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
A59757	S. Pauls confession of faith, or, A brief account of his religion in a sermon preach'd at St. Warbroughs Church in Dublin, March 22, 1684/5 / by William Lord Bishop of Kilmore and Ardagh.	Sheridan, William, 1636-1711.	1685 (1685)	Wing S3231; ESTC R32664	19,031	32

Loyalty as my own and do really in my Conscience acquit you from any design of insluencing the People and when I reflect upon the saying of St. Paul Gal. 1.10 If I please men I should not be the Servant of Christ I am well assured you discharged a good Conscience towards God because you have been so little follicitous to study the Satisfaction of the World However because so many various Censures are past upon it already and neither you nor I can foresee what misconstructions may be made of it for the future and because some things are reported of it which I hear were not delivered to your prejudice I think you cannot do your self nor your Sermon greater justice than to expose it to the publick view of the world and let it plead its cause against all Gainsayers By this you will have an opportunity of vindicating your Loyalty against the Exceptions of the pretended Catholicks your Prudence against the temporizing Politicians and your Doctrine against all that are resolved to write against it And I am confident let them begin when they will if you need Succours the Cause will not want those that shall assist I am Your Lordships most affectionate humble Servant A. Midensis This was followed by this second Letter My Lord I Had the Happiness to hear your last Sermon at St. Warbroughs and find by my conversing amongst the people that it gave general satisfaction and has done really a great deal of good They imagine that your Lordship by your Station and Correspondence understands much of Affairs and they generally conclude by your behaviour in that Sermon That we are very secure in the King 's Royal Word You would hardly imagine how far this hath quieted some suspicious minds and if your Lordship would let your self be prevailed with to make it publick I am confident it would contribute yet more to secure the loyalty and quiet the fears of the People and though this may seem unnecessary to your Lordship it being impossible any one of our Communion should be disloyal without renouncing his Religion yet give me leave to inform your Lordship that there neither doth nor will want those that having nothing to say to it as it is will not fail to misrepresent it to prevent therefore them if not to satisfie your Friends I hope you will be persuaded to comply with the request of My Lord Your Lordships most humble and dutiful Servant W. King From these two Letters the Readers may see the sence of both Adversaries and Friends and what effect it had on them and especially the People and by publishing of it I hope at least to get this advantage that our Adversaries will be afraid to misrepresent future Discourses of this kind when they see we have so ready and short a way to expose their Lies And let them rest satisfied that notwithstanding their causless heights and the confident brags of some of them That our Religion shall soon be suppress'd and the wheadles of others of them by which they think to prevail with us if not to come over to theirs yet to speak nothing in confutation of it we both dare and will justify our Selves and our Religion against all the little petty arts of Defamation or Calumny they can use against us and that we believe the chiefest of their strength consists in these I have only this one thing more to add That this Sermon is printed as it was preached without any alteration and that it is own'd as the true sence and real expression of the thoughts and heart of the Preacher St. PAUL'S CONFESSION of FAITH Acts 24.14 15 16. But this I confess unto thee that after the way which they call Heresy so worship I the God of my Fathers believing all things which are written in the Law and the Prophets and have hope towards God which they themselves also allow that there shall be a resurrection of the dead both of the just and unjust And herein do I exercise my self to have a Conscience void of offence towards God and towards man TWo things are required in a Preacher to be able to exhort with wholesome Doctrine and to confute Gainsayers the one requires Rhetoric the other Logic. We cannot have a better president for this than St. Paul Acts 14. whom for his admirable Elocution the Infidels took for Mercury their God of Eloquence come down from Heaven and for the profoundness of his matter he is stiled a chosen Vessel Acts ●0 to contain the Mysteries of Gods Kingdom for proof of this I will only instance to you from the 33d of the 8th to the Romans to the end of that chapter whereof * Doctr. Christian St. Austin and † Annot. in N. Tost Eras mus say that never Tully nor Demosthenes could speak any thing like him there being nothing mean or low in the whole for if we respect the persons here we have God Christ at the right hand of the Father Principalities and Powers if we respect the things here we have life heighth depth things present and things to come and if we respect the Rhetorical Ornaments what Interrogations what Gradations what Antitheses what contraries and what repetitions So that this might justly make up the 3d part of St. Austin's wish that he had seen Christ in the flesh Rome flourishing and St. Paul preaching But I need no further Arguments this very conflict with Tertullus is a sufficient demonstration whereof my Text is a part for having clear'd himself from that most odious crime of Sedition and evidently proved that the Orators Accusation was not only improbable but impossible he now descends to the other branch of his Calumny concerning his Religion that as he was no turbulent Fellow nor raiser of Sedition in the Common-wealth so he was no setter forth nor maintainer of heretical Doctrines or Novelties in the Church In the words we have these two parts 1. His Concession in these words but this I confess 2. His Confession in these words after the way which they call Heresy c. And in his Confession we have these particulars 1. The Act I worship 2. The Object The God of my Fathers 3. The Manner after that way which they call Heresy 4. The Rule of it believing all things that are written in the Law and the Prophets 5. The principal ground of it and have hope towards God that there shall be a Resurrection of the dead 6. And lastly the Effect of it and herein do I exercise my self to have always a Conscience void of offence toward God and toward Man So that if you would have a clear and perfect definition of St. Paul's Religion it is briefly this A worshiping of one true God by Jesus Christ according to the Scriptures with a stedfast endeavour to keep the purity of the Conscience unspotted in hopes of the future Resurrection of the dead But to proceed 1. Of his Concession but I confess From which

Sea least his People finding them should think themselves absolv'd from their Oath And thus our Saviour Jesus Christ being to leave his Disciples obliges them to the use of his Sacraments till his return never intending to return again in humility but in glory If a dying Friend should give you a Ring as a token of his Love and charge you to keep it for his sake would you despise an instance of so great Kindness How comes it then to pass that we so little value so inestimable a Jewel as the blessed Sacraments which are the Badges of our Christianity whose Value and Dignity does not flow from the outward Elements For what is the sprinkling of a little Water the eating of a bit of Bread or the drinking of a sup of Wine But from the Ordinance and Institution of Christ just as a piece of Wax with the Kings Broad Seal stampt upon it is of more value than a thousand times so much in the Merchants Shop And truely if we would be taken for Christ's Souldiers we ought not to be ashamed of his mark the Holy Sacrament of his Body and Blood There are two things generally objected by many that are called Christians against receiving of it the one is that if they partake of it unworthily it will prejudice them Such would do well to consider that until they put themselves into a condition of Receiving it Worthily they cannot be in a condition of dying and how dangerous it is not to be always so the uncertainty of this life does shew The other Objection is That they are not yet willing to part with their Sins to which the Receiving of the Sacrament obliges them and therefore they will defer Communicating until they are Old and have a mind to repent and part with their Sins Such would do well to consider that they may fall short of the time they design for that work or if they should not that God may not give them then Grace to Repent And thus much of External Worship which I told you consists in Preaching and Hearing in Invocation and the reverent use of the Sacraments The other part of his Service is Internal that is the worship of the Spirit without which all our Preaching Hearing Praying Christning and Communicating are but like a Sepulcher outwardly beautiful but inwardly full of corruption for though the outward Form is that which approves us to Man yet it is the inward frame that justifies us to God Who does not like such Professors as * Cap. 7.8 Cap. 24.6 Joh. 4.24 Hosea compares to a half baked Cake and Ezekiel to a Pot whose scum is therein For God is a Spirit and he will nay he must be worshipt in Spirit and Truth Some there are who with Esop's Dog snatch at the shadow and lose the substance that is place the whole worship of God in bodily Exercise and external Adoration as bowing before a Crucifix in creeping to a Cross in running a bare-leg'd Pilgrimage in visiting the Reliques of the Saints in hearing of so many Masses in macerating the Flesh in hanging down the head for a day like a Bulrush in Crosses and Candles in Holy Waters and Holy Oyls in Pixes and Paxes and such like fripperies And there are others who like Lapwings make the greatest noise when they are farthest from their young ones though they pretend the greatest distance from the Papists yet come very near them in many things and place their whole Religion in running through thick and thin three or four Miles on a Sunday to hear a Man preach or rather prate nonsence in carrying a Bible under their Arms though they neither understand it nor draw any Inferences from it for the amendment of their lives and practices in condemning all as Reprobates that are not of their own Communion and in applying the intricate and misterious places of Scripture especially such as denounce Gods Judgments to those that are not of their own persuasion And if they can but prate like Parrots in the Scripture phrase and sing three or four Psalms upon a Lords Day and repeat at night the nonsence they heard the morning nay if they commend the Preacher for bawling lowd and making wry faces and thumping the Pulpit and holding forth for two or three hours and preaching off Book such stuff as is impossible for a considering person to write they conclude they have worship'd God sufficiently and that no more is required of them And truly though this is very far from being acceptable to God yet I wish we had not too just cause on the other hand to complain that internal Worship is too much slighted by us and Prayers and Sacraments too much neglected and that as in times of Popery all Religion and Worship was in a manner reduced to a Mass so now amongst us to a Sermon they seeing without understanding and we hearing without practising Thus much for the first particular to wit the Act in which I have spoken of the external and internal Worship due to God I now proceed to the second particular in the Confession and that is the Object of his Worship the God of my Fathers Observe no Saint nor Angel no Creature nor Throne no Dominion nor Power no Heathenish Diety but the only true God in Jesus Christ Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God Exod. 20. and him only shalt thou serve And See thou do it not Chap. 22.9 saith the Angel in the Revelations to St. John I am thy fellow creature worship God The Manichees worship'd two Gods a God of Good and a God of Evil and the Tritheits three Gods whence they had their Name the Valentinians worship'd thirty couple of Gods and the Gentiles as St. Austin observes thirty thousand Gods thence they worship'd their adulterous Jupiter their beastly Apollo their drunken Bacchus their bastardly Aesculapius their theevish Mercury their bloody Mars their impudent Venus and their spiteful Juno De Deo uno vero as Zanchy observes And the Papists have equall'd if not exceeded the Heathens in the number of their Gods and their superstitious Ceremonies as may appear by the practice of the common people in these particulars 1. The Pagans had their several tutelar Gods for several places for Delphos worship'd Apollo Crete Jupiter Athens Minerva and Ephesus Diana And so in Popery England worship'd St. George Scotland St. Andrew Ireland St. Patrick Venice St. Mark and Millain St. Ambrose 2. In Paganism they had several Gods for several Elements as Jupiter for the Fire Juno for the Air and Neptune for the Sea And so in Popery they have Agathus for the Fire Theadulus for Tempests St. Barbara for Thunder and St. Nicholas for the Sea 3. In Paganism they had several Gods to pray to for their Cattel and their Fruit as Pan for the one Ceres for the other and Bacchus for their Wine and so in Popery they have Vrbanas for their Wine Jodocus for their Fruit Wandelinus