Selected quad for the lemma: death_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
death_n	bear_v	sin_n	world_n	4,338	5	4.9247	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A44010	The questions concerning liberty, necessity, and chance clearly stated and debated between Dr. Bramhall, Bishop of Derry, and Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury.	Hobbes, Thomas, 1588-1679.; Bramhall, John, 1594-1663.	1656 (1656)	Wing H2257; ESTC R16152	266,363	392

whereof which is this Liberty is to choose what we will not to choose our Will no iucul●ation is sufficient to make the Bishop take notice of notwithstanding he be other where so witty and here so crafty as to send out Arguments for spies The cause why I denied the consequence was that I thought the force thereof consisted in this that Necessity in the Bishops opinion destroyed Liberty b Concerning the eternal Decree of God c. Here begins his Reply From which if we take these words knowledge of Approbation Practical knowledge Heavenly Bodies act upon sublunary things not onely by their motion but also by an occult vertue which we call influence Moral efficacy General influence Special influence Infuse something into the Will The Will is moved The Will is induced to will The Will suspends its own act Which are all Non-sense unworthy of a Man nay and if a Beast could speak unworhthy of a Beast and can befal no creature whose nature is not dep●aved by Doctrine nothing at all remaineth to be answered Perhaps the word Occult vertue is not to be taxed as unintelligible But then I may tax therein the want of ingenuity in him that had rather say that heavenly Bodies do work by an occult vertue then that they work he knoweth not how which he would not confess but endeavours to make Occult be taken for a Cause The rest of this Reply is one of those consequences which I have answered in the beginning where I compare the inconveniences of both opinions that is That either Adam did not sin or his sin proceeded necessarily from God which is no stronger a consequence than if out of this That a man is lame necessarily one should inferre That either he is not lame or that his lameness proceeded necessarily from the Will of God To the end of this Number there is nothing more of argument The place is filled up with wondering and railing ● D. FIftly If there be no Liberty there shall be no day of Numb 12. Arg. 5. Doom no last Judgement no rewards nor punishments after death A man can never make himself a criminal if he be not left at liberty to commit a crime No man can be justly punished for doing that which was not in his power to shun To take away Liberty hazards Heaven but undoubtedly it leaves no Hell T. H. THE Arguments of greatest consequence are the third and fift and fall both into one Namely If there be a necessity of all events that it will follow that praise and reprehension reward and punishment are all vain and unjust And that if God should openly forbid and secretly necessitate the same action punishing men for what they could not avoid there would be no belief among them of Heaven or Hell To oppose hereunto I must borrow an answer from St. Paul Rom. 9. ver 11. from the 11. verse of the Chapter to the 18. is laid down the very same objection in these words When they meaning Esau and Jacob were yet unborn and had done neither good nor evil That the purpose of God according to election not by works but by him that calleth might remain firm it was said to her viz. to Rebeckah that the elder shall serve the younger And what then shall we say is there injustice with God God forbid It is not-therefore in him that willeth nor in him that runneth but in God that sheweth mercy For the Scripture saith to Pharaoh I have stirred thee up that I may shew my power in thee and that my Name may be set forth in all the earth Therefore whom God willeth he hath mercy on and whom he willeth he hardeneth Thus you see the case put by St. Paul is the same with that of J. D. and the same objection in these words following Thou wilt ask me thin why will God yet complain for who hath resisted his will To this therefore the Apostle answers not by denying it was Gods will or that the decree of God concerning Esau was not before he had sinned or that Esau was not necessitated to do what he did but thus Who art thou O Man that interrogatest God shall the work say to the workman why hast thou made me thus Hath not the Potter power over the Clay of the same stuff to make one vessel to honour another to dishonour According therefore to this answer of St. Paul I answer J. D's objection and say The power of God alone without other help is sufficient Justification of any action he doth That which men make among themselves here by Pacts and Covenants and call by the name of Justice and according whereunto men are counted and tearmed rightly just and unjust is not that by which God Almighties actions are to be measured or called just no more than his counsails are to be measured by human wisedom That which he does is made just by his doing Just I say in him not alwaies just in us by the Example for a man that shall command a thing openly and plot secretly the hinderance of the same if he punish him he so commanded for not doing it is unjust So also his Counsails they be therefore not in vain because they be his whether we see the use of them or not When God afflicted Job he did object no sin to him but justified that afflicting him by telling him of his power Hast thou sayes God an arm like mine Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth and the like So our Saviour concerning the man that was born blind said it was not for his sin nor his parents sin but that the power of God might be shewn in him Beasts are subject to death and torment yet they cannot sin It was Gods will it should be so Power irresistible justifieth all actions really and properly in whomsoever it be found Less power does not And because such power is in God only he must needs be just in all his actions And we that not comprehending his Counsails call him to the Bar commit injustice in it I am not ignorant of the usual reply to this answer by distinguishing between Will and Permission As that God Almighty does indeed permit sin sometimes And that he also foreknoweth that the sin he permitteth shall be committed but does not will it nor necessitate it I know also they distinguish the action from the sin of the action saying God Almighty does indeed cause the action whatsoever action it be but not the sinfulness or irregularity of it that is the discordance between the Action and the Law Such distinctions as these dazel my understanding I find no difference between the will to have a thing done and the permission to do it when he that permitteth it can hinder it and knowes it will be done unless he hinder it Nor find I any difference between an action that is against the Law and the sin of that action As for example between the killing of Uriah and

of his in his Book de Cive cap. 6. pag. 70. ascribes to power respectively irresistible or to Soveraign Magistrates whose power he makes to be as absolute as a mans power is over himself not to be limitted by any thing but onely by their strength The greatest propugners of Soveraign power think it enough for Princes to challenge an immunity from coercive power but acknowledge that the Law hath a directtive power over them But T. H. will have no limits but their strength Whatsoever they do by power they do justly But saith he God objected no sin to Job but justified his afflicting him by his power First this is an Argument from authority negatively that is to say worth nothing Secondly the afflictions of Job were no vindicatory punishments to take vengeance of his sins whereof we dispute but probarory chasstisements to make triall of his graces Thirdly Iob was not so pure but that God might justly have laid greater punishments upon him than those afflictions which he suffered Witness his impatience even to the cursing of the day of his nativity Job 3. 3. Indeed God said to Job where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth Job 38. 4. that is how canst thou judge of the things that were done before thou wast born or comprehend the secret causes of my judgements And Job 42. 9. Hast thou an arm like God As if he should say why art thou impatient doest thou think thy self able to strive with God But that God should punish Job without desert here is not a word Concerning the blind man mentioned John 9. his blindness was rarher a blessing to him than a punishment being the means to raise his Soul illuminated and to bring him to see the face of God in Jesus Christ. The sight of the body is common to us with Ants and Flies but the sight of the soul with the blessed Angels We read of some who have put out their bodily eyes because they thought they were an impediment to the eye of the Soul Again neither he nor his parents were innocent being conceived and born in sin and iniquity Psal. 51. 5. And in many things we offend all Jam. 3. 2. But our Saviours meaning is evident by the Disciples question ver 2. They had not so sinned that he should be born blind Or they were not more grievous sinners than other men to deserve an examplary judgment more than they but this corporal blindness befel him principally by the extraordinary providence of God for the manifestation of his own glory in restoring him to his sight So his instance halts on both sides neither was this a punishment nor the blind man free from sin His third instance of the death and torments of Beasts is of no more weight than the two former The death of brute Beasts is not a punishment of sin but a debt of nature And though they be often slaughtered for the use of man yet there is a vast difference between those light and momentary pangs and the unsufferable and endless pains of hell between the meer depriving of a creature of remporal life and the subjecting of it to eternal death I know the Philosophical speculations of some who affirme that entity is better than non-entity that it is better to be miserable and suffer the tormenss of the damned than to be annihilated and cease to be altogether This entity which they speak of is a Metaphysical entity abstracted from the matter which is better than non-entity in respect of some goodness not moral nor natural but trancendental which accompanies every being But in the concrete it is far otherwise where that of our Saviour often takes place Mat. 26. 24. Woe unto that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed It had been good for that man that he had not been born I add that there is an Analogical Juctice and Mercy due even to the brute Beasts Thou shal● not mus●●e the mouth of the Oxe that treadeth out the corn And a just man is merciful to his Beast f But his greatest errour is that which I touched before to make Justice to be the proper result of Power Power doth not measure and regulate Justice but Justice measures and regulates Power The Will of God and the Eternal Law which is in God himself is properly the rule and measure of Justice As all goodness whether Natural or Moral is a participation of divine goodness and all created Rectitude is but a participation of divine Rectitude so all Lawes are but participations of the eternall Law from whence they derive their power The rule of Justice then is the same both in God and us but it is in God as in him that doth regulate and measure in us as in those who are regulated and measured As the Will of God is immutable alwayes willing what is just and right and good So his justice likewise is immutable And that individual action which is justly punished as sinful in us cannot possibly proceed from the special influence and determinative power of a just cause See then how grossely T. H. doth understand that old and true principle that the Will of God is the rule of Justice as if by willing things in themselves unjust he did render them just by reason of his absolute dominion and irresistible power as fire doth assimilate other things to it self and convert them into the nature of fire This were to make the eternal Law a Lesbian rule Sin is defined to be that which is done or said or thought contrary to the eternall Law But by this doctrine nothing is done nor said nor thought contrary to the Will of God St. Anselm said most truly then the will of man is good and just and right when he wills that which God would have him to will but according to this doctrine every man alwayes wills that which God would have him to will If this be true we need not pray Thy Will be done in earth as it is in heaven T. H. hath devised a new kind of heaven upon earth The worst is it is an heaven without Justice Justice is a constant and perpetual act of the Will to give every one his own But to inflict punishment for those things which the Judge himself did determine and necessitate to be done is not to give every one his own right punitive Justice is a relation of equallity and proportion between the demerit and the punishment But supposing this opinion of absolute and universal necessity there is no demerit in the World we use to say that right springs from Law and Fact as in this Syllogism Every thief ought to be punished there 's the Law But such an one is a thief there 's the Fact therefore he ought to be punished there 's the right But this opinion of T. H. grounds the right to be punished neither upon Law nor upon Fact but upon the irresistible power of God Yea it overturneth as much as in

it lies all Law First the eternall Law which is the ordination of divine Wisdom by which all Creaturs are directed to that end which is convenient for them that is not to necessitate them to eternall flames Then the Law participated which is the ordination of right reason instituted for the common good to shew unto man vvhat he ought to do and what he ought not to do To vvhat purpose is it to shevv the right vvay to him vvho is dravvn and haled a contrary vvay by Adamantine bonds of inevitalbe necessity g Lastly hovvsoever T. H. cries out that God cannot sin yet in truth he makes him to be the principal and most proper cause of all sin For he makes him to be the cause not onely of the Lavv and of the action but even of the irregularity it self and the difference betvveen the Action and the Lavv vvherein the very essence of sin doth consist He makes God to determine Davids Will and necessitate him to kill Uriah In causes physically and essentially subordiuate the cause of the cause is evermore the casue of the effect These are those deadly fruits vvhich spring from the poisonous root of the absolute necessity of all things vvhich T. H. seeing and that neither the sins of Esau nor Pharaoh nor any vvicked person do proceed from the operative but from the permissive Will of God and that punishment is an act of Justice not of dominion onely I hope that according to his promise he vvill change his opinion Animadversions upon the Bishops Reply Number XII THE Bishop had argued in this manner If there be no Liberty there shall be no last Judgement no Revvards nor Punishments after death To this I answered that though God cannot sin because what he doth his doing maketh just and because he is not subject to anothers Law and that therefore it is blasphemy to say that God can sin yet to say that God hath so ordered the world that sin may necessarily be committed is not blasphemy And I can also further say though God be the cause of all motion and of all actions and therefore unless sin be no motion nor action it must derive a necessity from the first mover nevertheless it cannot be said that God is the Author of sin because not he that necessitateth an action but he that doth command and warrant it is the Author And if God own an action though otherwise it were sin it is now no sin The act of the Israelites in robbing the Egyptians of their Jewels without Gods warrant had been theft But it was neither theft cousonage nor sin supposing they knew the warrant was from God The rest of my answer to that inconvenience was an opposing to his inconveniences the manifest Texts of St. Paul Rom. 9. The substance of his Reply to my Answer is this a Though punishment vvere an act of dominion not of Justice in God yet this is no sufficient cause vvhy God should deny his ovvn act or vvhy he should chide or expostulate vvith men vvhy they did that vvhich he himself did necessitate them to do I never said that God denied his act but that he may expostulate with men And this may be I shall never say directly it is the reason of that his expostulation viz. to convince them that their wills were not independent but were his meer gift and that to do or not to do is not in him that willeth but in God that hath mercy on or hardeneth whom he will But the Bishop interpreteth hardening to be a permission of God Which is to attribute to God in such actions no more than he might have attributed to any of Pharaohs servants the not perswading their Master to let the People goe And whereas he compares this permission to the indulgence of a parent that by his patience incourageth his son to become more rebellious which indulgence is a sin he maketh God to be like a sinful man And indeed it seemeth that all they that hold this Freedome of the Will concieve of God no otherwise than the common sort of Jewes did that God was like a man that he had been seen by Moses and after by the seventy Elders Exod 9. 10. Expounding that and other places literally Again he saith that God is said to harden the heart permissively but not operatively which is the same distinction with his first namely negatively not positively and with his second occasionally and not causally so that all his three wayes how God hardens the heart of wicked meu come to this one of permission which is as much as to say God sees looks on and d●th nothing nor ever did any thing in the business Thus you see how the Bisho● expoundeth St. Paul Therefore I will leave the rest of his ●…mentary upon Rom. 9. to the judgement of the Reader to think of the same as he pleaseth b Yet I do acknowledge that which T. H saith That he who doth permit any thing to be done which it is in his power to hinder knowing that if he do not hinder it it will be done doth in some sort will it I say in some sort that is either by an antecedent Will or by a consequent Will either by an operative Will or by a permissive Will or he is willing to let it be done but not willing to do it Whether it be called antecedent or consequent or operative or permissive it is enough for the necessity of the thing that the heart of Pharaoh should be hardened and if God were not willing to do it I cannot conceive how it could be done without him c T. H. demands how God should be the cause of the Action and yet not be the cause of the irregularity of the Action I answer because he concurres to the doing of evil by a general but not by a special influence I had thought to passe over this place because of the non-sense of general and special influence seeing he saith that God concurres to the doing of evil I desire the Reader would take notice that if he blame me for speaking of God as of a necessitating cause and as it were a principal Agent in the causing of all Actions he may with as good reason blame himself for making him by concurrence an accessory to the same and indeed let men hold what they will contrary to the truth if they write much the truth will fall into their pens But he thinks he hath a similitude which will make this permissive Will a very clear business The earth saith he gives nourishment to all kinds of plants as well to Hemlock as to Wheat but the reason why the one yeilds food to our sustenance the other poison to our destruction is not from the general nourishment of the earth but from the special quality of the root It seemeth by this similitude he thinketh that God doth not operatively but premissively Will that the root of Hemlock should poison the man that eateth it