Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	harden_v	heart_n	pharaoh_n	2,001	5	11.6391	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A40891	XXX sermons lately preached at the parish church of Saint Mary Magdalen Milkstreet, London to which is annexed, A sermon preached at the funerall of George Whitmore, Knight, sometime Lord Mayor of the City / by Anthony Farindon.; Sermons. Selections	Farindon, Anthony, 1598-1658.	1647 (1647)	Wing F434; ESTC R2168	760,336	744

People Crassum reddito cor populi hujus Make the heart of this people fatt and their eares Heavy lest they see with their Eyes and heare with their Eares and be converted Now to make their heart fatt and their eares heavy and to shut up their eyes is more then a bare permission is in a manner to destine and appoint them to Death most true if it can be proved out of this place that God did either But it is one thing to Prophesy a Thing shall be done and another to doe it Hector in Homer foretells Achilles Death and Herod the fall of Mezentius in Virgil and our Saviour the Destruction of Hierusalem but neither was Hectors Prophesy the cause of Achilles Death nor Herods of Mezentius nor our Saviour of the Destruction of Hierusalem vade dic Goe and tell them makes it a plame prediction what manner of men they would be to whom Christ was to speake stubborn and refractory and such as would harden their faces against the Truth If you will not take this Interpretation our Saviour is an Interpreter one of a Thousand nay one for all the world and tells the multitude that in them was fulfilled the Prophesy of Esay which saith By hearing you shall heare and not understand Matth. 13.14 for this Peoples heart is waxen fat and their eyes have they closed that they might not see And here if their eyes were shut it were fit one would Think they should be open'd True saith Chrysostome if they had been borne blinde or if this had been the immediate Act of God but because they wilfully shut their eyes he doth not say simply they do not see but seeing they do not see to shew what was the cause of their blindnesse even a perverse and froward heart they saw his Miracles they said he did them by Beelzebub He tells them that he is come to shew them the will of God they are peremptory and resolute that he is not of God and bring corrupt Judges against their own sight and understanding they were justly punisht with the losse of both For it is just that he should be blind that puts out his own eyes Yet was not this incrassation or blinding through any malevolent influence from God but this action is therefore attributed to God because whatsoever light he had afforded them whatsoever means he had offered them whatsoever he did for them was through their own fault and stubbornness of no more use to them then colours to a blinde man or as the Wise-man speaks a messe of Pottage on a Dead-mans Grave We might here Sylvam ingentem commovere meet with many other places of Scripture like to this but we will touch but one more and it is that which is so common in mens mouthes and at the first hearing conveighs to our understanding a shew and appearance of some positive act in God which is more then a bare permission For God tells Moses in plain termes Indurabo cor Pharaonis I will harden Pharaohs heart Exod. 7.3 And here I will not say with Garson aliud est litera aliud est literalis sensus that the letter is one thing and the litteral sense another Hil de Trin. l. 8. but rather with Hilary Optimus est lector qui dictorum in telligentiam ex dictis potius expectet quam imponat retulerit magis quam attulerit he is the best reader of Scripture who doth rather wait and expect what sense the words will beare then on the sudden rashly fasten what sense he please and carry away the meaning not bring one nor cry this must be the sense of the Scripture which his presumption formerly had set down Sure I am none of the Fathers which I have seen make this induration and hardning of Pharaohs heart a positive act of God not Saint Augustine himself who was more likely to look this way then any of the rest although he interprets this place of Scripture in divers places Augustin Feriâ 4 post 3. Dominic in Quadrages Pharaoh non potentiae sed patientiâ Dei indurabatur id Ser. 88. I will but mention one and it is in one of his Lent Sermons Quoties auditur cor Pharaonis Dominum obdurasse c. As often as it is read in the Church that God did harden Pharaohs heart some scruple presently ariseth not onely in the mindes of the ignorant Laity but of the Learned Clergy and for these very words the Manichees most Sacrilegiously condemned the old Testament and Marcion rather then he would yeeld that good and evil proceeded from the same God did run upon a grosser impiety and made another two principles one of good and another of evil But we may lay this saith he as a sure ground and an infallible Axiome Deus non deserit nisi prius deserentem God never forsakes any man till he first forsake God When we continue in sin when the multitude of our sins beget despair and despair obduration when we adde sin to sin and to make up the weight that sinks us when we are the worse for Gods mercy and the worse for his Judgements when his mercy hardens us and his light blindes us God then may be said to harden our hearts as a Father by way of upbrayding may tell his prodigal and Thristlesse son ego talem te feci t is my love and goodnesse hath occasioned this I have made thee so by sparing thee when I might have struck thee Dead I have nourished this thy pertinacy although all the Fathers love and indulgency was grounded upon a just hope and expectation of some change and alteration in his son Look upon every circumstance in the story of Pharaoh and we cannot finde one which was not as a Hammer to malleat and soften his stony heart nor do we read of any upon whom God did bestow so much paines His ten plagues were as ten Commandements to let the people go and had he relented at the first saith Chrysostom he had never felt a second so that it will plainly appear that the induration and hardning Pharaohs heart was not the cause but the effect of his malice and rebellion Magnam mansuetudinem contemptae gratiae major sequi solet ira vindictae for the contempt of Gods mercy and there is mercy even in his Judgements doth alwayes make way for that induration which calls down the wrath of God to revenge it We do not read that God decreed to harden Pharaohs heart but when Pharaoh was unwilling to bow when he was deaf to Gods Thunder and despised his Judgements and scorn'd his Miracles God determined to leave him to himself to set him up as an ensample of his wrath to work his Glory out of him to leave him to himself and his own lusts which he foresaw would lead him to ruine and destruction But if we will tie our selves to the letter we may finde these several expressions in several Texts 1. Pharaoh hardned his heart 2.