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	matter_n	see_v	3,060	5	3.1155	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A27232	The Quakers challenge made to the Norfolk clergy, or, A relation of a conference between some clergy-men of the Church of England and some Quakers held (on the 8th of December 1698 in West-Dereham Church) in the county of Norfolk : together with those letters which passed between them in order thereunto : to which is added a certificate relateing to the challenge.	Beckham, Edward, 1637 or 8-1714.; Meriton, Henry, d. 1707.; Topcliffe, Lancaster, 1646 or 7-1720.	1699 (1699)	Wing B1654; ESTC R27616	19,882	30

Justice of the Common Law in this Case much exceeds your pretence of Edification And this being denied by you we take it for granted your design is to Censure and pass Judgment on Persons unheard And if your Charge be to be drawn from Books it is as reasonable by the Common voice of Mankind that their Titles and Pages be given the Authors of which if living have an undoubted right to explain for themselves or if Dead such notice is reasonable for our due preparation to Answer Till which we shall only say that the Living labours of the Dead have this Justice due to them viz. that the whole be considered and the Scope and Intent of the Writer be taken and not rigidly much less falsly to pervert his words to a Sence contrary and repugnant to the Scope of the whole The refusal whereof will speak a design Partial Injurious and Precipitant but we hopeing on better Consideration you 'l do otherwise do expect as above to be sent us in such convenient time as we may examine them which cannot be in less time then Three weeks at least This demand its true you laugh at and call it a foolish generosity yet it being reasonable we insist on it For the frightful Apparitions which by opening our Books you say sent you to your Prayers c. we doubt your Frights or Fevers have been so great as to prevent your having any true Idea of Them or any loving concernment for Vs therein And not finding our selves haunted as you suggest we rather desire you to speak truth than offer false Sacrifice For conclusion to this and to try your Ingenuity whether your Method be to do as you would be done unto we put these following Questions I. Whether you are willing to be Charged out of all the Old and New Books Pamphlets and Sermons that your Brethren the Clergy have Wrote and Printed to stand and fall by them II. Are you willing we should Publickly Charge you with Errors or Mistakes out of any of the abovementioned and not beforehand give the Particular Instances to you For know ye that we expect Equal liberty with you to Charge as well as to be Charged III. Will you Personate all your Brethren as above both Dead and Living so as to be Charged out of their Books in their stead Your direct Answer we expect without any further Evasion Boast or Menace in the interim conclude Your abused because not sufficienly known Friends Richard Ashby John Hubbard Dan. Phillips Richard Case The Reply dated November the 16th 1698. Friends YOUR last does not a little astonish Us. 1 st That you should deny your Challenge which is as plain an one as Words in English can make it and truly very brave to all our Cloth that is to Nine or Ten thousand of us 2 ly That you affirm that we espoused Bugg's Cause when you or some of you cannot but know the contrary by one of us For when the last Summer you demanded of Hen. Meriton whether he would justify Bugg's Books written against you he Answer'd They contain'd Matters of Fact which he was not capable of judging of having not the Books to compare them with Francis Bugg's Writings yet told you that if his Citations were true you see then he made an If of it and therefore did not justify them he would justify such Expressions were Blasphemy But you are still offended at our unreasonable limitation of you as to the Place whence you are to fetch your Disputants But Friends did not you begin with us Did not you limit us when you rejected Francis Bugg and all others too that were not of our Cloth some of whom you know too well might have been very useful to us in this Service Nay did not you reject Francis Bugg for this reason because he had been Answer'd as you pretend over and over again and was unreasonable as if we had nothing to do but Actum agere Aud may not we say the same of your Hackny Disputants they have truged so long in that road and have been Spur'd and Gall'd by us enough already and therefore in reason we ought to turn them off awhile and give them rest till another occasion More plainly they have been Answered over and over already and are unreasonable Besides Your Church which you profess your selves so Zealous Members of have owned and approved of those Books we intend to quote and your selves have been known to admire and almost adore them and their Authors And therefore till you disclaim them you are as much concern'd to Vindicate them as the Authors themselves for by owning them you become joynt Authors and your Plea for them will be the Plea of Parties and not of Proxies But now When the Court of Equity will not relieve you you fly to Common Law but if yon give us no better proof of your skill in it then in this instance we shall have little reason to take your Counsel in Law Business Friends 'T is matter of Fact we Charge you with that we find such and such Blasphemous Expressions in your Books For matter of Right whether such Expressions are to be esteemed Blasphemy we shall leave it to the Judgment of the Auditory The matters of Fact your Authors have already owned them at least so much as will make good our Charge And for matter of Right whether such Expressions are Blasphemous or no we think the Common Law will not allow the accused Malefactor when he 's convicted of the Fact a right to Judge of the Law or whether his Fact hath been a breach of it Suppose we had Charged some of your Friends with Common Swearing by their Maker and they should not deny matter of Fact that they have said such words only they excuse them with a great deal of Artifice that they were spoken in Passion that they dropt from them rashly or their minds did a little run out or truly they do not affect such Speeches or they may see Cause otherwise to word them is there any Law or Equity such Men should be admitted in any Court in the World to Plead and Apologize for Common Swearing If matter of Fact be Prov'd or Own'd may not the Judge turn such Men out of the Court and pass the Definitive upon them The fact is own'd by their Men themselves that such Expressions are in their Books so much at leastwise as will prove the Charge and let the Auditory whom we appeal to as Judges in this Case determine whether Blasphemy or no. We dare affirm it will be easier for the People to Judge that such and such words are Blasphemy then such words are Swearing And we are Sorry to see you so Zealous for such Authors only to give them an opportunity to excuse Blasphemy At last you direct us to that Golden Rule in Divinity to do as we would be done by and think you have Gravell'd us with three Questions which you suppose we cannot Answer

Friends Your People have been ever ready to say Our Charges have been Lies and Forgeries and every where have run with this cry in their Mouths Lies all Lies because alas they never Read our Books or at least never compar'd them with your Authors Therefore we perceive that writing Books will not do but we must bring forth those that you have written at a Publick Meeting and lay them open before your deluded followers and desire them to see with their own Eyes and perhaps they may see such a Frightful Sight as they little expected there You might easily have discerned that our Charge affects the whole Body of your People it relating to Blasphemies so long and so often Printed and yet never Contradicted or Censured but asserted to be from Persons Infallible Blasphemies so often approved of by your Second day Meeting where all your Books are Examined and by an Index Expurgatorius Corrected tho written from the Mouth of the Lord. So that your Church hath owned them and we may justly Charge the Blasphemies of these Books upon it till they disown them But you seem to be much concerned for the Restraint we lay upon you so that you may not go out of this Diocess for your assistance But truely Sirs you see we have put the same Restraint upon our selves we will not go out of the Diocess perhaps but a little way from Home for ours we cannot think you can be at a want for help in such a Diocess where there are several Thousands of you Besides if you will have a little Patience the Persons you had probably designed for this Service may have work enough at Home ere long For we are Inclinable to believe that the like Charge to this will go thro many Diocesses in this Kingdom So that they may save their Powder and Shot till the Charge comes to their Door Friends tho we intend to Charge you with Blasphemy out of your own Books yet we cannot think it fit to give you the Authors Names Line and Page for that were to send you our Arguments before the day we shall use them that you might have time the more cunningly to Elude the force of them It is enough to let you see we intend to Charge you with Blasphemy as expressed in our last tho we should not be so foolishly generous as to tell you the very Place where we intend to assault you Besides we our selves have not yet read over some of your Books out of which as we are reading them there arises every day new matter for a Charge and so perhaps there may to the time of our Meeting For we can searce open a Book of yours but presently we are even frighted with such Apparitions that sends us to our Prayers for a Poor deluded People that are daily haunted with them And further we may add that you have their Books as well as we and would you read them over as we do ye your selves could not but see those Blasphemies we Charge you with being too big to escape your sight But you think it just the Authors of those Books out of which we extract our Charge should be permitted to speak for themselves You cannot but know that most of those Authors are Dead and as for them that are alive we have already heard them in your Prints to little purpose However they have no reason to Challenge it as a peculiar due to them to be the only Vindicators of their Cause seeing every Particular Member of your Church is concern'd in it as well as they So that it is a Charge upon every one of you all as well as upon the Authors of those Books you having Espoused them till they be disown'd and condemn'd by you To conclude we cannot see how it can consist with either Justice or Prudence to alter our Method for the Reasons given We therefore think it but a vain thing for you to trouble your selves or us with any more such Letters Poor People that are going blindfold to Samaria instead of Dothan the Lord open your Eyes to see where you are and whither you are going is the Prayer of your best of Friends tho you may possibly think as your greatest Enemies Hen. Meriton John Meriton Lau. Parke To Hen. Meriton John Meriton and Lau. Parke a Reply to the foregoing Letter dated Nov. the 9th 1698. Friends YOURS of the third Instant we received wherein is the date of your former in Answer to which when we in Friendly sort told you of that Omission it was not that we did Catch at any little escape of yours which did at least relate to the Letter if not to the Cause But to proceed As in our last we judge the term Challenge not proper to the offer we made whatever the Judgment of your Selves or Betters may be concerning it As for its Boldness and Pertness as you are pleased to term it we take it to be another Escape of your Memories to suppose it herein to exceed any of those as you say which were sent to the whole Host of Israel But such as it is we doubt not to make good and that in truth void of Wrath. As to Francis Bugg you did Espouse his Charge blindfold as appears by your after Inquiry and reading of our Books and did Espouse it by more ways then that one of Witnessing to the delivery of his Charge which none of our honest unprejudicate Neighbours would As for Quotations made by Bugg from our Books you say the pretended Answerers deny not the truth of them but betake themselves to their usual Palliating and Painting tricks c. This Assertion we have no cause to Credit but for the present will say that we know that in several Answers of ours to Books of this sort there is frequently detected false Quotations and his apparent Forgeries which if either you have not read or not observed it might have been well enough to forbear that scurrility of Painting and Tricks Now for your Charge you acknowledge it to be upon the whole Body of us and therefore as in our former we think you are not just in your limitation nor does your threat if you will have a little Patience c. fright us from still insisting on our Exceptions For as our last did declare our acceptance of such of your Propositions as were equal and fair and desired the rest might be agreeable and such as we are perswaded no ingenuous or just Persons would Evade or deny us So we still insist on them not knowing any Power or Dominion you have over us to overrule what we have so fairly offered to qualify your Limitations For if you intend to confine us as Respondents only who are within this Diocess it is reasonable to confine you not to Charge Persons or their Books more remote or absent For why should a Man whom you may Charge be obliged to Answer by Proxy when perhaps he can better defend himself the