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	see_v	3,350	5	3.0636	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A39270	The vanity of scoffing, or, A letter to a witty gentleman evidently shewing the great weakness and unreasonableness of scoffing at the Christian's faith, on account of its supposed uncertainty : together with the madness of the scoffer's unchristian choice.	Ellis, Clement, 1630-1700.	1674 (1674)	Wing E575; ESTC R3033	22,122	41

rate you think you say that for which the world is bound to return you many thanks and our Churches will now be soon emptied to fill the Tavern and the Alehouse and the jugling Priests be forced either to starve or stand to your courtesie whether they shall be entertain'd at your doors with a hard crust or a harder cudgel But be not angry I beseech you if I be bold to tell you that if these be your thoughts you flatter your self too much and may possibly stay as long for thanks from men that can consider what they do as you would make the poor Priests you so freely abuse stand for an alms at your gates They who rightly understand the meaning of your words and have so much wit as to think on any thing beyond their present lusts would hardly be perswaded to think any thing save that Hell which you deny more dreadful than that other Hell which this your wild inference if once generally assented to would make upon Earth Nay I dare say that could you win all men to be of the same mind of which you at present seem to be your self would be the first that would begin to contradict your self and be ready to cut your own throat to be revenged on your rashness in teaching men this mad lesson Suppose that every Prince should bring his Subjects every Lord his Tenants every Father his Children and every Master his Servants first to be of this opinion that nothing remains either to be feared or hoped for after death and that they should next from this opinion take up the same resolution to live as they list and enjoy their pleasure without all check of conscience I am very confident that if the Subjects should take arms to redeem their liberty the Tenant keep back his rent and not own his Landlord Children deny obedience to their Parents and Servants refuse to labour for their Masters those very same persons who first unadvisedly put this dangerous fancy into their heads would rather work all means to have those heads taken off from their shoulders than it should continue any longer there How unreasonable a thing is it then in you to triumph in derision over the Faith of Christians which you cannot but confess is the main buttress that upholds your own best beloved interests when should this your darling humour on which you now most blindly dote as much bewitch your inferiors as it hath done your selves it would at once make havock of your estates and honours and force you to do penance for your follies in sackcloth and ashes Can you yet hug your selves in your licentious thoughts and dream that wise men will admire and magnifie your wit Though most men do indeed express too great a fondness for their liberty yet I dare say a very few would be content to enjoy it upon those terms as you do promise it Most men do dread the effects of libertinism and licentiousness no less than they love the causes that produce them before they understand the evils they are pregnant with and therefore although too many ears be already set too wide open to your Syren notes yet is it a thing incredible that they should be so unwise when their eyes are opened too to see the rocks and whirlpools into the midst of which this ravishing musick would invite them as wilfully to run upon their own destruction Would it not think you be a very pleasing thing for men to live in perpetual feuds tumults and confusions What a gallant incouragement would it be to the poor husbandman when he durst not go to plough without his guard lest the next that comes should take away his oxen nor could cast the seed into the furrows without very reasonable fears that another should reap the crop when he builds an house to think that his next neighbour will set it on fire or thrust him out of his possession and when he is laid down to rest not to dare to shut his eyes lest his wife or child should cut his throat If all the fears of Hell and endless torments which Religion possesseth men withall are found weak enough to keep them within the bounds of honesty and good-neighbourhood then I must be bold to tell you Sir and all wise men will easily believe me that the reins of religion once cut in pieces by your Sophistry and nothing after this life left for men to fear or long for all the laws of man will be as easily broken as Sampson's Wit hs the Magistrates authority will be set at nought and the greatest power you can imagine in the civil sword will prove too weak to secure the publick peace or restrain the libertine from those outrages and extravagances which would render death a thousand times more eligible than life This is a thing too apparently the consequence of your doctrine for who are the men I pray you that dare despise the gibbet and the halter for any petty prey but those whom you have taught or else have been before-hand with you in believing that as well their misery as their happiness shall end there But your selves know very well the truth of what I now say and are too ready to make ill use of it to our present disturbance and your own future misery You can tell us when you list that Religion hath the greatest power to keep the World in awe and order but then you would perswade us to believe withall that it is no more but a politick invention which necessity set the wit of man on work to find out for that purpose I am not now to disprove any of your assertions being resolved to represent you to your own eyes with all the advantages you can desire you will find when you can but once allow your selves the liberty to consider things that you stand in need of more than all to win you the approbation even of your own judgments For supposing this that you would have are not you the only politick wise men of the world and do not we all owe you abundant thanks for thus opening a wide gap to all confusion and disorder and your own ruine amongst the rest of mankind whilest you endeavour to pull down that fence which you confess was wisely made and not without great cause to secure the peace and comfort of the world If all this be not yet enough to let you see how much you befool your selves whilest you deride our Faith and call your selves wise for living as you list consider but this one thing more how you must needs hereby deprive your selves of that only thing besides your wit wherein you seem to glory I mean the honour of being Loyal to your Prince It is most evident that you thus betray your selves to be the worst of subjects and the most dangerous of all that plead for Toleration in a State or Kingdom I confess indeed there is a sort of people that would be thought the only

be so stubborn and impudently refractory as to persist in disputation and so unreasonable as once more to call for any farther satisfaction in a thing so heterodoxly yet so magisterially asserted we shall usually see these tall gentlemen if they can find no fair opportunity of quitting the company and running away begin to stoop by little and little even so long till the bravado dwindle into a bare It may be so and yet possibly it may be thus and no man can tell us whether it be thus or so So that whatever conquest they obtain if ever they prove masters of the field must be wholly attributed to the weakness of their adversaries nothing to their own valour and prowesse To deal clearly with you after all that I have had to this day the opportunity to hear or read from any of these great wits who are so greedy of the honour to trample upon the Faith of Christians yet as impatient as the Devil himself would be though they deserve it much more to be called Atheists I could never see any thing offered as a conclusion which would amount to any more than one of your Sceptical premises and were these all with a thousand more as good as they laid together with all the art and confidence whereof you and your partners have good store how little strength they would have to secure you from as much folly as you charge upon others or defend the most tolerable of your desperate resolutions from the just imputation of madness requires no great skill in another to teach you nor sagacity in you to learn would you be at leisure from your vanities and have patience to consider without a teacher Who knows say you whether there be an Heaven and a life to come or no Suppose now that this your question were altogether unanswerable and be it as true as you would have it that no man knows this Yet are you far from having gain'd all that which you catch at such a victory over the poor Christian that you may without the just censure of vanity crow upon your beloved dunghill of uncleanness For if none know this then none knows whether you or he hold the truer though it will be easily seen anon which of you holds the safer opinion If the Christian think there is a life to come and yet there shall be no such thing then indeed he is in an error and his hopes are vain and yet I dare not say foolish because an eternal happy life after death is a thing so desirable of all that every man would be willing to lay hold on any grounds whereon he might build any though but the weakest hope and expectation of it It you think there is no life to come and yet there be one then are you in an error by so much the more dangerous by how much your loss will prove greater he losing only some temporal joys but you eternal and yet much more foolish inasmuch as you both despised what confessedly was in it self above all things desirable and rashly exposed your self to those torments which are of all things most formidable If then no man yet know whether there shall be any such thing or not then as no man can yet say which of you is in the error so certainly the folly must fall to your lot who make him the But of your scorn who for ought that either you or any man else upon your supposition can yet tell may be as wise yea and is probably even in his choice certainly in his modest behaviour much wiser than your self But yet good Sir if you and your confederates have authority to play the fools part and yet be thought the wisest on the Stage shew us whence you have it and we have done Again you say Who knows it This is your way you are ready at posing but as slow as others in answering and indeed this is your master-piece and you know whose character the Proverbial saying hath made it One fool can ask more questions than twenty wise men can answer But suppose that in answer to your question we should affirm that we know it or at least that it may be known what we should thus affirm whether truly or no you could never be able to disprove if you say and swear we know it not that is only to contradict not confute us and the world hath seen no more for it as yet but only your word and ours If neither of us as yet have so much command over men's Faith as to be credited in a matter of so great consequence upon our bare assirmation or negation then are we yet on even ground and you have no more cause of triumph over us then we have over you If either may be credited on his word why one and not both If both much good may it do you It cannot be in the contradiction but with respect to the divided parties We say we know it and are believed you say you know it not and are believed Say we both true then are we knowing and you ignorant Say we both falsey then are you alike guilty with us in cousening the world by a lie and your lie is the more pernicious by how much greater the good is out of which you cousen it Say we truly and you falsly I need not tell you what follows But if we say falsly and you truly you have only this advantage that you are ignorant and we are deceived both equally to be pitied by others but neither have cause of glorying over the other Yet without doubt you must be the only men who have searched into Nature's mysteries and have been fitted by the advantages of Education to discover the knaveries of jugling Priests and the follies of a deluded people If your word may be taken for it thus you shall be esteemed but if your great boastings of your selves will amount to no more but a piece of arrogance too well known to be essential to men of your complexion you must still go a begging as well as we fools for Faith to believe you Suppose it yet once more to be as you say that no man knows any thing of all this yet as this will afford you no ground of glorying over others simplicity so neither will the unreasonable inferences you fetch thence when throughly examined prove either acceptable to the considering part of the world or so much as safe or honourable to your selves I shall shew you the former of these now and the later in the close of this Letter You tell us that seeing these things cannot be known It is most reasonable that men should please themselves in a free enjoyment of all things they esteem good in this world and so make to themselves as much happiness as they can here seeing that happiness which men expect after death in another world is for ought we know no better than a dream I dare not doubt but whilest you talk at this