Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	wonder_v	world_n	zeal_n	13	3	7.4398	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A41414	The Christian sodality, or, Catholick hive of bees sucking the hony of the Churches prayers from the blossome of the word of God blowne out of the epistles and Gospels of the divine service throughout the yeare / collected by the puny bee of all the hive, not worthy to be named otherwise than by these elements of his name: F. P.	Gage, John, priest.	1652 (1652)	Wing G107	592,152	1,064

us in the B. Sacrament as we must fear him under his severer name of our Judge if we now fail of such equall love unto him O happy Christians who at the same time when they are bid to fear Christ are taught to love Jesus and consequently their love and fear must be as equal as Christ Jesus is to Jesus Christ But the reason why we beg this equality of fear and love is because Christ doth never leave destitute of his government those whom he instructs in the solidity of his love that is Christ our Judge will sweetly rule us if he find we do solidly love him and we were last Sunday taught the solidity of that love did consist in loving God above all things and not only our neighbour but also our enemies as our selves which lesson was then given as a preparative to this Feast now flowing in the Octaves thereof and alluded unto in this prayer teaching us in brief what the Epistle and Gospel tell us more at large The first that who loves not ought to stand in fear of that death which he abides in by not loving Nay more so confident must our Love be that we must rather not fear to dye for our neighbour then we must dare not to love him and to this we are incited by the example of Christ whose love made him dye for us that were his enemies Again we are told this love must be real and true not verbal onely and that it cannot be so if we relieve not our neighbour in his necessity when we are able so to do This argues indeed that we are not left destitute by our Governour Christ Jesus who instructs us in this solidity of love from one end of the Epistle to the other And since it is the general consent of all Expositours that the Supper mentioned in this dayes Gospel is a figure of the Blessed Sacrament sure that is a mystery as full of solid love as is expressed in the Prayer above teaching us never to go unto this Supper without equal fear and love and so the Prayer stands excellently well adapted both to the Sunday to the Feast to the Epistle and to the Gospel of the day For if we can by saying this prayer fervently obtain the equal fear and love which it petitioneth assuredly in recompense thereof Almighty God will so govern us as we shall not for humane ends excuse our selves from our duties to his Divine Majesty but shall come so religiously to the Supper of the Sacrament here as we need not fear being shut out at the last Supper of eternall rest in glory which again the Expositours will have the Sacramentall Supper to be a signe of And thus as well every sense as every letter of this Gospel is included in this most admirable prayer of holy Church The Epistle 1 Joh. 3.13 c. 13 Marvell not Brethren if the world hate you 14 We know that we are translated from death to life because we love the Brethren He that loveth not abideth in death 15 Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer and you know that no murderer hath life everlasting abiding in himself 16 In this we have known the charity of God because he hath yielded his life for us and we ought to yield our lives for the Brethren 17 He that shall have the substance of the world and shall see his Brother hath need and shall shut his bowels from him how doth the charity of God abide in him 18 My little children let us not love in word nor in tongue but in deed and truth The Explication 13. THe Evangelist had in the precedent verses told us the difference between the children of God and those of the devil and how there was mortal enmity between the one and the other instancing in Cain killing his Brother Abel for no other cause then envy to him seeing the sacrifice of Abel was acceptable to God and his was not in regard Abel was a child of God and Cain a child of the devil and so no marvel if his offerings were not acceptable to God Almighty But the Apostle proceeds further and bids Christians not wonder if the world hate them because of their good deeds since for that reason Cain representing the malignancy of the world hated Abel who was a figure of a good Christian offering grateful sacrifice to God besides the Apostle here alludes to what he had said in his Gospel Chap. 15.18 If the world hate you know it hated me before it hated you and therefore here he concludes they should rather expect then wonder at it if they found the world did hate them since no Son can hope for love from him who hates his Father and the foregoing Verses of this Epistle were all upon our happy filiation with God But we may observe the causes remarkable why the wicked for those are understood by the world so called from the greater part thereof that are wicked indeed do hate those who are good The first is the dissimilitude betwixt vice and vertue which begets a hatred as similitude begets love and affection for we see all worldlings puffed up with pride and ambition contrariwise all good Christians are meek and humble The second is Envy for wicked men seeing they cannot arrive at purity and sanctity envy those who do attain thereunto The third because the good men do further reprehend the vices of the wicked as the holy Ghost doth inspire them in imitation of his example whose coming shall argue the world of sin as we heard John 15.8 The fourth because the world sees good men flye the company of the wicked The last because their affections are contrary one doating upon the world altogether the other wholly inamoured on Almighty God so they must needs be as opposite as two Contraries are as heat to cold as dry to moist and labour to overcome each other but with this difference that the good man labours the conversion of the bad the bad man indeavours the perversion of the good 14. The Apostle doth not here say we know by any divine Faith or certain knowledge as hereticks will needs interpret this place but onely by moral certitude we know that if we love one another for Gods sake we must needs love God much more and as by sin against him we dye so by love of him we detest sin and are by that meanes translated from the death of sin to the life of grace in this world and to the life of glory in the next So that all the certitude we have of this is the testimony of our own consciences telling us we are not guilty of any defect either in our love to God or to our neighbour Yet because St. Paul 1 Cor. 4. v. 4. no sooner said he was not guilty then he added yet in this I am not justified the Catholick Church teacheth our assurance of our being in the state of grace is onely moral not divine And three signes

called even thence Hebrews which signifies passe-over as the Chaldeans did passe Euphrates to live in Palestina And Abraham as we read Gen. 14. ver 13. was the first called an Hebrean because he was the first that passed Euphrates or as others think because they were descended of them that in the confusion of Babylon onely reserved the pure Hebrew tongue the Faith and Religion of Abraham to which descent as the false Apostles laid claime so doth Saint Paul and thus consequently an Israelite and of Abrahams Seed as well as they Acts 22. I am a Jew born in Tarsus the Metropolitan of Sicilie 23. He doth not here affirm They are the Ministers of Christ but takes it as an assertion of their own and for argument sake lets it pass saying he is truly so whereas they onely pretend it and for even letting this pass for a truth he tells them he speaks as one scarse wise for humouring them in such fond arguments yet they are ad hominem such as themselves using they cannot but allow them to have force if he use them too and whereas the false Prophets boasted of the pains they took the true Apostle here professeth he hath taken much more pains than they to indear himself to them since he was often in Prison for labouring to convert Souls and was often beaten on the High way by deaths are here meant the dangers of death to which he often exposed himself 24. It was a Law in Deut. 25. ver 5. that no man corrected with stripes should receive above fourty lashes and so to be sure not to infringe this Law the Jewes never gave above thirty nine stroaks to any Malefactor that they whipped and therefore when Saint Paul was five times whipt for his preaching he had every time one stroak less than fourty which whipping he avoided at Rome by pretending the priviledge of Tarsus whose natives were all held Romans and so free from that base punishment of being whipt 25. He tells here of much more than Saint Luke mentions in the Acts of the Apostles whence we may conclude Saint Luke writes not all the truth though all he writ be undoubtedly true It seemes this whipping with rodds was different from the former flagellations he spake of which was with whips He sayes the wracks he suffered were in the middle Ocean not as usually on the shoars so that it was miraculous how he escaped and therefore he speaks as if he had been so often at the depth of the Sea because had not Miracles preserved him and brought him like Ionas to the shoar he had indeed been drowned so he tells what naturally would have been his fate but that God providentially prevented it 26 27. See here how both by Iewes those of his own Religion and Race Acts 22. he was in danger in all times in all places by all parties of acquaintance friends as well as foes whom he calls False Brethren pretending friendship and yet betraying him which sufferings ought to be incouragements to Bishops and Pastours ever after finding how their Predecessour led them the way and pattern of Apostolicall behaviour in such occasions 28. He passeth now from his outward troubles to his inward cares of all the Churches under him all the Souls converted by him and any one of these Souls he values at so high a rate that to save her he is willing often to incur all these enumerated dangers 29. What greater tenderness can be expressed than the making other mens evills his own out of the equall love he bears to them with himself hence he is weak with the weak burned with those that are scandalized that is to say scorched with the passion that boyleth in those whose zeal makes them take scandall at others misdoing 30. Now whereas the False Apostles did glory in their power amongst the people Saint Paul to teach the Corinthians better principles makes profession to glory rather in his infirmities that is in those passages of his life which rendred him mean and contemptible in the sight of others in his being whipt and scorned for Christ his sake not in his Miracles for there he shewed power but in his sufferings not in his Sins for had he committed any those he could not boast of nay must blush at but in his being weak with the weak c. 31. See how severely he avers this Truth when he calls God to witness it 32 33. This Governour was Father in-law to Herod who first marryed the daughter of Aretas King of Arabia and whom he after repudiated and cast off to marry Herodias his brother Philips wife for which cause Aretas made war against Herod to revenge his Daughters wrong in which war Herod was slain and Damascus being a City near Arabia Aretas put in there a Governour whom the Jewes dealt with to seize upon Paul as a man Factious and one that would under pretence of zeal move sedition against Gentilisme and so bring in Vitellius Governour of Syria sent by Tiberius Cesar to revenge Herods death upon Aretas and consequently they falsly pretended Paul would bring him into Damascus to out Aretas of his command there so by this means the Governour of Damascus Aretas his substitute laid wait to apprehend Paul and he was by the zeal of good people let out of a window in a basket and so escaped his fury which passage the Apostle brings in to prove how h● was persecuted by th●se of his own Religion the Iewes suggesting he aimed to destroy Gentilsme the Religion of Aretas Chap. 1● ver 1. Now he enters into a pretended vain-glory about his Visions and Revelations of our Lord which he seemes to say he must doe though it be not expedient to prosecute his Trope or Figure of Ironia in flowting them that are made fooles by men boasting with much less cause than he can boast to make them wise believers of the Truth he tells them 2 3 4. And lest they might think he was Rapt by the Divell as Simon Magus had been he sayes he was Rapt in Christ that is by the Spirit of God it seemes this Rapture happened to him nine years after his miraculous conversion for he writ this Epistle in the year of Christ fifty eight which was the second of Nero's raign so his Rapture happened unto him in the year of Christ forty four which was fourteen years before his now boasting of it as thus provoked thereunto whereas he was converted in the year of Christ thirty six that is nine years before and therefore by no vain impulse after so long and so modest a silence of it so if fourteen year before he had the illuminations of this strange Rapture how eminent must he be now after so long a practice in that spirit of Devotion which this Rapture must needs put him into note though the Apostle speaking of a spirituall truth will not mix any naturall verity therewith so as to determine whether he remained alive or dead in