Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	work_n	work_v	wrought_v	459	4	8.0041	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A33971	Par nobile two treatises, the one concerning the excellent woman, evincing a person fearing the Lord to be the most excellent person, discoursed more privately upon occasion of the death of the Right Honourable the Lady Frances Hobart late of Norwich, from Pro. 31, 29, 30, 31 : the other discovering a fountain of comfort and satisfaction to persons walking with God, yet living and dying without sensible consolations , discovered from Psal. 17, 15 at the funerals of the Right Honourable the Lady Katherine Courten, preached at Blicklin in the county of Norfolk, March 27, 1652 : with the narratives of the holy lives and deaths of those two noble sisters / by J.C.	Collinges, John, 1623-1690.; Collinges, John, 1623-1690. Excellent woman.; Collinges, John, 1623-1690. Light in darkness.	1669 (1669)	Wing C5329; ESTC R26441	164,919	320

most excellent capacity and that is the most excellent person whose better and more excellent part is so ennobled and made excellent But the fear of the Lord ennobleth the more noble and excellent part and that in the noblest and most excellent capacity Thirdly The truth of the Proposition will appear if we consider the excellency of the object to which this excellent quality moveth the soul and for an union with which it prepareth it The force of the demonstration dependeth upon the principle That the more excellent any object is towards an union with which any quality is subservient and working the more excellent that habit or quality is which is a principle so justifiable to reason and allowed by common consent and judgement that I need not insist on the proof of it Take all other qualities or advantages which the creature can afford they serve us no further than to the creature preparing us for an union with that For instance Beauty is an amiable gift of God but wherein doth it serve us it indeed may commend the woman to an husband but it will not at all commend her to Christ Wisdom and Knowledge are rare habits and prepare us for an union and endearment to and with wise and learned men but they commend not a soul at all unto God The like may be said of those other distinguishing excellencies before mentioned But now this excellent habit The fear of the Lord commendeth the soul to the Creator and prepares it for a glorious union with him who is the supreme good and unquestionably the most excellent object The beautiful the knowing the wise person may be abominable to God a child of wrath and abhorred by him but in every Nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted of him saith the Apostle Reason teacheth us to judge those the most excellent persons in the world who upon a just account are most approvable to the wisest and most excellent persons of the earth and those things the most excellent which render any so acceptable upon this account if there were no other we should set a great rate upon knowledge vertue and wisdom above what we set upon beauty and riches and bodily strength c. because they commend us to the more judicious rational and wiser part of the world By the like parity of reason certainly if we will but use our reason and accordingly form our judgement we must judge the fear of the Lord the most excellent quality and the person who feareth the Lord the most excellent person he alone is the Jedidiah the person whom God loveth the soul whom God careth for This and this alone is that which commendeth the Creature to the Creator Fourthly That is the most excellent quality which directeth to and prepareth the soul for the most excellent end There is an end to which the wise Creator hath ordained and designed every thing which he hath made and there is an end which every rational agent propoundeth to it self in working and there is an end or issue which every thing will have The great end of man in point of action for which God hath created him is the glorifying of his holy Name The wise man saith God made all things for himself And the Apostle saith For him are all things God in working worked for the best ends cause he could work for no greater wrought for himself The Apostle saith of man particularly We are created in Christ Jesus unto Eph. 2. 10. good works which God had before ordained that we should walk in them Mans great end in point of fruition and priviledge is the enjoyment of God here in the influences of grace hereafter in the beatifical vision of his glory There now are the great ends of man the ends for which God hath created him and which the wiser sort of men will propound to themselves Besides these great ends of man there are also some little ends of humane actions to which men direct much of their action such as the obtaining of a comfortable beeing and subsistence in this life c. An end though in it self considerable yet exceeding little in comparison with the former as every one will judge who hath but learned to compare Time with Eternity and the soul with the body and outward man Take now all those other things before mentioned as things either in reality or vulgar estimation raising the price of one mortal above another this only excepted the highest end they move towards which they dispose and prepare the creature for is no more than a sweet and happy beeing in this life and that too according to the various humours of men as one fancieth happiness to lie in riches a second in pleasure a third in intellectual or moral virtue Bodily strength and health are great blessings of God but what further fruit do they bring forth than what tasts well to a mortal pallat what do they signifie more than that such as are blessed with them pass the time of their mortality with less pain sorrow and trouble than those that want them Beauty is an amiable gift but hath it any further influence upon mans felicity than this that whose are blessed with it stand in a nearer capacity to some creatures favour than others more deformed and uncomely to whom being united by marriage or some near degrees of affection they shall probably in the world have a life of more content pleasure and outward satisfaction than others who are not under so lovely circumstances Come from them to the indowments of the mind knowledge prudence a diligent industrious or active spirit c. and indeed what ever else can be named this fear of the Lord only excepted they neither direct the soul to its best and noblest end nor any way prepare and dispose it for the obtaining of it unless in a very remote capacity What 's the issue of knowledge wisdom but this that the persons thus far blessed stand upon better ground to live in the world than other men as well in regard of the satisfaction these habits give to the mind as of the light that ariseth from them to direct a mans converse and the usefulness of such a person unto others The same might be said of moral vertues Riches Honours great Relations c. They none of them look beyond this life nor contribute any thing to an happiness beyond it Nay it were yet something if they perfectly blessed a man so long as he is circumseribed with the limits of time and mortality but how little do they if I shall evidence they come short of this than which there is nothing of more easie demonstration For to us who are Christians there 's something more required even to such an happiness than an affluence of worldly contentments We know and believe that there is a God that this God is the chiefest good and consequently building upon the rational principle of all Philosophers we

the Christian Wife in obedience to his superiour commands and under the encouragement of many great and precious promises for the glorifying of his holy Name who first instituted this relation and therefore to him of right it belonged to give lawes to it who also in his Word hath superadded another duty of a good Wife not understood by the Philosopher viz. a due regard to the salvation of the Soul of her Husband 1 Cor. 7. 16. What knowest thou O Wife whether thou shalt save thy husband For the first of these this excellent Lady rated her self by Julius Caesars reckoning not judging it enough for her to be thus vertuous unless she also lived above the suspicion of the contrary To let us know that she had not forgot the Law of her Mother she would often mention a saying of hers That temptations to the Violation of the honour of Ladyes in this particular originally proceeded from some too light and familiar carriage first in themselves and that wanton was suffered to come too near who came to be denyed Her constant behaviour therefore was tempered with that affability and gravity which in conjunction best became a person of her Ladyships honour And that she might shew the Church of Rome a Protestant Lady possessed of that threefold chastity which they make so meritorious as she had managed her state of Virginity and that upon the most publick Theatre in our English World so as she would often bless God who had taught her so to behave her self that none ever durst offer any rudeness to her and her conjugal relation without the least stain upon her honour So having lost the man of her bosom and again reduced to a single condition she grew to be something superstitious in this thing not only resolving through Gods assistance to go to her Grave having been only the Wife of one Husband but almost looking upon it as a piece of her duty and often reckoning it a piece of the honour of her fathers house that none of her Noble Sisters left Widows had married a second time The Philosopher allots to the vertuous wife the governance of the house within doors and a wiser than he had before in the description of his Vertuous Woman told us That she Prov. 31. 27. 11. looketh well to the affairs of her houshold and the heart of her husband trusteth in her She was not indeed under such circumstances as she needed to lay her hands to the spindle or to hold the distaff yet that was often her divertisement but it might truly be said of her that she looked well to the affairs of her house and that the heart of her Husband trusted in her And that not only as to the affairs of her House within in respect of which she was so vigilant as during the time that I waited on her it was no easie thing for any servant to impose upon her but also to those which were more extrinsecal and ordinarily no womens imployment Perceiving her dear Husband ingaged in a great debt she undertook the management of his whole estate and auditing all his accounts and that to so good a purpose that in a few years she had shortned his debt Six thousand pounds The Apostle treating of the duties of the Wife saith Eph. 5. 31. Let the Wife see she reverence her husband and St. Peter observeth that Sarah did so and attested it by calling him Lord which yet had not been much significant if it had not been conjoyned with a prudent concealing infirmities and a due Obedience to his just commands This Noble Lady did not only so in words but really testifie the honour and reverence she bare unto her head Her prudent concealing infirmities was obvious to all though no proper matter for this discourse Her Obedience to her Husbands commands was so absolute as if she had learnt of Aristotle that the Commands of the husband are Arist Oeconom lib. 2. a law by God imposed on the Wife by matrimonial conjunction She had indeed learned of a better Tutour Eph. 4. 22. Wives submit your selves to your own husbands as unto the Lord for the husband is the head of the Wife even as Christ is the head of the Church But above all most remarkable was this incomparable Ladies Christian patient sympathy with her dear husband in those bodily afflictions with which it pleased God to exercise 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 him exemplifying that of Demosthenes how valuable to an husband on a sick bed a good Wife is It pleased God to exercise him with successive afflictions though in different degrees even from her first Espousals to him and to allott him this Noble Lady as much for a Nurse as for a Wife Her care for him and tenderness of him was beyond expression of which I was an ocular witness for the seven or eight last moneths of his life when his distempers grew heaviest upon him In the day time she confined her self to his Chamber seldom leaving him for an hour unless to wait upon publick Ordinances or to take her daily bread or perform her secret Devotions In the night she watched with him to such a strange excess as all about her wondred her thin body could bear seldom laying her self down to take any rest till two or three of the Clock in the morning and then upon an ordinary Couch in his Chamber where she might hear every groan and be at hand to every need Thus she approved her self a Vertuous Wife according to the rules of Philosophy with this difference that she did all this from a more noble Principle in a more excellent Manner and to a more noble End But this was not all she was as much a meet help for him as to the things of Eternity and the salvation of his soul as in the things which concerned this life The familiar Compellation which her Noble husband generally used to her was My dear Saint and this not without a just cause from the experience he had had of her as to spiritual things When thou art converted saith our Saviour strengthen thy Brethren No sooner had God wrought a change in the heart of this Noble Lady but her great sollicitude was for the husband of her bosom that sin might not rest upon him When Christ had called Philip Joh. 1. 45. Philip findeth Nathaniel and saith unto him we have found him of whom Moses in the Law and the Prophets did write Jesus of Nazareth This Lady rightly apprehended that this spiritual charity ought to begin at home By her prudent monitions and passionate intreaties her husband was won from what had been the vanities of his youth To abhorre the things wherein he had formerly delighted to inquire after choose be acquainted with and to delight in those good wayes of God with which formerly he had no acquaintance and against which for want of a due knowledge of them he had formerly taken up a prejudice He was naturally