Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	sin_n	suffer_v	suffering_n	2,120	5	9.4937	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A90298	Immoderate mourning for the dead, prov'd unreasonable and unchristian. Or, Some considerations of general use to allay our sorrow for deceased friends and relations but more especially intended for comfort to parents upon the death of their children. By John Owen, chaplain to the right honourable Henry Lord Grey of Ruthen.	Owen, John, chaplain to Lord Grey of Ruthin.	1680 (1680)	Wing O825aA; ESTC R231417	48,707	156

yet there may be ways of unhallowing Marriage and turning that into a sin which was at first ordained for the greatest Blessing For if only Interest or Humour or Lust be the chief foundation and ingredient of our Choice or if some sinful pre-ingagement or lewd Amours make Marriage necessary for the hiding our shame or if any of these things do cause a Contract or make up the match we may expect that God in justice may blast and curse the fruits of our Body for the sin of our Soul and for the sins of our flesh too An instance whereof we have in Gods decreeing the death of Davids Child which though it was born in Marriage yet God utterly dislik'd the Conjunction the first occasion and grounds thereof being laid in Adulterous Embraces David making no scruple to murder the Husband that he might obtain the Wife But when David heard that heavy sentence against his Child that he should surely die for his sin might not he have confest himself altogether in the fault and desired to suffer wholly himself and have said as in another Case 1 Chron. 21. 17. It is I have sinned and done evil indeed but as for this Lamb this Innocent Babe what has it done Let thy hand be upon me or my Fathers House and not on this Child that that should be plagued I say one would think that David should have set himself to deprecate Gods displeasure against his Child upon his account and desired to have sustained the burthen of his own sin But the sentence was gone out and what was written was written and there was no reversing the Decree And therefore all they that intend to change their condition and desire that they may leave their Inheritance to their Children had best look to it and have a care that they do not make Lust or any sinful Pre-ingagement a Preamble and Introduction to Marriage for fear God disappoint them in their hopes and desires and either write them Childless or take away their Children in wrath for their folly and wickedness For though God spared David and gave him a grant of his own life that he should not die yet there is no begging the life of his Child the Prophet reading its Destiny the Child that is born shall surely die So that for people to couple together in a scandalous and sinful way and to make Lust the basis and foundation of Marriage is to murther their Children in the Womb and in a manner to predestinate them to destruction But then when David heard that his Child should not live but was under a sentence of Death and that according to the words of the Prophet it presently fell sick and was desperately ill How then did he behave himself Truly like a very kind and indulgent Father for it was no sooner struck with sickness but David besought God for the Child And David fasted and went in and lay all night upon the Earth and the Elders of the House arose and went to him to raise him up from the Earth but he would not neither did he eat bread with them in the 16 and 17. v. of this Chapter Here we see David in a sad and mournful posture expressing all the symptoms and signs of a mighty sorrow and being earnest in Prayer to God for it which if all Parents would do the like upon the same occasion when their Children are sick or any ways afflicted they would find their Prayers to be a more efficacious way than all the Drugs of the Apothecary or the numberless prescriptions of the Physicians for the recovery of their Children For the effectual fervent Prayer of the Righteous availeth much But then we may consider that David had great reason to bewail the sickness of the Child as first being the effect and punishment of his sin and secondly upon the account of natural affection First He had a great deal of reason to grieve and be troubled at the sickness of his Child it being sent as a punishment for his own personal sin and therefore when he saw it in misery and pain and great anguish and considered that it suffered all this principally for his sake that he had the greatest hand in bringing all this trouble and sorrow upon it and that he was the great Actor in the Tragedy and this his sin occasion'd this great scene of sorrows How could he do otherwise than lay the sickness of it to heart and take on bitterly to think that by the murder of Vriah he had caus'd the Death of his Child and that by committing folly with Bathsheba he had brought such an affliction upon their Issue I say such a consideration must needs wound David to the very heart and cause him to make great Lamentations over the Child And truly the same sorrows would become even the best Parents and it might not be amiss for them to make some like Reflections For the Parents are generally apt to impute the Distempers the Sickness the Death of their Children either to want of due care in their Nurses or to the badness of the Air or the unwholesomness of the Season or ill diet or the irregular course of the Physician I say though we are apt to ascribe the sickness and Death of our Children to these outward and secondary Causes yet we should do well to suspect our sins as the cause of their misery and sufferings and to believe that there is something more than ordinary in the afflictions of such harmless and innocent Creatures Surely the Parents have sin'd though these poor Lambs suffer and therefore it is good and convenient that all Parents do examine themselves and see whether they need go any further than themselves to find out the true cause and original of those many weaknesses and distempers which they see in their Children and for which they seem so much concern'd and troubled How mightily are some Parents troubled to see their Children grow crooked and deform'd and yet little consider that possibly their Children are the unhandsomer for their being so proud of themselves and glorying in their Beauty others are griev'd to see their Children prove such Punies so feeble and infirm and of such a weak Constitution and do not reflect upon the debaucheries of their life and how they have lost their strength in Dalilahs Lap. And it is a general complaint and observation that every Age declines more and more in strength and virility and that the latter Generation of men are dwindled almost into Pigmies in comparison of what they were formerly and yet men do little consider that Luxury and riotous Living may be assigned as the grand Causes and Reasons of this great Degeneracy And we also see that new and strange Diseases do creep up daily and multiply and invade humane Bodies and yet we seldom impute these decays and breakings of nature to the vices of our Progenitors Whereas we have just reason to grieve at the sight of those many Diseases which

has perform'd greater Cures and greater Recoveries and done greater wonders than all the Elixirs or Proprietates or Nostrums of the most skilful and renown'd Physicians It was Prayer that restored Hezekiah from a dangerous sickness and prolong'd his Days it was Prayer which supported David under all his troubles and gave him ease in his greatest extremities it was Prayer that opened the eyes of the blind and ejected the Devils and did the most glorious things to all Admiration and therefore we must apply our selves to God and depend upon our Prayers as the most proper and specifick remedy in afflictions We must be fervent and frequent and importunate in Prayers to God on the behalf of our Friends and Relations and who can tell whether God will be gracious to us that our Friends may live But then may some reply and say it was in vain for David to use Prayer or any other means it was to no purpose for him to expect the recovery of his Child or that God should answer him though he pray'd never so much For he knew that God had decreed the Death of his Child and told him in as plain words as could be by his Prophet that the Child should surely die and why then should David flatter himself so as to imagine that he could do the Child any good by his Prayers or prevail with God for his Recovery Why should he use that dubious Language as who can tell 't is possible or it may be that the Lord will be gracious to me that the Child may live Why should he stand doubting or supposing a possibility of a thing when God had positively declared the contrary To which I Answer That God declared by his Prophet Jonah the destruction of the Ninevites and prefixt the time to just forty days and this was declared with as great positiveness as the Death of Davids Child by the Prophet Nathan and the Prophet Jonah try'd and said Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown in the 3. of Jonah and 4. v. and yet after the delivery and promulgation of this sentence the Ninevites did not despond or utterly despair of Gods mercy but fell to repentance and humbling themselves and put the success to the same venture that David did and much in the same Language saying in the 9. v. Who can tell if God will return and repent and turn away from his fierce anger that we perish not And what was the Issue of their Repentance and Humiliation and using the best means they could to divert Gods Judgments Why the Issue was that by their Repentance they stav'd off the judgment and put it back as we may see in the 10. and last ver And God saw their works that they turned from their evil ways and God repented of the evil that he had said that he would do unto them and did it not And so in the 20. Ch. of the 2. of Kings God ordered the Prophet Isaiah to go and carry to Hezekiah the same message of Death and to acquaint him that he must expect no other than Death Thus saith the Lord Set thine House in order for thou shalt die and not live Could any thing be more absolute and positive than these words and yet Hezekiah instead of melancholizing himself with the thoughts of Death or expecting it every hour turned his face to the Wall and prayed unto the Lord saying I beseech thee O Lord remember now how I have walked before thee in truth and with a perfect heart and have done that which is good in thy sight and Hezekiah wept sore in the 3. ver And what good will you say could Hezekiah's praying and weeping and appealing to the Righteousness of his life do him Could that or any thing else save him and prevent his dying when God had so solemnly Decreed yes truly his Prayer and Repentance did him so much good as to prevail with God to grant him a longer Lease of his life and ordered the same Prophet that had just now told him of his Death to return forthwith and acquaint him also that he had reverst the fatal sentence Turn again and tell Hezekiah the Captain of my people Thus saith the Lord the God of David thy Father I have heard thy Prayer I have seen thy tears behold I will heal thee on the third day thou shalt go up unto the House of the Lord. And I will add unto thy days fifteen years What then shall we say that there is any change in the Divine Decrees or any inconstancy in God or that he is worse than his word when he thus positively denounces judgment and yet suspends it God forbid says the Apostle yea let God be true but every man a lyar as it is written that thou mightest be justified in thy sayings And therefore for the clearing of God from all imputation of falshood or mutability in these instances of his judgments denounced against sinners without any actual execution we are to understand that those threatnings of God in Scripture which run in an absolute form have a condition imply'd that is Nineveh shall be destroyed and Hezekiah shall die except they repent So that God does still reserve a power of revocation and puts in a conditional clause of repentance which though it be not exprest yet is always to be understood and therefore where Gods threatnings of death and destruction seem most peremptory and final we are yet to attempt the diverting and preventing them by our Prayers and repentance we are to use the means and as we say leave the success to God For who knows but the Lord may be gracious But if God will not hear our Prayers nor accept our Repentance as he did neither in the present Case of Davids Child yet we are to use the most proper means and to try all the ways imaginable to pacify Gods anger and to appease his wrath and still to go on praying and repenting as David did We are not to despond of mercy or to despair of success but at the very last push and the utmost extremity of affliction to say who can tell but the Lord will be gracious And thus I have delivered to you the just reasons why David mourn'd so exceedingly for his Child when it lay upon a Bed of sickness and languishing As first considering that his own sin was the chief and declared cause of his Child 's grievous and desperate sickness and secondly upon the account of that natural affection which is in all Parents toward their Children which moves their bowels to pity and bewail them when they are in misery and distress But then the great wonder is that the Father which was so much concern'd and deeply immerst in sorrow for the sickness of his Child should give over mourning upon the death and loss of it that his sorrow should expire and be at an end as soon as the Child was departed and had given up the Ghost But now he is dead why