Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	woman_n	write_v	year_n	107	3	4.7207	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A45640	The divine physician, prescribing rules for the prevention, and cure of most diseases, as well of the body, as the soul demonstrating by natural reason, and also divine and humane testimony, that, as vicious and irregular actions and affections prove often occasions of most bodily diseases, and shortness of life, so the contrary do conduce to the preservation of health, and prolongation of life : in two parts / by J.H ...	Harris, John, 1667?-1719.	1676 (1676)	Wing H848; ESTC R20051	75,699	228

they are not winged with zeal and importunity It is the importunate Beggar that getteth an Alms They that faint in their prayers have such a faint heart as never winneth a fair blessing And therefore as a Corroborative against such faintings let us consider how oft we use a Medicine for the Body before it can be whole how many stroaks on Oak must have before it will fall how over and over again we plough our Lands and delve our Gardens before we can have our expectation and also how frequently Earthly Kings must be attended upon before Suiters can obtain their suite Surerely favours and mercies even from the King of Kings would be slighted and undervalued if fetched with a faint word And therefore let us vis unita fortior join force to force prayer to prayer and so by a holy violence of zeal besiege the Kingdom of Heaven and in time it will surrender its self to our lawful desires and requests For saith the Apostle the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much James 5. 16. Indeed if our prayers be without life or come out of fained lips or be distracted with wild and wandring thoughts or if they be tainted with hypocrisie pride or incredulity we can look for no favourable audience from Heaven For God heareth not sinners but if a man doth his will him he heareth John 9. 31. God heareth not Sinners that is wilful presumptuous and impenitent Sinners But if a man doth his will by active and passive obedience him he heareth that is either explicitely by granting the individual or particular thing requested or interpretatively by granting that which is aequivalent or far better Now if a righteous Man prayeth for health and a prolongation of his temporary life and God still continueth him upon his Bed of sickness and within a short time by death giveth him Eternal life in exchange for his temporary herein is no severe repulse or denyal but a more favourable audience more satisfactory concession and more Princely donation But you will urge that this last way of granting Requests doth not fully answer the scope of the present Point Hereupon I must reply that though the return of our most faithful prayers must be determined and their success limited by the will of our Heavenly Father according to the words of Christ Jesus Nevertheless not as I will but as thou wilt Matth. 26. 39. yet we must understand that it is the will and usual favour of the Almighty to grant the very things we desire and stand in need of commonly by means and herein chiefly and principally by faithful prayer which without Natural means is often found more effectual then Natural means without it And to encourage us to make trial of such excellent means we have a promise from Truth its self I say unto you whatsoever things ye desire when ye pray believe that ye receive them and ye shall have them Mark 11. 24. And this brings me to propose or prescribe In the Third place Faith as an excellent means conducing likewise to the health of Body and consequently prolongation of life and this in a super-natural way also There was a Woman vexed with an uncomfortable Disease twelve years She suffered many things of Physicians Mat. 9. 20. some torturing her with one Medicine some with another none did her good but much hurt She had spent all her living upon them Luke 8. 43. and herein saith Erasmus was Bis misera Her sickness brought her to weakness weakness to Physick Physick to beggary beggary to contempt Thus was she vexed in body mind and estate yet Faith healed her Her wealth was gone Physicians gave her over but her Faith did not forsake her Daughter be of good comfort thy faith hath made thee whole Mat. 9. 22. There was a Woman bowed down with the Spirit of infirmity eighteen years Luke 13. 11. yet loosed There was a Man bedrid eight and thirty years John 5. 5. 9. a long and miserable time when besides his Corporal distress he might perhaps conceive from that Eccl. 38. 15. He that sinneth before his Maker let him fall into the hand of the Physician that God had cast him away yet Christ restored him But may some say it is not mentioned that either of th●se two last were cured by Faith I answer that doubtless Christ saw the seed of Faith in them though it were but as a grain of mustard-seed and so rewarded them accordingly Again we may instance in the Samaritan whose Leprosie though hard to cure yet Faith was able to do it Thy faith hath made thee whole Luke 17. 19. But may some say it was not properly his Faith but Christ's vertue that cured him Why then doth not Christ say Mea virtus and not Tua sides My vertue not thy Faith hath made thee whole True it is his vertue only cures but this is apprehended by Man's Faith The miraculous Cure was attributed to Mans Faith not as to the efficient cause for that was Christ's Divine vertue but as to the instrumental cause or means by which he apprehended and applyed to himself that Divine power by which he was healed Thus in the afore-mentioned place or instance in the 9th of Math. it is written that the Woman which was diseased with an issue of blood twelve years came behind Jesus and touched the hem of his garment For she said within her self if I may but touch his garment I shall be whole And in Mark 5. 30. we read that when that diseased Woman had touched him Jesus knew in himself that vertue had gone out of him and he turned him about in the press and said who touched my clothes Yet speaking to the Woman he mentioneth not his vertue but her Faith Daughter thy faith hath made thee whole Mark 5. 34. Object But here some may object that the gifts of Healing with other miraculous Gifts are ceased in the Church and so consequently Prayer and Faith must needs be ineffectual to the Cure of bodily Distempers without the conjunction of Natural means Answ. To which I answer 'T is true the Doctrine of the Gospel having been long since sealed and confirmed by so many Miracles in the Primitive Church there is now the less need of them more particularly of the gift of Healing and therefore I shall not urge those Miracles which the Church of Rome boasteth of as wrought of late times by some of her Sons or with her extend the promise of our Saviour Mark 16 17 18. to all future times and Ages of the Church yet thus much I may avouch that as God is still able to work Miracles so he hath sometimes even in this latter Age wrought miraculously for the convincing the present times of Atheism and the further confirmation of our Faith in the Gospel And this Mr. Valentine Greatraks in his Printed Letter to the Honourable Robert Boyle Esq maketh appear Wherein he giveth an Account of divers strange Cures by himself

all the increase of his house should die in the slower of their age 1 Sam. 2. 32. So on the other side it is God's blessing if he increase the length of our dayes and we die with Job being old and full of dayes and go in our grave in a full age as a shock of corn cometh in in his season to the barn Job 42. 17. 5. 26. Therefore that Heathen Cic. Tusc. 1. was mistaken who said Optimum est non nasci proximum quam cito aboleri The best thing is never to be born and the second best to die assoon as we are born For though long life to some be as wearisome as death is fearful though old age in many be a disease not curable but by death yet these are but accidental life it self is a blessing and the longer we live the more experience we have of God's favour a greater loathing of the sins of our youth and a larger time of repentance as having space wherein to grow wiser and better and thereby to make this life a large preparative to Eternal life Health then and long life being now considered as blessings we will henceforth follow the means and leave the blessing to God CHAP. 1. The first means being to avoid Sin in general which is supernaturally an occasion of bodily Diseases and shortness of Life DIseases are the interests of Sin till Sin there were no such things For this cause in general many are weak and sick Let a Man take the best air he can and eat the best food he can let him eat and drink by Rule let him take never so many Antidotes Preservatives and Cordials yet Man by reason of Sin is but a crazy sickly thing for all this For as one saith all sicknesses of the body proceed from the Sin of the Soul I am not ignorant that the Lethargy ariseth from the coldness of the brain that the Dropsie floweth from waterish blood in an ill affected Liver that the Spleen is caused from melancholly wind gathered in the mid-riff but the cause of all these causes the fountain of all these fountains is the Sin of the Soul And this Truth from the Fountain of Sacred Writ will be clearly derived unto us Our Saviour said unto the Man that had been thirty-eight years diseased Behold thou art made whole sin no more lest a worse thing come unto thee John 5. 14. Jesus thus warning him by shewing him the cause of his infirmity which was Sin Those Physicians that derive all Diseases from natural causes only do not well understand that Text for it is Spiritually discerned All sickness is certainly the fruit of Sin and many Physicians will acknowledge it being induced thereunto by a consequence from an instance of a particular though Epidemical disease namely the Plague or Pestilence which is concluded not only from the Word of God Lev. 26. 25. but also from the confirmed constant and received opinion of all Ages to be Flagellum Dei pro peccatis Mundi The rod of God for the sins of the World The word Plague in the Greek 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifying no less for 't is so furious a disease as it disdains any general method of Cure when it is in its rage So that we must needs conclude that whatever be the natural causes of Diseases Sin is the supernatural and meritorious cause not only of this but also of all other Diseases Let me instance but one particular disease more the Palsy when our Saviour was about to cure a Man sick of that disease Mark 2. 5. he first pronounced forgiveness of Sins to him to shew that his Sins were the cause of his disease I confess diseases in the godly are many times God's love tokens and he doth not alwayes aim at the demonstrating of his justice in punishing sin when he layeth sickness upon Men for sometimes he layeth it upon his own Children for other ends as for the trial of their Faith and Patience c. as we see in Job's example yet it is true that God doth not chastise or punish those that are innocent but such as deserve it by their sins otherwise he should be supposed as unjust Sin then the Spiritual disease is the original and procuring cause of every natural disease so as if there were no sin there should be no sickness But here peradventure some may object and say how do this appear experimentally and exemplarily in some vicious Persons whose blood danceth in their veines and whose bones are moistned with marrow who are in health when he whom Christ loveth is sick John 11. 3. as 't was said of Lazarus To this I answer that the like matter bad almost stifled and amazed Job Job 21. and Asaph Psal. 73. but they soon understood a reason of the several dispensations of God's Providence One general reason might be this it may well stand with God's Providence as he is the Father of Mercies and the God of Justice as he shall see cause to let both his Mercy and his Justice meet together both upon the wicked and the Godly As for instance many times he conferreth benefits upon the wicked and suffereth them to go free from punishment there is his mercy though short and temporal but the evil that is in them he punisheth Eternally there is his Justice Again many times he punisheth the sins of his best Servants with temporal afflictions but their goodness he rewardeth with Eternal blessings there is his Justice in punishing temporally his Mercy in rewarding Eternally and in both these the wisdom of God's Providence is discovered So more particularly God doth sometime permit the wicked to have a sound body with a diseased Soul and the Godly a diseased body with a more sound Soul But yet for the most part in the revolution of experience we shall find that where sin reignes most there most diseases as hand-maids are attending upon her And though every general Rule in Grammar hath its exception yet take this as general without exception that Original and likewise Actual sins are the seeds of bodily diseases Though by Gods Mercy and Providence all things even the sharpest work together for good to them that love God Rom. 8. 28. Yea Sin is not only a Spiritual or supernatural cause of bodily diseases but also of shortness of life For as one saith through Sin our bodies are become nothing but the Pest-houses of diseases and death Sin hath corrupted Mans blood and rendered his body mortal and vile Before Sin our bodies were immortal for death and mortality came in by Sin but now Alas they must return to dust and 't is appointed to all Men once to die by Statute Law in Heaven and 't is well if they die but once and the second death hath no power over them they must see corruption and this is the wages that Sin allows to its Servants For the wages of Sin is death Rom. 6. 23. this is the largess or