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	let_v	lord_n	2,934	5	3.6705	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A31927	Englands antidote against the plague of civill warre presented in a sermon before the Honourable House of Commons on their late extraordinary solemn fast, October 22, 1644 / by Edmund Calamy ...	Calamy, Edmund, 1600-1666.	1652 (1652)	Wing C234; ESTC R5769	41,464	54

a hearty-abhorrency and detestation of these sins Now the Lord cals upon you this day to do thus And to do thus more then others you that are Gentlemen because these sins in you are more scandalous and do more hurt both by Imitation and by Imputation They doe more hurt by Imitation because great men are like unto Looking-glasses according to which all the Countrey dress themselves whatever they do other men follow And your sinnes do more hurt by Imputation for God doth many times impute the sins of the Rulers upon the People as he did impute the sin of David upon the people of Israel And therefore God requires you this day to repent in dust and ashes And to be humbled before the Lord as you are Gentlemen that is the first But then secondly God commands you to repent as you are Parliament men As you are men with a personall repentance as you are Parliament men with a Parliament repentance And here give me leave to speak to you first divisim and then conjunctim First To speak to you singly and severally I beseech you search and try your wayes And if there should be found any amongst you that drive the designs of Oxford and that are present at Westminster only to betray their Countrey the Lord unmask such and the Lord give them repenting hearts This is to build your houses upon the bloud of three Kingdoms this is to sell your souls for preferment And it is just with God that such men should not only lose their souls but lose their very preferment also as Judas that sold his Master and hung himself And then again If there be any amongst you that drive your own designs and seek your own ends and not the publike good and seek your own ends more then the publike good and seek your own ends to the detriment of the publike good these are crying abominations and the Lord cals for a Parliament Repentance this day It was the Complaint of the Apostle of his time Omnes quae sua sunt quaerunt c. Phil. 2 21. All men seek their own and no man seeks the things of Iesus Christ If the Apostle Paul had been alive in our daies I wonder what he would have said of our times For truly if God should unrip us here before the Congregation I am afraid he should finde many of our hearts to be made up of nothing but of self-love and creature-love and yet notwithstanding this is a sin and not only against the light of the Word but against the very light of nature for the light of nature teaches us that all private good should be swallowed up in the publike And the very Decii and Curtii and Aristides and many other Heathens will rise up in judgement against many Christians in this particular There is a famous Text in Ier. 45. 3 4. Behold saith the Lord I do now begin to pull down what I have built and to destroy what I have planted and seekest thou great things for thy self seek them not Is this a time to seek your own ends this is just as if a man should have his house on fire and in stead of seeking to quench his house should go and trim up his chamber what will become of his Chamber when the house is burnt It is just as if a man when the Ship he is in is sinking should go and enrich his own Cabine The Lord give you hearts to repent of this Or if there be any amongst you that favour Malignants because they are your friends though enemies to God and his Cause this is a great sin to be repented on greatly And I say to such as the Prophet to Iehosaphat 2 Chro. 19. 2. Because you help the ungodly and love those whom the Lord hateth therefore wrath is gone out from the Lord against you Now let me consider you conjunctim as you are united into one body And here give me leave to put you in minde of a praier of Austins very necessary to be made by you this day Lord deliver me from other mens sins For this is a certain rule That all the sins of the Kingdom which are committed by your connivance or allowance are the Parliament sins and they call for a Parliament Repentance And therefore I beseech you search and try your hearts and consider how far you are accessary to the sins of the Kingdom that so you may be wrought up not only to a personall but to a Parliament humiliation And if it doth appear that you have taken more care in setling your own Liberties then in setling of Religion If you have taken more care to build your own houses then Gods house this is a crying sin and this makes you accessary to a thousand sins that are committed in the Kingdom Again If you do not labour according to your duty and according to your power to suppresse the Errors and Heresies that are spread in the Kingdom all these errours are you errours and these heresies are your heresies and they are your sins and God cals for a Parliamentary repentance from you for chem this day You are the Anabaptists and you are the Antinomians and it is you that hold That all Religions are to be tolerated even Iudaism and Turkism That the Soul is mortall and dies with the body c. These are your errors if they spread by your connivance For the sinnes of the sons of old Ely are imputed to old Ely himself And when the people of Israel had profaned the Sabbath Nehemiah contended with the Nobles of Iudah for suffering them and tels them that it was they that did prophane it because they suffered the people to prophane it Neh. 13. 17. Thus also all the guilty bloud that God requires you in justice to shed and you spare God will require the bloud at your hands And all the Bribery all the cousenage and all the robberies which are committed in the Kingdom which you can punish and do not these are all your sins Oh that the Lord would work up your hearts to the meditation of these things and that the Lord would make your hearts like wax and this word like the Sun to melt them Thus God cals you to repentance as you are men and to a Parliament repentance as you are Parliament men And God cals you to do all this now God now commands you now to repent The commandement is now and the practice must be now There must be two nows the nunc of the Commandement and of that you have heard abundantly but now there must be also the nunc of Obedience God now commands you now to practise this Text for otherwise for ought you know you may be in hell the next hour peradventure you may and peradventure you may not But howsoever you put your everlasting estate upon two peradventures peradventure God will deny thee space to repent next hour or if he give thee space peradventure God will deny thee grace

You know the Story of Chrysostom that preached many Sermons to the people of Antioch against Swearing and the people began to be weary of that subject and asked him when he would leave preaching against swearing He answered when you leave swearing I 'le leave preaching against swearing Would you have the plaister taken away before the wound be cured I could heartily wish that all the godly Ministers of England would combine together never to leave preaching the sword-removing and landpreserving doctrine of repentance till they had perswaded all the people of England to repent and till God should be pleased upon our repentance for Christs sake to turn away the judgements that are now upon us The words themselves are part of that famous Sermon that Saint Paul did preach to the Athenians to drive them from their old Idolatries and Superstitions to which they and their forefathers had been so much addicted In the whole verse we have three parts First A description of the times in which their forefathers lived they were times of ignorance But the times of this ignorance No wonder they were Idolaters for they were ignorant They sate in darknesse and saw no light and no wonder for a man in the dark to erre and go astray A description of Gods carriage and behaviour towards those times And the times of this ignorance God winked at By which words you must not understand as if God did allow of their Idolatries but there is a twofold meaning of those words 1 God winked that is God did not so severely punish your forefathers that lived in time of ignorance for their Idolatries as he will do you that live in time of knowledge if you continue in these courses For ignorance doth excusare à tanto though not à toto your forefathers knew no better and therefore were no better But now God will wink no longer For we live in times of knowledge And he that knoweth his masters will and doth it not shall be beaten with many stripes 2. God winked at your fore-fathers that is God did not care so much for them as he doth for you God despised them The word in the Greek is {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} the same word that is used Act. 6. 1. and it signifies to neglect and despise God did neglect your forefathers and suffered them to go to hell in their Idolatries but now God takes more care of you for God hath sent me to preach Jesus Christ for your salvation And therefore it is no excuse for you to pleade the example of your forefathers for the times of ignorance God winked at but now God commands you to repent of the sins your forefathers lived in Here we have a description of the Duty that God required of them and that God requires of us and that God requires of all men every where But now God commands all men every where to repent But now not now exclusively but now eminently now rather then at another time now more then at another time But now God doth not only entreat but he doth command and he doth not only command some men but he commands all men and not only in some places but every where But now God commands all men every where to repent In the words thus explained there are five Observations I shall wave the first four and pitch only upon the last the first is That to live impenitently in times of knowledge is a sin that God will not wink at To be a drunkard or an adulterer or an idolater c. under the times of the Gospel is a sinne that God will never bear And the times of ignorance God winked at but now c. That it is a great blessing to a nation for God to send the Gospel to a nation And the times of ignorance God neglected and despised but now God hath sent the Gospel to you God takes more care of your salvation That long prescription of time for Idolatry and superstition is no good argument to maintain Idolatry and superstition This was the argument that the Athenians brought against Pauls doctrine ver. 18. This man seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods He preacheth new doctrine that our forefathers never heard of and therefore we will not hearken to his doctrine This was the argument the Jews brought against Steven and his doctrine Acts 6. 14. We have heard him say that this Iesus shall alter the customs which Moses delivered us This is the great argument the Papists use to maintain their Masse-book their adoration of images and the rest of their superstitions In King Edward the sixths dayes when the great rebellion was in the West the only argument that was brought by the Rebels to uphold their rebellion was because that King Edward did endeavour to bring in a new way of worshipping of God which they and their Forefathers did not know And this is the great and only reason that makes many poor and ignorant people to cry down the Parliament and for this cause many thousands have taken up Arms to fight themselves into Popery and slavery And all because they fear the Parliament will take away their old Episcopal government their old Cathedrall service their organs altars crossings of their children in Baptism and other such like customes For my part I am not ignorant of what dangerous consequence it is to alter and change the customs of a kingdom and I know the Parliament is so wise as that they will not alter and the Assembly of Ministers so judicious as that they will not advise them to alter any custome in the worship of God but upon very grave and weighty considerations But howsoever this is no good argument Because I have been accustomed to come to Westminster to hear the Organs play and to hear Cathedrall service And because I my self was signed with the sign of the crosse when I was baptized And because I have lived all this while under Episcopall government therefore I will take up Arms rather then the Parliament shall make me to worship God in any other way then I have been accustomed The Text confutes this Argument And the times of this ignorance God winked at but now commands all men every where to repent Former times were times of ignorance and times wherein mens consciences were oppressed and mouths stopped from speaking But now the times are times of Reformation now God hath given greater liberty and hath sent a greater light into the kingdom And now God commands all men every where to repent That the Commandements of Gods Ministers they are Gods Commandements God commands all men saith the Text that is God by me commands my Commandement is Gods Commandement These four Doctrines I shall not any further meddle withall but the Doctrine that through the help of Almighty God I shall desire to insist upon is this That Repentance is the great Commandement of God for these times Or thus