Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	know_v	knowledge_n	see_v	2,585	5	3.6782	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A30450	A sermon preach'd before the King in the chappel at Whitehall on the third Sunday in Lent, being the 7th day of March, 1696/7 by the Right Reverend Father in God, Gilbert, Lord Bishop of Sarum.	Burnet, Gilbert, 1643-1715.	1697 (1697)	Wing B5906; ESTC R21494	14,772	38

to come in one single view Yet in this we see what is the Perfection of a Rational Nature It is Thought Acting with Liberty and Guided by Knowledge The better we know things the more we examine their Nature Causes and Effects the more we examine what is past and look into what may be before us the deeper we go into our selves to consider our Capacities and to examine our Defects the greater views we give our selves of Truth in general the more we open our Minds to know the Works of God the Courses of the Heavenly Bodies the Structures of this Earth with all the varieties with which it is both Beautified and Enriched but above all the more we consider this strange mixture of Light and Darkness of Soul and Body which meet in Man the wonderful Capacities of his Mind and the amusing Texture of his Body and when from all this we accustom our selves to think much of God and his Attributes when from mere Speculative views we descend to more Practical ones and view our selves and compare our Obligations and our Actions and from a strict review of what we have seen form a wise prospect of what may be before us and above all when a Man brings those more general Thoughts to an exact knowledg of himself and a strict rule of Life then does he become truly Wise and so grows up to be as sublime and as exalted a sort of Being as he can work himself up to Then a Man grows up to the height of his Nature when he is often turning his Thoughts towards some useful Piece of Knowledge or Observation when he reflects much and judges slowly but sedately and truly and frames his whole Life to a constant Pursuit of that which is the effect of so much Consideration and Care A Man needs but reflect a very little on what he feels within himself to be convinced of the truth of all this The more Ignorant and Implicite the more Rash and Inconstant the more Headstrong and Wilful he is he feels that he is the lamer and imperfecter sort of Creature He whose Knowledge is only imployed in the mean Business of Life or in the meaner Arts of Cozenage and Deceit he who is led or driven blindfold and who neither knows nor is concern'd to know how he ought to conduct himself but leaves himself to Chance or Fate to sudden Thoughts or unlook'd-for Accidents and is not the wiser for what is past nor the carefuller of what may be before him this Man I say is with all his Shows of Wealth and Greatness with all his Gilding and Trappings but a poor a blind and a miserable Creature a Slave to Humour or Interest to Envy or Ill-nature But he is of a much Nobler Order one is almost tempted to say of another sort of Beings who has opened his Mind and spread his Faculties wide to the acquiring of true and useful Knowledge who imploys his Thoughts and Time to the digesting of what he knows and the rendring it useful to himself and others and who makes it the study of his whole Life to reduce those his Theories to Practice and so lives by Thought and Reflection Souls so raised are aspiring to imitate that Original Perfection they are on a true Scent and in the right Way they may perhaps make some wrong Steps but it is impossible that those who take this Method can miscarry All must end happily with those who begin so well As God is Pure and Perfect in Himself so he is Holy in all his Ways and all those who arrive at good degrees of this Intellectual Purity are at the same time very exactly careful in observing the Moral Order of Things that Rule of their Actions and Deportment towards others These are reduced to Two general Heads of Truth and Goodness Truth is the Vertue which of all others Nature puts on us with the most forcible Impression It is indeed no other but the speaking and acting according to the Sense that we have of Things It is that which Nature always suggests it shoots it self ever first into our Thoughts and Words It is simple and uniform ever the same maintained without Care and managed without Study It requires a good degree of study to carry on false and deceitful Designs with proper Disguises with that contrivance and presence of Mind and with that Memory and Attention that are necessary to indirect Practises Whereas if a Man has but the Virtue and the Courage to be Honest he goes on with little anxiety trusting to his Integrity for that will both support and conduct him Truth is the first and the most indispensable of all the Obligations among Men. It is the Basis of Society and the Foundation of all the Confidence and Security that can be in the World Many Nations have differed much in their Notions concerning the other Virtues but all have agreed that within Society at least Truth ought to be maintain'd sacredly and the more open and free the more unreserved and hearty this Sincerity is it tends to establish Nations and Neighbourhoods upon a surer Bottom It is the same Vertue that makes us true in our Words just in our Dealings faithful to our Promises and exact in our Payments all arise from the same Root from an Integrity of Heart and a candid Sincerity in all that one professes says or does This is the speaking the Truth as one thinks and intends it and the maintaining the Truth as it has been spoken or promised This is the conforming our selves to the Divine Being who is true and faithful keeping his Covenant and Promises who is the God of Truth and who desires Truth in the inward parts Whereas the Men of Falshood and Deceit who love and tell Lyes who lie in wait to deceive who give themselves to Oppression and Extortion who take Advantages from the simplicity and credulity of other Persons to impose on them the more dextrously and who make Lies their refuge and their Strength and are not wanting to fortifie them with Oaths and Imprecations that they may vent them with the better Grace and give them the more Credit these are fallen from the Resemblance of the true and righteous God and are lapsed into the state of the Apostate and fallen Spirit whose Character is That he abode not in the truth because there is no truth in him who when he speaketh a Lye speaketh of his own that is his natural Stile and Dialect for he is a Lyar and the Father of it Here we must begin our Conformity to God as to our Morals It is a vain thing to pretend to make any farther Progress in Religion 'till we have learnt to practise this which is the first Element of Virtue There is no going further 'till we enter upon the diligent Practice of this as a careful Master will not carry his Scholars over the first Elements 'till they are once fully the Masters of these It is the

he think his Duty is also done God is pleased Scores are cleared and all is set to rights here is the superstitious conceit of Prayer On the other hand If one considers Prayer as a mean and method to raise within him high thoughts of God and low ones of himself a severe sense both of his Sins and Duties with earnest Addresses made to God and humble Resolutions formed in himself and thus uses Prayer as a real mean to humble and to purify himself to keep him in mind of his Duty and to direct him by fervent Addresses to obtain Divine Assistances he feels this is a Practice the continuance of which makes him really the better and upon such Performances he sees it is very reasonable for him to believe that according to the Promises made in the Gospel of the hearing and granting our Prayers that God will accept of such Addresses and will upon them make such returns as our Necessities or Occasions do require This in general then is certain That God has not imposed Religion on the World as it were to lay a Tax on men or raise a Tribute from them he needs nothing from us as we cannot give him any thing he has only commanded us to be Religious because it is the only possible way to exalt our Natures to compose our Minds and to govern our Actions It is that which renders us proper Objects of the Divine Love and Complacence and puts us in the certain way of attaining the utmost Happiness of which we are capable which is to see God as he is and to be made like unto him Our being made like God here is the certainest Method as well as the surest Earnest of our being to enjoy him for ever in that State of a more and perfect Conformity to him than we are capable of arriving at here What is this to be like God! Can a mortal and finite Nature stretch it self so far beyond its Bounds and Capacities as to become either Infinite or Eternal Can such frail and short-sighted Beings as we are become Omnipotent or Omniscient No surely Man is but Vanity and even men of high degree are a lie they are no less a Vanity than the rest but because they seem to be somewhat they are a lie The Kings and mighty Potentates of the Earth after all the swellings of Flattery and Vanity are when compared to God as nothing or less than nothing and vanity a diminution in Speech that wants not its beauty Wherein must we then resemble God or how can we hope to become like unto him It must be at a great distance and with an infinite disproportion that we can pretend to this Imitation God may be considered by us either in an Intellectual way as he is a Mind perfect in himself or in a Moral way as he is perfect in his Dealings with all others In both respects we may be able to find out proper Instances of conforming our selves to him He is a pure and perfect Spirit not clogged with Matter or any union or relation to Matter We are indeed chained down to a Body and lock'd up in it We are incumbred with all its pressures and drawn down to an earthliness and lowness by too great a commerce with sense and sensible Objects This captivates and depresses us nor can we quite throw it off or escape from it till the Prison can hold us no more and our Fetters fall off A disturbed Imagination does now viciate our Thoughts violent Passions and inflamed Appetites do strangely by a sort of Magick transform our Souls They become heavy and dull feeble and unactive and almost as Low and Insensible as Matter it self Then do we rise up to resemble God in the Intellectual way when we raise our Minds as much out of our Bodies and above them as we can when we deny our selves all commerce with those viciating Objects that corrupt our Minds and war against our Souls And when we reduce our selves to short allowances with relation to those more Innocent amusements and delights which may be necessary to the support of the Body and to the keeping it in such tune as to answer the occasions that our Souls may have with it or to give our Minds such easy and lively intervals between severer exercises a continuance in which would quickly wast or overset us that so we may return to them with greater advantage and prosecute them with more force But besides this a Man who would raise his Mind to be the greatest and noblest sort of Being to which it can be exalted ought to break himself all he can to all eagerness and vehemence and to a quick pursuit of his Passions or Pleasures He ought to shake off all those additional fetters which he has added to those under which he is put by the state of Life he is now made subject to He gives wings to his Soul who raises it often above Sense and Interest above the views of Pleasure or Advantage who directs it to Contemplate and to Meditate and by such practices is as it were making escapes from his Body and Bodily Objects who grows even ashamed of that necessary commerce which he must hold with this material World and therefore he not only prepares to leave it but is daily looking and longing for it In a word do not all Men feel that when then they let their Minds go far into Voluptuous Covetous or Ill-natur'd designs their Souls are as it were steep'd and soak'd into Matter they are depressed and debased by it and made capable of nothing that is high or generous By a long continuance in these things they lose their relish of better things as they become incapable of them Their Minds grow down to Earth and become little better than what the Libertines allow them to be mere sluggish and unactive Matter Is not this a Degeneracy and a Debasing of our Natures and a sinking them deeper and deeper into Matter and Corruption Whereas those and those only feel that they have Souls indeed who rise to the higher Regions of Thought and Meditation Who break themselves to Appetite and Passion to Humour and Interest and live in Thought and Reflection who awaken all those noble Seeds that are in their Natures and Exercise and Improve them and make themselves to become as much Minds as they can possibly be The Clog of the Body will be often taking them down yet they will rise up again and aspire after as much of Intellectual Light and Life as this state of Matter and Mortality will allow of A Second thing in the Intellectual way in which the considering God as our Pattern will direct us to raise and exalt our selves is when we consider him as Acting eternally upon a true and full view of all things and upon the purest and clearest Light with a perfect and unerring Wisdom It is true we are not capable of this sort of Perfection God sees all things past present and