Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	life_n	love_n	love_v	2,826	5	6.6025	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A44673	A discourse concerning the Redeemer's dominion over the invisible world, and the entrance thereinto by death some part whereof was preached on occasion of the death of John Hoghton Esq, eldest son of Sir Charles Hoghton of Hoghton-Tower in the county of Lancaster, Baronet / by John Howe ...	Howe, John, 1630-1705.	1699 (1699)	Wing H3021; ESTC R19328	73,289	250

only capable of Childish things Or is it a reasonable imagination that by how much we are more capable of action we shall be the more useless and have the less to do We may further lastly add that which is not the least considerable 4. That all the active Services and usefulness we are capable of in this World is but transitory and lies within the compass of this temporary State of things which must have an end Whereas the business of the other World belongs to our final and eternal State which shall never be at an end The most extraordinary qualifications for service on Earth must hereafter if not by the cessation of the active Powers and Principles themselves as Tongues Prophecies and such knowledge as is uncommon and by peculiar vouchsafement afforded but to a few for the help of many ●hese endowments designed for the Propagation of the Christian Faith and for the stopping Mouths of gainsayers must in the use and exercise at least by the cessation of the objects and occasions fail and cease and vanish away 1 Cor. 13.8 The like may be said of courage and fortitude to contend against prevailing wickedness skill ability with external advantages to promote the impugned interest of Christ and Christian Religion of all these there will be no further use in that other World They are all to be considered as means to the end But how absurd were it to reckon the means of greater importance than the end it self The whole present constitution of Christs Kingdom on Earth is but preparatory and introductive to the Celestial Kingdom And how absurd were it to prefer this Temporary Kingdom to the Eternal one and present serviceableness to this to perpetual service in the other 'T is true that service to God and our Redeemer in this present state is necessary in its own kind highly acceptable to God and justly much valued by good Men. And we ought our selves willingly to submit to serve God in a meaner capacity in this World while it is his pleasure we shall do so especially if God should have given any signification of his mind concerning our abode in the Flesh some longer time as 't is likely he had done to the Apostle Paul Phil. 1.24 because he says he was confident and did know that so it should be ver 25. we should be abundantly satisfied with it as he was But to suppose an abode here to be simply and universally more eligible is very groundless and unreasonable And were a like case as if a person of very extraordinary abilities and accomplishments because he was useeful in some obscure Country Village is to be looked upon as lost because his Prince being informed of his great worth calls him up to his Court and finding him every way fit employs him in the greatest affairs of State To summ up this matter whereas the means are always according to usual estimate wont to derive their value from their end Time from Eternity This judgment of the case that usefulness in this present State is of greater consequence and more important than the affairs of the other World breaks all measures overturns the whole frame and inverts the Order of things makes the means more valuable than the end Time more considerable than Eternity and the concernments of a state that will soon be over greater than those of our fixed permanent everlasting State that will never be over If we would allow our selves the liberty of reasoning according to the measure and compass of our narrow minds byast and contracted by private interest and inclination we should have the like plausible things to think concerning such of ours as Die in Infancy and that when they have but newly look't into this World are presently again caught out of it that if they had lived what might they have come to How pleasant and diverting might their Childhood have been How hopeful their Youth How useful their Riper Age But these are commonly thoughts little wiser than theirs and proceed from a general infidelity or misbelief that whatsoever is not within the compass of this little sorry World is all emptiness and nullity Or if such be pious and more considering 't is too plain they do not however consider enough how great a part it is of Divine magnificence to take a reasonable immortal Spirit from animating a piece of well figured Clay and presently adjoyn it to the general assembly above How glorious a a change is made upon their Child in a moment How much greater a thing it is to be adoring God above in the Society of Angels than to be dandled on their knee or enjoy the best provisions they can make for them on Earth That they have a part to act upon an Eternal Stage and though they are but lately come into Being are never to go out of being more but to be everlasting Monuments and Instruments of the glory of their great Creator and Lord Nor perhaps is it considered so deeply as it ought that it hath seemed meet to the Supream Wisdom upon a most important reason in the case of lengthning or shortning the Lives of Men not ordinarily or otherwise than upon a great occasion to interrupt the tendencies of Natural Causes But let Nature run its Course For otherwise very frequent innovations upon Nature would make Miracles cheap and common and consequently useless to their proper great ends which may be of greater significancy in the course of Gods Government over the World than some addition to this or that Life can be worth And therefore should this consideration repress our wonderment why God doth not when he so easily can by one touch upon this or that second Cause prevent or ease the grievous pains which they often suffer that love him and whom he loves He reckons it fitter and they will in due time reckon so too themselves when the wise methods of his Government come to be unfolded and understood that we should any of us bear what is ungrateful to us in point of pain loss of Friends or other unpleasing events of providence than that he should make frequent and less necessary breaches upon the common order and course of Government which he hath establish't over a delinquent sinful World Whereupon it is a great piece of wisdom and dutifulness towards our great Lord not to pray absolutely peremptorily or otherwise than with great submission and deference to his wise and holy pleasure for our own or our Friends lives ease outward prosperity or any external or temporary good thing For things that concern our Spiritual and eternal welfare his good and acceptable will is more expresly declared and made known already and before hand But as to the particular case of the usefulness of any Friend or Relative of ours in this or the other State the matter must be finally left to the arbitrement and dispose of him who hath the Keys o● Hades and of Death And when by his turn of

forthwith depart willing or unwilling ready or unready 6. Souls that go out of this World of ours on the turn of this Key go not out of being He that hath this Key of Death hath also the Key of Hades a Key and a Key When he uses the former to let them out from this he uses the latter to give them their Inlet into the other World and into the one or the other part of it into the upper or the lower Hades as the state of their case is and doth require Our business is not now with Pagans to whom the Oracles of God are unknown If it were the best and wisest of them who so commonly speak of Souls going into Hades never thought of their going no whither nor therefore that they were nothing They had reasons then which they thought cogent that induced them tho' unassisted with Divine Revelation to conclude they surviv'd their forsaken bodies And what else could any unbrib'd understanding conclude or conceive When we find they have powers belonging to them which we can much more easily apprehend capable of being acted without help from the body than by it We are sure they can form thoughts purposes desires hopes for it is matter of fact they do it and coherent thoughts and thoughts arising from thoughts one from another Yea thoughts abstracted from any thing corporeal the notions of right and wrong of Vertue and Vice of moral good and evil with some agreeable resolves Thoughts quite above the sphere of matter so as to form a notion of the Mind it self of a spiritual Being as unexceptionable a one as we can form of a body Yea of an Original self subsistent Mind and Spi●i● the Former and Maker of all other T is much more apprehensible since we certainly know that all this is done that it is done without any help of the body than how flesh or blood or bones or nerves or brains or any corporeal th●ng should contribute to such Methods of thinking or to any thought at all And if it can be conceiv●d that a Spirit can act without dependence on a body what should hinder but we may as well conceive it to subsist and live without such dependence And when we find this power of thought belongs to somewhat in us that lives since the deserted Carkass thinks not how reasonable is it to suppose that as the body lives not of it self or life is not essential to it for life may be retir'd and gone and it remain as we see it doth the same body still that the soul to which the power of thought belongs l●ves of it self not independently on the first cause but essentially so as to receive life and essence together from that cause or life included in its essence so as that it shall be the same thing to it to be and to live And hereupon how obvious is it to apprehend that the Soul is such a thing as can live in the Body which when it doth the Body lives by it a precarious borrowed life and that can live out of the Body leaving it when it doth so to drop and die These Sentiments were so reasonable as generally to prevail with the more deeply thinking part of Mankind Philosophers of all sorts a few excepted whose Notions were manifestly formed by vicious inclination in the Pagan World where was nothing higher than Reason to govern But we have life and immortality brought to light in the Gospel and are forewarned by it that these will be the measures of the final Judgment to give eternal life at last to them who by a patient continuance in well-doing seek honour glory and immortality To the rest indignation and wrath c. because there is no respect of persons with God As supposing the discovery of another World even by natural light much more by the addition of supernatural to be so clear as that the Rule of the Vniversal Judgment even for all is most righteously to be taken from hence and that there is nothing but a resolution of living wickedly to be opposed to it It is also no slight consideration that a susceptibleness of Religion should among the Creatures that dwell on Earth be so appropriate and peculiar to Man and some rare Instances excepted as far diffused as Humane Nature So as to induce some very considering Men of the Antients as well as Moderns both Pagans and Christians to think Religion the more probable specifying Difference of Man than Reason And whence should so common an impression be but from a cause as common Or how can we avoid to think that this signature upon the Soul of Man a capacity of Religion should be from the same hand that formed the spirit of Man within him and that a Natural Religiousness and Humane Nature it self had the same Author But who sees not that Religion as such hath a final reference to a future state He was no despicable Writer tho' not a Christian that positively affirmed hope towards God to be essential to Man and that they that had it not were not partakers of the Rational Nature 'T is so much the more a deplorable and monstrous thing that so many not only against the light of their own Reason but of Divine Revelation are so industrious to unman themselves And having so effectually in a great degree done it really and in practice aim to do it in a more compendious way notionally and in principle too And make use or shew of Reason to prove themselves not to be reasonable Creatures or to divest themselves of the principal dignity and distinction of the Rational Nature And are incomparably herein more unnatural than such as we commonly count 〈◊〉 upon themselves who only act against their own bodily life but these against the much nobler life of their Soul They against the life of an individual These against their own whole species at once And how deplorable is their case that count it their interest to be in no possibility of being happy when yet their so great dread of a future state as to urge them upon doing the most notorious violence to their own faculties to rid themselves of it is a very convictive Argument of its reality For their dread still pursues and sticks close to them This shews it lies deep in the nature of things which they cannot alter The terrible Image is still before their Eyes and their principal Refuge lies only in diverting in not attending to it And they can so little trust to their own Sophistical reasonings against it that when they have done all they can they must owe what they have of ease and quiet in their own Minds not so much to any strength of reason they apprehend in their own thoughts as in not thinking A bold jeast may sometimes provoke others laughter when it doth not extinguish their own fear A suspicion a formido oppositi will still remain a misgiving that they cannot