Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	maintain_v	zeal_n	zealous_a	17	3	9.5072	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A39566	Christianismus redivivus Christndom both un-christ'ned and new-christ'ned, or, that good old way of dipping and in-churching of men and women after faith and repentance professed, commonly (but not properly) called Anabaptism, vindicated ... : in five or six several systems containing a general answer ... : not onely a publick disputation for infant baptism managed by many ministers before thousands of people against this author ... : but also Mr. Baxters Scripture proofs are proved Scriptureless ... / by Samuel Fisher ...	Fisher, Samuel, 1605-1665.; Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691.	1655 (1655)	Wing F1049; ESTC R40901	968,208	646

proved to be his Luke 12.52.53 Math. 24.9.2 Tim. 3.12 1 Cor. 1.27 2 Cor. 6.4 5. So that where there 's none of this I avouch the Gospell in its purity is not there though where these are the Gospel is not the cause for that is men lusts and flesh fighting against the light but the only the occasion whereupon they arise when Satan the strong man holds the house the goods are all in peace but when Christ the stronger man comes to storm him out there 's contention in hearts houses Towns and Countries as when Christ came to Ierusalem all was in an uproar and when Paul came with his Gospel to Ephesus Athens Iconium Lystra Derbe lewd fellows of the baser sort were set on by others to raise tumults for truth tormented them into rage thus we often judge of Causes as good or bad right or wrong by the effects that flow from them but to reason upon a cause as good or ill true or false right or wrong according to the might or moaness the abilities or defects of the persons that stand up for it is the right way to wrong it indeed sith the Antichristian cause hath the mighty wise and prudent Priests and Potentates of the world for its Patrons when the poor only for the most part receive Christs Gospell and the strength that God ordains in defence thereof against the persecutor is the mouths of Babes and Sucklings Causes are to be rejected as wrong and false according to the defects and weakness that is discovered to be in the Arguments that are brought to maintain and not by the weakness and defects that may seem to be in those that are more zealous then able to mannage them if there appear to be weight in the Arguments these if strong however weakly and babishly propounded will carry the cause in the conscience of any but such Priest-be-charmed Christians as in Charity to their Churchmen are resolved to yield themselves up to be carried away with every wind of doctrine that passes from them and covering the weakness of them to be whifled any way by such arguments as the men themselves that make them are fain to grant to be weak to prove what they are brought for for no Argument is weak that is sufficient to evince the thing it s used in proof of though it fall from the mouth of never so weak a man if a weak feeble hand letfall an heavy Axe upon it or a sharp sword even the sword of the Spirit the word of God that is quick and powerfull it may serve to cut off the Popes head Tripple Crown and all but if the Pope himself and all his children which are the ablest Humanists in the world come out to warre against Christ and his cause with reeds and rushes blind non sequiturs weak and broken Consequences they must ride back to Rome for stronger swords or else they may force fools into conformity to their follies but never guide wise men after the spirit to believe their cause to be good as therefore t is not good that an ill cause that hath but weak Arguments to uphold it should be owned for good either in Charity or upon pretence of ability in the persons that patronize it as the Clergies crooked cause of Infant-sprinkling is for what saies the Parish to those poor ones in it that entertain the Gospel are you wiser than a whole Synod of able Orthodox Divines so it is a thousand pitties that a good cause that hath strong Arguments enough from Scripture and reason to prove it right should be wronged so as to be rejected as rotten yet so Christs true baptism is through the defects of the persons called Anabaptists who are supposed at least to have more zeal then ability to prove it of which sin of wronging a right cause upon account of such defects even the cause of Christs true baptism which in his strength those Babes that are baptized with it are not only zealous but able to make good against the Ablest Baby-Baptist that is among you I know no men under the Sun more guilty then you Clergy men who take your advantages to cry out the lowder against it as error by the defects of Christs Disciples that plead and practise it of whom you say commonly as you say complementally of your selves here they have more zeal then abilities to maintain it yea verily you who seem here whether more simply or more simulatorily who knows not so to implore the charitable benevolence of well disposed people to cover the weakness of your Arguments and not to suffer your cause of Infant-sprinkling to suffer throw your defects and inabilities to maintain it are men so far from teaching facienda faciendo from doing to others as you would be done to that you rather disclaim and proclaim those Arguments of ours as weak which as feeble a folk as we are are strong enough to storm you out of your strongest holds and cause that cause to be despised under pretence of our defects which though weak in our selves and pretending to little of that outward accomplishment which you call ability yet throw Christs word assertaining it to be his and his spirit assisting us thereunto we have both zeal and ability to maintain who is it I trow that trumpets about the eminency and learnedness of their party and illiteracy of the Anabaptists whereby to render the way the more contemptible more then the Priesthood who charm their people against the receipt of the Gospel in such sort as the Pharisees of old when they said are you also deceived have any of the Rulers of the Pharisees believed on him but this people that know not the law are cursed Ioh. 7.47 48 49. So brags Dr Featly and his fellows despising the way of dipping viz. joint suffrages of so many Bishops in such a Synod as for the Anabaptists they are a few mean sylly men and women an illiterate and sottish sect the father and head of whom quoth he was Nicholas Stock and a very blockhead was he p. 164. Simple rude Mechani●ks Russet Rabbies Apron Levites whom we own not quoth he but detest and abominate p. 113 who know not how to dispute for truth because they know not the original and cannot conclude syllogistically in mood and figure p. 1.2 Thus Featly defeats them in their cause by dilating on their defects and which of you almost do not confirm your people against their cause by their infirmities of one kind or other like flies you feast your selves upon their sores and let go their sounder parts you make much of their little to your purpose you make your best out of their worst and out of their personal weaknesses strengthen your selves and others against the truth which wise men know is nevertheless truth for the poors receiving it you root in their very excrements whereby to find matter to make their good cause bad and yet here oh how mendicant of other mens mercy not only

b. c. darians in the School of Christ but Sirs what need so much peccavi and precari if your ware were currant it would go off with acceptance without such a deal of cap and congee and pittiful intreaty to the Reader to cover the weakness of your Arguments the strength of which onely should cause him to gather the goodness of your cause and not strong intreaty to take it for good though the Arguments you plead it by are but weak Vino vendibili non opus est haedera if your Arguments and reasons for baby-baptism be strong and solid your Reader if rational will receive them if weak as you say they are he is a Reader scarce worth writing reason to who will be prevailed with by your desire so to cover their weakness as in charity to suffer himself to be overcome and carried away by them notwithstanding that their weakness to close with you in your cause and to be beaten into a belief of your baptism as good though it hath but broken reeds and bulrushes to maintain it by the force of bare beggings and beseechings or if in this request of yours to us to cover the weakness of your Arguments your meaning is not that we should be so silly as to build our belief and practice upon them though weak by your own confession whose they are but onely that we should not publish discover and divulge their weakness to the world but in charity be content to think our think or to see and say nothing truly Sirs what others will do at your request in this kind I know not but I assure you I cannot possibly for my part grant your desire in this case forasmuch as your selves have engaged me several waies not to be silent on pain of giving away the cause which if it were onely my own too the matter were so much the less you should have it with all my heart yea verily and my own life too to do your souls good for I know I could freely part with it to be a means of effecting your salvation but since it is the cause of God which he hath intrusted me with the pleading of against you who presume to enter the lists against it with such silly tools and weak weapons on behalf of a Babish-baptism which is not from heaven but of men I dare not give place so far as in foolish pitty to spare the Cittie Babylon or in Charity not to bewray a Breach or weakness in her walls of defence when I spie it for that were in Charity to betray the truth of of God and such Charity is more Antichristian by far then Christian what ere you call it and such as could have small hope of acceptance before God however esteemed of among men wherefore I desire you to have me excused if I cannot in charity cover the weakness of your Arguments for in Charity to poor souls that are led aside from the way of truth by your piteous pious pretences and weak reasonings for your way 〈◊〉 I am concerned in the very next place after I have done with this of yours to the Reader to discover to the world the weakness of them besides sith you have made so bold with your selves as to proclaime the weakness of your own Arguments for Infant-baptism I hope the Counties of Kent and Sussex will consider this that their choise Ministry that stood up to maintain Infant-Baptism at Ashford did after in their own Account theerof give out of their own accord that there was weakness in the Arguments they brought for that purpose men mutire nefas I hope it shall be no offence to you for me to second you in your own saying 't is you who have publisht your arguments to be weak my business shall be only publickly to prove them so to be as you assert them yet if it be offensive to you it shall be no wonder to me for I know already that you can bear it better to have your Disputation ly under disgrace and disparagement under shame and censure of weakness from your selves in print then from your supposed Adversary and true Friend my self so much as in a private Letter only and that some men as the Proverb is may more safely steal the horse then some so much as peep o're the hedge Pre. Not to suffer the cause to be wronged thorow the desects of those who had more zeal to maintain it then abilities c. Post. T is both usual and lawfull for us to judge of causes by the effects that naturally and necessarily flow from them for qualis causa i. e. naturalis per se talis effectus Retró e. g. Infant-sprinkling hath been a cause efficient and per se from whence much evil hath necessarily crept into the world for it hath been a means of confounding the Church and the World together of letting the Gentiles or Nations by whole sale into the outter Court of filling the world with meer nominal Christians and carnal Christianity whereby they have got advantage ever since to tread down the holy City and true worship and worshippers as Heresie Hereticks of bringing the nations into one Catholick Church whereof the Pope was universall Bishop or overseer for ages together thorow the eyes of his creatures the Clergy the very Stirrup whereby he and his Ministers who have blended themselves into a blind and beastly uniformity have become Masters of the Kingdomes and have got up to ride them a plea and president for traditions it being one it self which ever make Gods commands void and mens worship of God in vain an inlet of these and innumerable more mischiefs and absurdities for posito hoc uno absurdo sequuntur mille therefore it is undoubtedly an ill cause also t is lawfull to judge of a cause by the common Consequents which come from it not as caused properly but meerly occasioned by it and in respect of which it is called only causa sine quâ non i. e. that without which the other would not be and yet no other then the bare accidentall occasions of those effects which flow from something else as the cause thereof perse and most especially when those consequents are declared by the word of God to be such as will upon that occasion universally and unavoidably come to pass and thus we may give a shrew'd guess that our cause is good viz. that our Gospel Ministery Church-way and Baptism is the true one because we see it is seconded now and ever hath been with what it was of old seconded and foretold also that it should ever be even every where to the worlds end viz. divisions in families two against three and three against two the Father against the Son the Daughter against the Mother c. offences of friends and fleshly relations the account of Heresie and baseness hatred of men persecution cavils stirs tumults about it by which things Christs people Gospel Ministers and Ministrations are ever

to spare sentencing your cause as wrong by your personall defects and want of abilities but also in charity to couer the weakness of your Arguments which is such an unreasonable request as was scarce ever put forth before by any Disputants who if they find their Arguments to be weak ought rather to recant them specially after such publique acknowledgement of the weakness of them and to desire people that they would not suffer themselves to be swayed by them then otherwise But Sirs do you think in your consciences that there is such weakness in your Arguments as is here intimated to us in your own book and likewise that your cause which is so far from a good one that it deserves to bear the name of Abaddon is in danger of suffering so much through your defects in disputing it unless men be so charitable as to wink at the weaknesses of both I speak seriously in my mind you had then better by far have conceal'd then reveal'd your disputation in an Account and had provided much better for the honor of it for now you have vindicated it from the disgraces with which it was loaded in private like him that fetches a frisk out of the frying pan into the fire whilst you publish it in the same weakness onely robbing your Respondent of the strength of his Answers in which it discover'd it self at first and hang it out against the Sun so that all men may see clean through it so thin and thread-bare it is and that without spectacles and not onely so but make proclamation of the weakness of your Arguments with a petition to pardon the weakness of them that 's an ill bird which in hast bewraies his own nest and leaves it to others to make all clean and such are they that uncover their own nakedness so far when they need not that they are fain to be beholding to the benevolence of others to cover it and yet are so inexorable as to hold the cause of others inexcusable in the self same case wherein they are earnest to be excused by them for our cause is at a loss among you for the sake of what ere defects you spie in any persons that profess it But I believe you are not cordiall in your a●knowledgements here for if you were you would surely have endured your Respondents private representations of the weakness of your Arguments and your pedling in your proof of Infant-baptism with more patience then you did but its evident by your impatience towards him in that kind that what ere you say here of your selves in a voluntary humility yet you have so good an opinion of your selves and your work too that day that Tam nil as nothing as it here seems to be in your Account as well as ours you take it ill that any should esteem so poorly and speak so plainly though but privately of your trifling doings as you dispense with your selves to do here in publick before all the world and howbeit here 's weakness and defects and defects p. 3. overtly worded over by you in a general way yet it 's an hundred to one if a man take you at your word and yield to what you say as truth and say it ore after you that there 's much weakness in your Arguments and that there were many defects in your Disputation and your zeal of Infant-baptism is great and your abilities but mean to maintain it you will be half angry with him and think he casts scandals upon your disputation and be ready to gainsay all this and to stand up in vindication of your Arguments as strong and sufficient and lay all the defects that were in the disputation at your Respondents door and if you be askt what one individual particular Syllogism Term Argument or Scripture you were out in the framing uttering urging or underctanding of throughout the whole day of the disputation I am perswaded you will sooner bite your nayles then assign any or if it be specified by others that in this and that you were out you misunderstood such or such a Scripture such a speech or passage you faultred in I am afraid your pretended self-deniall will be found so little that you 'l justifie your selves in every bit and scrap of that which past from you during the whole discourse which makes your confessions deserve but little of that favour you so much implore by how much they savor of juggle and complement more then of a real true sense of what is wanting to you indeed which verily is a right-baptism to maintain rather then abilities to maintain that right-none that you stood up for nevertheless I must needs grant it to be true that you say here that your abilities were far short of your zeal yea so short that howbeit you had a good mind to do it yet you neither did nor could maintain it at all but wherefore was it but because you had a bad cause in hand yea had your zeal been as big as your cause was bad there had been no standing before you indeed the defects of your cause was the cause of your defects and not your own defects the cause of your causes had not the fault been more in your faith which was a false one then in your faculty to maintain things and had that and your baptism been as good as your parts are great and both these as probable as you capable to prove the meanest among you might have done more at the disputation then as it happend all of you did per vim unitam because though you fought with one who was no more then a flea in your ears yet you hapned to be fog'd so that you faced the wrong way and fell in unawares against the truth which in these daies of its return falls upon inquisitive consciences with more force from the mouth of fooles and babes then meer tradition doth from the wisest Babists in the world The deepest defect is in the cause you defend in the way you warrand t is a crooked cause an unwarrantable way and therefore those that will warrand mens walking in it can never do it without faultring and fumbling in the work and such after occasions of fawning on men for their charitable excusation Gentlemen that I may neither seem to defie nor yet to deifie your persons but put things upon a true Account you are men that have some worth and excellency and yet some weakness and exigency too but I impute your miscarriage in the disputation not half so much to your own as to your causes indigency your business was well man'd but ill manag'd because there was but an ill matter to be maintain'd you were at the wrong end of the staff and therefore well might you be defective in the strife this makes the least of the flock draw you great Leviathans out now adayes and the feeble to be as David before Goliahs that have been Polemically exercised from their youth

sense as neither had they that Covenant or promise of a father-hood which it was a Seal of though even Ishmael himself and the lowest males in Abrahams house were all to be circumcised upon this account only if if there had been no other as he was commanded to circumcise all his males As to a fuller account of my grounds for this opinion I shall suspend it till I take my other Account of these passages in yours and take notice only here first of your sacred Sophistication in giving that out for granted which was so abundantly denied Secondly that close contradiction you here give not onely to the truth but your selves also for you give out in the next page but one before that I denied Circumcision to be a seal of the Righteousness of faith which in your own sense is as much as of the Gospel-Covenant to any of Abrahams posterity and that I multipli'd words in proof of the contrary and yet here in relation to that very Relation of your own in the weak wilfulness of your memories you give out that I had confessed Circumcision to be even to Ishmael the seal of the Gospel-Covenant that is with you still of the righteousness of faith thus for your own ends fathering your own false-tenet upon me ye have not lost all by the shift for you have fastn'd the fault of sorgery upon your selves and this puts me in mind of another of your mis-reports which because t is so suitable to this I 'le give you some little sense of it here though I find it farre off hence in your Review p. 13. l. 1.2 where looking or rather licking over all your arguments again as somewhat rude and deform'd in their first delivery and among the rest this from Circumcision of infants to their baptism you positively affirm thus that the Adversaries confess baptism to be the seal of the Gospel-Covenant whereas if by Adversaries you mean your friend my self among others besides what else shall elsewhere be produced in proof of my dissent from you in this point your selves can bear me witness or if you will not a thousand others will that on the very day of Disputation when the Clergy-man of Kenington stiled baptism an initial seal I deni'd it to be a seal at all and am sure it would have found you all more work then you are aware of to have made good that un-gospel like expression of it though I grant it to be a sign of the Gospel-Covenant Report Another as flat a falsi●y as ever fell from the mouths or pens of men who pretend to truth is that clause which lies in the last line of the seventh page and first line of the eighth wherein consider it with the words before you say I confessed that the spiritual seed of Abraham and their children had under the Gospel as good right to the seal thereof which is baptism as Ishmael who was that carnal seed of Abraham had right to the seal of the Gospel-Covenant Circumcision Reply Whereas besides my constant denial of Circumcision to be a seal to any but Abraham as I said immediately above and as your selves testifie of me and besides my denial of baptism to be a seal at all I either did deny the children of the spiritual seed i. e. of believers to have right to baptism or else to what purpose did you oppose me for this was the very question between u● which as you affirm'd so I from the beginning to the end of the Disputation all along most inalterably deny'd Indeed I confessed ore and ore again that Abrahams spiritual seed i. e. believers have right to baptism but that the natural seed of this spiritual seed of Abraham are Abrahams spiritual seed as so born or that believers children qu● tales are semen fidei as well as their parents is a most silly saying of your own page 14. but that which all the day long I most strenuously stood against much more that they were the subject of baptism yet you say here in the Preter-plu-perfect tense that I had confessed their right to baptism as good as Ishmaels to Circumcision which me thinks if I had done so would have been exprest some where or other in the foregoing part of your true Account or else it is not so true as 't would be taken for but sith it is not to be found that I confest such a thing in all your Relation of the most materiall things that past among which this had it been confest as you here say had been the most materiall of all for it had been the full giving you the cause and saving you the labor of more Disputing we 'l take it for granted if you please rather then charge your true Relation of the most materiall things as not relating the most materiall of all that this your Testimony of my confession of this matter is most prodigiously false and abusive Sirs I wonder you are not ashamed so palpably to speak contrary to what you have here recorded I know not well what you mean by so many foul mis-reports unless as a certain great Benefactor to the Romish religion perceiving it unable to stand by the Scriptures bestowed a Legend of lyes towards its support which is call'd Legenda aurea so you supposing your Infant-baptism uncapable to be maintain'd any longer by principles of truth and reason have thereupon been so bountiful to the cause as to give in this golden-leaden-legend Another sorry tale and strange story you tell is not of me but of one of my side as you are pleased to speak and this me thinks if I be not mistaken with a kind of Emphasis of the Featlean strain as if it were some presumption for a Russet Rabby or secular Artizan to climb so high and flutter and sile so neer the pulpits and pompous Belconies of the Priests and as if he were a man Sacerdotalis ambitionis loving the uppermost Room and chief place in the Synagogue more to be taken notice of himself then that the truth should be taken notice of by the people in which things if you muse as you use yet know Sirs that we have no such custome nor the Churches of God of whom you say thus Report That having plac'd himself on the highest of the pulpit stairs to be seen of all and craved the liberty granted by the propositions to ask questions and receive satisfaction he profest himself a stranger and to come thither by accident though both afterwards appeared contrary Reply Though both will yet appear to be contrary to what you would have them appear to be if you could tell how viz. a couple of untruths for verily he was a stranger and so I then told Mr. Prigg who askt me of him that had not been long in the Countrey and was unknown both by face and name not to my self and some others yet however to most of that Auditory in which I believe not one of many could say who or whence he