Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	wonderful_a	work_n	world_n	95	3	3.9734	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A44901	A sermon preach'd before the Right Honourable George Earl of Berkley, governour, and the Company of Merchants of England trading in the Levant seas At St. Peter's Church in Broadstreet, Nov. 18. 1683. By John Hughes, A.M. and Fellow of Baliol College in Oxon, and chaplain to his Excellency the Lord Chandois, ambassadour at Constantinople.	Hughes, John, b. 1651?	1683 (1683)	Wing H3313A; ESTC R202531	12,620	31

A SERMON Preach'd before the RIGHT HONOURABLE GEORGE EARL OF BERKLEY GOVERNOUR AND THE Company of Merchants Of ENGLAND Trading in the Levant Seas At St. Peter's Church in Broadstreet Nov. 18. 1683. By JOHN HVGHES A. M. and Fellow of Baliol College in Oxon and Chaplain to his Excellency the Lord Chandois Ambassadour at Constantinople LONDON Printed for Fincham Gardner at the White-Horse in Ludgate-street 1683. TO THE Right Honourable GEORGE Earl of BERKLEY Governour and to the Company of Turkie Merchants Right Honourable c. THE Subject of the ensuing Discourse was of your Appointment and the Sermon is now publish'd at your Command So that if the Text gave you no Title to it yet you have made it yours by approving it And therefore lest the Faults of it should reflect upon you I think my self bound to declare this truth by way of Apology for them That 't was made in a hurry of other business and amidst the distractions of a man going into another World I don't tell you this because you knew it before and for that reason and for the sake of some things in it well meant I presume gave the whole a favourable acceptance though it be far from a correct piece Neither should I have told it others who may possibly throw away so much time as to read this Discourse but that I am more concern'd for the reputation of your Candour than of mine own Judgment For I could be well content to publish my weakness without an Apology when 't is the best means I can use for the discharge of a necessary duty And gives me an opportunity to testifie my gratitude both for that general and unanimous consent whereby you entitled me to the honour of your service and the particular favours and great civilities which though a stranger yet as a Clergy-man I have received from you And since the acknowledgment of Benefits is one branch of the Vertue of Gratitude I hope you will think it my duty and nothing else makes me say that that part of this Sermon which treats of the advantages of Shipping to this Island does more eminently concern your selves And that the obligations you have laid upon me before mention'd do infinitely fall short of those I lie under as an English man to the Eastern traffick which you mannage For most of the useful Arts amongst us owe their Original to Asia the Less or Greece from whence they were deriv'd to us and some before the Roman Conquest And by the best account that History can give us we first received the Christian Religion immediately from Syria So that not to speak of the Benefits we at present enjoy from the Levant trade the merits of its past services have been so incomparably great to the whole Nation that I doubt not but they 'll be an Argument to Authority to continue the protection and encouragement of it as they ought to be to all English men to wish and pray for its prosperity Amongst whom as more particularly bound your happiness in every kind and degree of it shall be the constant subject of the Prayers of Right Honourable c. Your most Obliged and most Obedient Servant John Hughes Psal. CVII 23 24. They that go down to the Sea in Ships that do business in great Waters These see the Works of the Lord and his Wonders in the Deep 'T IS an Observation as true as common That men are generally more affected with the Novelty of things than with their Excellency that the same Object which at first rais'd their Admiration or charm'd their Affections upon a short continuance in the same Circumstances or a frequent intercourse with it makes but very slight impressions on them And this is equally true with respect either to the Wisdom or Goodness of God which appears stamp'd on his Works For does not the commonness of his Mercies make them seem little if not unobserv'd Do not the choicest pieces of his Creation which we are acquainted and daily conversant with meet with a kind of coldness and indifferency of thought about them The number and magnitude The Regular Motion and excellent Order of the Heavenly Bodies The constant returns of Day and Night and the several vicissitudes of Seasons which are so many standing Miracles and repeated Confutations of Atheism are less regarded than some single and in comparison slight Occurrences if extraordinary Whereas there is really more reason of Surprisal and devout Admiration at the Natures and constant and orderly Revolutions of these than at any of those unusual and supernatural Events which are stiled Miracles It being a much greater and more glorious work to make this World and to keep every thing in that just order it is Than sometimes to restrain the natural force of a Creature or make it exert it self beyond its natural Power For this is but a short and transient the other a permanent and continual Miracle But even those that are properly Miracles though the most surprising things imaginable lose very much of their Efficacy on the minds of Men when frequent and customary Thus the Israelites when they had been for some time fed with Quails and Manna from Heaven despis'd and loath'd them And after their deliverance from Egypt had been wrought by a long Series of Miracles which accompanied them throughout their whole Journey into Canaan so that they scarce eat or drank or slept or walked without a Miracle yet so faint impressions did they leave on them that the Psalmist tells us They forgat his works and his wonders that he had shewn them The commonness of them made them look like the rest of Gods Works and partake of the same Fate with them to be little regarded And therefore if any of those wonderful works of God which the Royal Prophet has respect to in my Text do fall under the like neglect because they are not new since by the long use of Navigation men are now made acquainted and familiar with them It is to be resolved into the same common Cause the weakness and inconstancy of mens minds which will not long be deeply affected with any thing be it ever so surprising or excellent For though the Wisdom and Goodness of God be so admirably displayed throughout all his works that no place is unfurnish'd with great variety of Objects to entertain and ravish the devout Contemplator yet certainly it may be said of those that go down to the Sea in Ships that do business in great Waters better than of any sort of Men in the world That these see the works of the Lord and his wonders For none of the Works of God either of his Creation or especially of his Providence are greater or more admirable than those which are beheld on the Sea or some way or other concern Navigation Now in speaking to the Text though the former part of it Those that go down to the Sea in Ships that do business in great Waters might give

Tyre in the number of Artificers 'T is this furnishes us with most of our Medicines and first brought us the art of healing 'T is this acquaints us with the present state of the World and with the Histories of past Ages not only such as relate to forreign Kingdomes but to our own also of which we should otherwise have known nothing but what had been imperfectly deliver'd down to us by Oral Tradition For unto this Art we owe that without which no ingenuous Science can be understood or scarce any good Trade manag'd I mean the knowledge of our Alphabet and Spelling and that any of us are able to Write or Read Because the use of Letters being first found out in Phoenicia or Chaldaea it was naturally impossible that the knowledg of them should have been conveyed to us but by the help of Navigation But the top and Crown of its Glory is that it was a necessary instrument of planting Christianity amongst us which ought to be infinitely dearer to us than wealth or learning or any thing besides For it gave Joseph of Arimathea and other Apostlical men the first Preachers of the Gospel here an access to us and without it unless by a Miracle the Knowledge of our Saviour could never have reach'd our Isle So that speaking as Men but for this Art instead of presenting our selves now before the Lord in his Holy Temple that God who made the Heavens and the Earth and us and all things else we might at this time have been worshipping some little Impotent Divinities of our own making which can neither help their Worshippers nor hurt those that prophane them Or it may be with a little more Discretion might have been falling down to the Sun or Moon or some of the Host of Heaven that are the immediate indeed but second and subordinate Causes of a great deal of good to Mankind We had not only continued a rude and needy People but without Shipping we had been without God in the World Thus I have prosecuted this very large Subject I confess with some general hints only because if the Text had oblig'd me to speak to nothing besides yet the straitness of an hour w'ont admit of a full and particular Discourse of that business which is done in great Waters I come therefore to the remaining part of the Text and in the last place to III. Reckon up some of the most remarkable works and wonders of God in the deep And the first I shall mention is That the Sea being higher than the Earth does not overflow it When the Text saith Those that go down to the Sea in Ships it is to be understood of the part only that is next the Shore Eor in other places that 't is higher is evident both from the nature of a Globe which the Sea and Land could not otherwise make and also from ocular Demonstration because at a distance on the Main you first see Masts of a Ship coming towards you before you see the Body of it or the Ship it self which being so much the fairer Object of Sight must necessarily be seen first if the Ocean were a level But now that the Waters being above the Earth and in continual Motion Ebbing or Flowing do not fall down upon it and cover it but contrary to the Nature of a Fluid Body keep themselves in heaps within their proper place is unaccountable to Reason and can only be resolv'd into the Virtue of that Almighty word Gen. 1.9 And God said let the Waters under the Heavens be gathered together unto one place and let the dry Land appear and it was so Next to the miraculous confinement of the Sea within its proper bounds we may place this that 't is Navigable That so loose and yielding a body as Water is should support the load of a Ship and of so many thousand weight in it when it can't bear up a grain of Lead or the least Stone Here the Wisdom and Goodness of God can never be sufficiently admir'd who knowing how necessary Navigation was to the good of Mankind has provided them all the requisites thereto as materials for their Ships and their Tackle the Magnet for their Compass the steddy and parallel direction of the Axis of the Earth for their Cynosura and which is the Foundation of all created Timber with the natural Disposition of floating and to enable the Sea the better to bear it up has infus'd a Salt thickness into it which last is the more observable because it excellently suits with the end of carrying Ships and can serve none other that we know of But then the Sea being thus fitted for Ships and their Burthen A new Scene opens for the Divine Glory to display it self in making this cold and thick Element administer to vital warmth and perspiration And so a fit Receptacle for an innumerable company of living Creatures Which Fertility of the Waters does as much illustrate the Wisdom and Goodness of God as any of his Works on Earth His Goodness in the maintenance of many thousand Families by the Fishing-Trade His Wisdome in the Natures of those Animals Many of them for strength and goodly proportions being inferiour to none on the Land But I shan't be tedious in giving particular Descriptions of these only observe That when Almighty God himself would magnifie his Wisdom and Power before Job he picks out the Leviathan of the Sea for the chief subject of his Triumph And having describ'd his strength and proportions with respect to them leaves us this supereminent Character of him Vpon the Earth there is not his like he is a King over all the Children of Pride But besides the wonderful works of Creation which I think come fairly within the sense of my Text 'T is evident from the following Verses which describe a deliverance from a Storm that the Text does more especially respect the Acts of Divine Providence as employed about Sea-fairing men And here his Goodness is to be admir'd 1. In preserving their Ships at Sea and in Storms and Tempests Except the Lord build the House the Workman laboureth but in vain and except he supports it when built it cannot stand But how many more accidents do hourly threaten the ruin of a Ship at Sea than an house at Land The decays of a House may be repaired and the breaches made up when a leake in a Ship cannot be stopt In a Tempest an house has only the Wind to contend with which is commonly gentler at Land but a Ship must endure the violent Concussions of the Waves too An Earthquake does now and then swallow up an House but how many more Eddies are there to suck in a Ship In a calm 't is as lyable to the Common accidents of Firing and Dissolution by a decay of some of its parts as an House But in a storm how many more Dangers it is subject to and consequently how much more endearing that Providence is which preserves it