Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	israel_n	lord_n	people_n	2,601	5	4.8657	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A65225	The repairer of the breach a sermon preached at the cathedral church of Glocester, May 29, 1660, being the anniversary of His Maiesty's birth-day, and happy entrance into his emperial city of London / by Thomas Washbourn.	Washbourne, Thomas, 1606-1687.	1660 (1660)	Wing W1026; ESTC R38494	23,222	34

Many houses shall be desolate even great and fair without inhabitant This this was the cause that the Vineyard of the Lord of Hosts that is the house of Israel and the men of Juda his pleasant plant was so eaten up so troden down vers. 5. This was the cause the Christian Church went to wrack by persecution under Heathen Emperors Almighty God making them his Rod to scourge his backsliding people into repentance and better obedience for we are not unlike a childs Top that never goes upright without whipping So St. Cyprian speaking of the times of Decius Quia traditam nobis divinitus disciplinam pax longa corruperat jacentem fidem pene dixerim dormientem censura coelestis erexit Because long peace had corrupted the good order and discipline of the Church delivered to us by divine Authority the wisdom of God thought fit by the hand of his justice to awake the dull and drousie and almost dead faith of Christians And from the same cause Eusebius derives the Original of Dioclesians persecution in whose words as in a glasse we may see the face of our own times with all its deformities take the Latine for want of the Greek Postquam vero res nostrae per nimiam libertatem ad mollitiem ac segnitiem degenerarunt alii alios sunt odio contumeliis prosecuti c. After that our affairs through too great a liberty degenerated into sloth and delicacy and that one began to prosecute another with hate and contumely and when we our selves onely opposed our selves with words of strife and contention when dissimulation and hypocrisie was grown to the heighth of malice Et qui pastcros nostri videbantur repulsa pietatis norma matuis inter se contentionibus fuerunt inflammati c. And they that were or pretended to be our Pastors and Ministers casting off the rule of piety blew the coals of discord among themselves till it grew to a flame and every one made his own ambition play the Tyrant as he listed when such was the hardnesse of our hearts that we were not touched with any sense or feeling thereof nor endeavoured to appease Gods wrath but as if we thought God did not regard and would not punish our sins but were such an one as the Heathen phansied him Nec ben pro meritis capitur nec tangitur ira We ceased not to add sin unto sin and then behold the divine judgment after its usual manner began to visit us by degrees Ita ut persecutio à fratribus qui in militia erant exordia sumeret So that our persecution took its rise and beginning from our brethren that were in the militia then then I say according to that of the Prophet Lam. 2. The Lord covered the daughter of Sion with a clowd in his anger and cast down from heaven unto the earth the beauty of Israel and remembred not his foot-stool in the day of his anger The Lord swallowed up all the habitations of Jacob and hath thrown down in his wrath the strong holds of the daughter of Juda he hath brought them down to the ground he hath polluted the Kingdom and the Princes thereof he hath encreased in the daughter of Juda mourning and lamentation and he hath violently taken away his tabernacle he hath destroyed the places of the assembly The Lord hath caused the solemn feasts to be forgotten in Sion and hath despised in the indignation of his anger the King and the Priest By this we have discovered what is meant by the old waste places the ruined foundations the breach or breaches that were made in the Israel of God with the reason thereof which hath opened my passage to my second Query By whom the waste places should be built the ruined foundations raised the breaches repaired the paths restored Ex te erunt And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places c. In the seventh chapter of Nehemia there is a long catalogue of the people the Priests and the Levites that had leave from the King of Babylon to go up to Jerusalem and build the waste places especially the Temple their whole number is computed to be forty two thousand three hundred and threescore vers. 66. among whom the grandees or chief are expressed by name vers. 7. and of those I find most honorable mention of two above all the rest as upon whose shoulders rested the main of the work Nehemia and Zerubbabel and therefore we shall insist somewhat upon both as we meet with them recorded in sacred story And first of Nehemias He was cup-bearer to King Artaxerxes as he himself tells us chap. 1. 11. and a great favourite he was as appears chap. 2. for when he commiserating the miserable estate of his native country presented a cup of wine to the King with a heavy heart which discovered it self in a sad face the King said unto him Why is thy countenance sad seeing thou art not sick this is nothing else but sorrow of heart vers. 2. To which Nehemia replied vers. 3. first praying for the King though a heathen as his duty was then telling him the cause of his sadnesse Let the King live for ever Why should not my countenance be sad when the City the place of my fathers sepulcher lieth waste and the gates thereof are consumed with fire Then the King said unto me For what d dost thou make request vers. 4. It seems the King was willing to grant him whatsoever he should ask in reason Observe the piety of the man before he petitions the King he makes supplication to the King of heaven and that was the sure way to speed for the hearts of Kings are in the hand of God So I prayed saith he to the God of heaven and I said unto the King if it please the King and if thy servant have found favour in thy sight that thou wouldst send me unto Juda unto the City of my fathers sepulchers that I may build it Whereupon the King dispatcheth him with a Commission and credential Letters to the Governours beyond the River that they might convey him over to Juda and with a Letter to Asaph the keeper of the Kings Forrest that he might give him timber to make beams for the gates of the palace which appertained to the house and for the wall of the City and for the house of God vers. 8. and to secure him by the way for they that enterprise good and great designes as this was are like to meet with strong opposition the King sent Captains of the Army and Horsemen with him vers. 9. Notwithstanding he like a prudent man resolves to carry on the businesse more by policy than power He comes to Jerusalem the Metropolis or head City of Judea and was there some time before he told any man what God h●d put in his heart to do at Jerusalem vers. 12. Then he takes a private survey of the ruined walls

they came croaking about us like the Frogs of Egypt and swarming like the Locusts out of the bottomlesse pit Barclay in his Icon Animorum writing of the several Sects in Religion which he had observed in England in King James his reign tells a story of a father and his two sons who constituted or made up a Church between themselves but these three not long agreeing the two sons Excommunicated the Father and at last one son the other so that these three made three distinct Churches in their conceipts and each one the true What would he have said had he lived to see the many factions and fractions Divisions and Subdivisions which have spawn'd since amongst us Our Church being well likened by the last Arch-bishop of Canterbury in his Speech at his death to an Oak cleft to shivers with wedges made out of its own body and at every cleft prophanenesse and irreligion entring in It was a most charitable wish of judicious Master Hooker and most seasonable for our times in his answer to Master Travers Supplication in Queen Elizabeths reign Take it in his own words for they are excellent and deserve as Job speaks in another case to be graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever to be so deeply imprinted in our hearts as never to be obliterated or rased out Since saith he there can come nothing of contention but the mutual waste of the parties contending till a common Enemy dance in the ashes of them both I do heartily wish that the grave advice which Constantine gave for uniting his Clergy so many times upon so small occasions in so lamentable sort divided or rather the strict commandment of Christ to his that they should not be divided at all may at length if it be his blessed will prevail so farre at least in this corner of the Christian world to the burying and quite forgetting of strife together with the causes which have either bred it or brought it up that things of small moment never disjoyn them whome one God one Lord one Faith one Spirit one Baptisme bands of so great force have linked that a respective eye towards things wherewith we should not be disquieted make us not as through infirmity the very Patriarchs themselves sometimes were full gorged unable to speak peaceably to their own brother Finally that no strife may ever be heard of again but this who shall hate strife most who shall pursue Peace and Vnity with swiftest paces And to this I hope all my Brethren of the Ministery will say Amen and make some amends for the Divisions and Breaches which too many of them through their former misguided zeal brought into the Church by their earnest endeavours for a happy settlement of all matters Ecclesiastical and by their humble submission to that Order and Discipline in the Church as is or shall be established by lawful Authority But behold more Breaches yet the Hebrew {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} is rendred by the LXX {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} a Builder a Maker or Repairer of hedges Now the Jews have a saying Massora sepes est Legis Divitiarum sepes decimae that as their Massora was the hedge of their Divine Law comprehending every verse word and letter of it so Tythes were the hedge of their riches and beyond a hedge in this respect as the same worthy Author hath very well observed for an hedge doth only fence and preserve that which is contained but Tythes and Offerings did more because they procured increase of the heap out of which they were taken witnesse that saying of God himself Mal. 3. 10. Bring ye all the Tythes into the storehouse and prove me therewith saith the Lord of Hosts if I will not open you the windows of heaven and pour you out a blessing that there shall not be room enough to receive it Yet was this hedge going down apace voted away from the Church by the Phanatick party who had devoured them in their imaginary hopes and taken ere this time all the houses of God in their possession if they had not been in the nick of time strangely prevented The onely way they thought to enrich themselves was to impoverish the Church and ceaze upon the poor remains thereof And whereas Abraham long before the Law was given by Moses and therefore could not be ceremonial paid Tythes of all the spoiles these men would make a spoile of all the Tythes then the Priests received Tythes from the Soldiers now the Soldiers would have taken Tythes from the Priests though to the ruine of themselves and their posterities and the whole Nation that would have been involved both in the guilt and punishment as was the whole Nation of the Jews for the same sin Mal. 3. 9. For my part I must confesse my fears that the curse which hath been upon out Nation of late years for this sin of sacriledge amongst other great and crying sins will not be taken off clearly for we see Gods hand is stretched out still against us in the late plague of immoderate rain and waters which may breed a dearth if not pestilential diseases till satisfaction be made by restoring what hath been wrested and ravished from the Church It was the opinion of that great advancer of learning Sir Francis Bacon in his considerations touching pacification and edification of the Church presented to King James and well-worthy the consideration ofthis present Parliament That all Parliaments since the 27 and 31 of Hen. 8. who gave away Impropriations from the Church stand in some sort obnoxious and obliged to God in conscience to do somewhat for the Church to reduce the Patrimony thereof to a competency for since they have debarred Christs spouse of a great part of her dowry it were reason they made her a competent Joynture And blessed be God that put it into the Kings heart to take care that all Bishops Deans and Chapters should out of their Impropriations augment the small Vicaridges belonging to them in such a reasonable proportion as the Tythes will well bear And 't is to be hoped that this will be a leading-card to invite and draw on others of the Nobility and Gentry to do the like as some of them have done already to their honor be it spoken and therein have preveated his Majesties desires in that kind and began to us I could name some of them but that I think they are sufficiently well known to the world Consider next the ruines and breaches in the State Armies raised Battles fought Cities besieged taken sacked Countries harassed plundred Parliaments purged dissolved at the pleasure of a thing call'd Protector or the Grandees of an Army the House of Peers abolished another of mock-Lords instituted all the fundamental Laws violated A breach upon our liberties by imprisoning men without shewing cause denying the people their voices in a free election of Knights and Burgesses fingit solemnia Campus Et non