Religion a thing too rarely found in this Age among Gentlemen of your Parts and I am confident with the Blessing of God upon your Endeavours not unlikely to prove of great Advantage to the Publick since as Mr. Herbert well observes A Verse may find him who a Sermon flies And turn Delight into a Sacrifice We read in Ancient Times before the Institution of Moral Philosophy by Socrates that Poets in general were to the People in stead of their Sacred Writ from whom they received their Divinity and Opinion concerning the Gods as who and how to be worshipped how pleased and pacified by what Prayers and Ceremonies together with such Rites and Ceremonies as were the Dionysiaca Cybeliaca Isiaca Eleusiniaca and the like Instituted by Orpheus All which were built upon this Ground That there could be no true Poet but must be Divinely inspired and if Divinely inspired then certainly to be believed This we find largely disputed and asserted even by Philosophers of best Account in those Days But the two main Arguments induced them to that Belief were First That extraordinary Motion of Mind wherewith all good Poets in all Ages have been possessed and agitated And secondly The Testimony of Poets themselves who professing themselves Inspired have made particular Relations of strange Visions Raptures and Apparitions to that purpose So that as the Beginning Growth and Confirmation of Idolatry may be ascribed as by many it is to Poets and their Authority so also to supposed Enthusiasms and Inspirations upon which that Authority was chiefly grounded Hence it is that many Ancient Authors as Aristotle Strabo and others affirm That Poetry in matter of Writing and Composition was in use long before Prose which might seem strange if not incredible did we judge by the Disposition of later Times but of those Enthusiastick Times not less probable than certain as our Learned Casaubon well observes And this I thought fitting to premise in Answer to that Obection which your Modesty is so apprehensive of viz. That being a Laick you interpose in Sacred Matters Rapin in his Reflexions speaking of the necessary Qualities belonging to a Poet tells us He must have a Genius extaordinary great Natural Gifts a Wit just fruitful piercing solid and universal an Vnderstanding clean and distinct an Imagination neat and pleasant an Elevation of Soul that depends not only on Art or Study but is purely a Gift of Heaven which must be sustained by a lively Sense and Vivacity Judgment to consider wisely of Things and Vivacity for the beautiful Expression of them c. Now this Character is so justly yours as I cannot but think that he described what a great Poet should be by hearing what you were and the rather since I have been informed by some English of his Acquaintance That Monsieur Rapin was studious in our Language only for your sake Nor would his Pains be lost 'T is a Question not easily to be decided Whether you have been more serviceable to the Peace of the State in your Absolom and Achitophel or to the Church in your Religio Laici or to the Nobility and Gentry in the innocent Recreation of your Plays A Country-Retirement like that of Ovid's to one that has led the Spring of his Age and Vigour of his Youth among the Noise and Pleasures of the Town is certainly a Transformation no less disagreeable than that which the Poets feign of Acteon or Sacred Writ of the Assyrian Monarch who grazed with the Beasts of the Field and to abandon a Covent-Garden Society for the Insipid Dull Converse of a Country Village where the Nomination of New Healths is the heighth of their Invention would render a Rural Life to be no less than a Civil Death were it not for Mr. Dryden's Writings which keep us still alive and by a most Natural Representation of the Humours of the Town make us flatter and fansie our selves like the Enjoyment of a Lover's Dream to be still there But I shall wave these Acknowledgments to you as things too general to be engrossed by me alone And will now spend the Remainder of this Epistle in informing you of the Occasion of my troubling you with this small Piece which I Entitle by the Name of Religio Laici from a Treatise of the Lord Herbert of Cherburie's so called whose Notions I have often made use of and grounded the Chief of my Discourse upon his Five Catholick or Vniversal Principles Wherein my only Aim is to assert an Vniversal Doctrine such as no ways opposeth the Religion Established among us and which may tend both to the Propagation of Vertue and Extirpation of Vice as well as to the Reconciliation of those Dissenters now in England who have of late so disturbed the Quiet of this Realm and who under the Pretence of Religion would exclude all Governours but themselves For as a late Author well observes Every Opinion makes a Sect every Sect a Faction and every Faction when it is able a War and every such War is the Cause of God and the Cause of God can never be prosecuted with too much Violence So that all Sobriety is Lukewarmness and to be Obedient to Government Carnal Compliance Which are the Opinions of those that would rob Caesar of his Due as well as remove the Peoples ancient Land-marks But for my part as in Civil Politicks I would not in this so Ancient and so Lineal a Monarchy abandon the Beams of so fair a Sun for the dreadful Expectation of a divided Company of Stars so neither in Ecclesiasticks do I covet to be without the Pale of the Church since though I will not Dogmatically affirm as some do That Episcopacy is Jure Divino yet with the Lord Bacon I say and think ex Anim That it is the nearest to Apostolical Truth and the most coherent with Monarchy Wherein I know you will not differ from me And therefore Sir at this time when the Name of Christ is made use of to palliate so great Villanies and Treasons under the Pretext of God's Cause against both King and Government I thought I could do no less than snatch up all Weapons that might defend the Publick and hope I have not lighted upon one with a double Edge I have endeavoured that my Discourse should be onely a Continuance of yours and that as you taught Men how to Believe so I might instruct struct them how to

Devil and Kelly together deluded old Dr. d ee with their Angelical Stone as they called it in Queen Elizabeths time if you will give Credit to the Record thereof preserved in the famous Cottonian Library and since published in Print by Dr. Casaubon Varro saith That the Ancient Priests of Egypt who were also Judges wore upon their Necks a great Emrald called Truth Some of the Rabbins attribute not so much to the Stones as to certain Writings under them Judgments made of future Events by remarquing the Configurations and Operations of the Planets and Stars as also Predictions made from Natural Causes are without all question not onely lawful but commendable although of little certainty But the cunning Artists the Priests who in Egypt were anciently Astrologers used to mingle with their Divinations Lies of their own Invention whereby they acquired more than by their Truths The word for Divinations in general is Mantike which Plato in Phaedro derives from Munike signifying furious or mad The difference between Prophets and those that were in Ecstasies or Trances was this The Prophets were said to run up and down raging and crying whereas the Extotekoi appearing devoid of Sense and Understanding seem'd little less than dead till they awaked out of their Trances wherein also they remained so long that they had time enough to devise something which might delude the People By this kind of Imposture Mahomet did often prevail when he arose from his Fits of the Falling Sickness Also from these sorts of Raptures anciently it may be supposed the Ethnick Narration of the Elyzian Fields and their Separate State of Souls after Death together with their manner of Reward and Punishment were at first devised and then vented to the People Neither have the Christian Times been without such Saints I mean not the true and holy ones but some that pretending to Sanctity have in their Ecstasies whether counterfeit or not feigned that they had seen Souls in Purgatory whereof the Legend will inform you more Nevertheless It is observed that the Souls of Men having many more Faculties than what the Representation of Worldly Objects can excite or call up and sometimes freeing themselves from their usual Employments and the Objects they meet with in this Life ascend to the Contemplation and even Vision of Divine Objects making themselves thus capable of knowing not onely things past but those that are to come to which kind of Ecstasie whether St. Paul's Rapture into the third Heavens may be referred I leave to others to judge In like manner we read of divers strange and incredible Ecstasies that have hapned to Men in this kind as not to mention our Modern Voyages which speak of Indians that in their Trances will discover what Ships are coming to their Islands and from what Ports many Months before their Arrival the like hapned of old to Pamphilus the Son of Neocles who as Plato saith lay ten days in a Trance and afterwards told Wonders But to credit these things is altogether matter of Faith and not of Common Reason from whence I cannot recede or build any new Doctrine upon such Reports especially when there is no Divine Authority like the Scriptures for it nor Original Attestation that the Prophecy was consigned unto us in those very Words wherein they are now extant and for the rest that they are more obscure than that an unquestionable Certainty may be built upon them But herein I am content to let every Man use his own Judgment and therefore shall quit this Subject with one Observation which is That by reading Mother Shiptons Prophecies when we are Boys we do the better rellish Nostredamus when we are Men especially since every vain-glorious Expositor of such Prophecies looks upon himself as little less than a Minor-Prophet Now All these Points having been for a long time debated and examined by me to the best of my Understanding I did think fit the rather to study and inquire out those Common Principles of Religion I could any where meet with onely before I undertook this great Task I thought it not amiss to advise upon what Grounds the Controverted Points amongst them did move But as here I observed nothing but matter of Faith or Belief concerning Things past questioned in any Age or Country so did I the more easily pass by it to come to those Articles which were grounded not onely upon Reason and Vniversal Consent of Religions but are I believe extant and operative in the Hearts of all Men which are not prepossess'd and obstructed with erroneous Doctrines and I am sure most deeply engraven in mine Which being done I thought it my Duty to inquire Whether by an apt Connexion of the Parts thereof I might fix so solid a Foundation that I might repose thereon as the first and principal Ground of all Religious Worship The Articles which I propose are Five in number and the same which the great Oracle and Commander of his Time for Wit Learning and Courage tam Marti quam Mercurio the the Lord Herbert Baron of Cherbury delivered and which I am confident are so Catholique or Vniversal that all the Religions that ever were are or I believe ever shall be did do and will embrace them The Articles are these The Five Catholick or Vniversal Articles of Religion I. That there is One onely Supreme God II. That He chiefly is to be Worshipped III. That Vertue Goodness and Piety accompanied with Faith in and Love to God are the best ways of Worshipping Him IV. That we should repent of our Sins from the bottom of our Hearts and turn to the Right Way V. And lastly That there is a Reward and Punishment after this Life Now of each of these in particular First Article Of One God As to the First Article Tho divers Godheads or Divine Natures were celebrated or worshipped in several Ages or Countries throughout the World yet there is no Agreement or Consent but onely concerning One Supreme God under the Attributes of Optimus and Maximus the one supposing his Providence the other his Power in the highest degree and extention and both these together inferring his Wisdom Justice Mercy and the rest Thus the Heathens bestowed several Names upon the Deity according to the several Parts of the Vniverse calling him in the Starry Heaven and Aether Jupiter in the Air Juno in the Winds Aeolus in the Sea Neptune in the Earth and Subterraneous Parts Pluto in Learning Knowledge and Invention Mercury Minerva and the Muses in War Mars in Pleasure Venus in Corn and the Production of Fruits of the Earth Ceres in Wine Bacchus and the like Under which several Appellations were signified onely the various Operations of the One Immense God which makes Minutius well observe That Qui Jovem principem volunt falluntur in nomine sed de una Potestate consentiunt Second Article That God is to be Worshipped As to the Second Article Tho divers other Deities Godheads or Divine Natures