Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	church_n	true_a	worship_n	1,554	5	8.1684	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A52535	A discourse of natural and reveal'd religion in several essays, or, The light of nature a guide to divine truth.	Nourse, Timothy, d. 1699.	1691 (1691)	Wing N1417; ESTC R16135	159,871	385

the time of the Law we read of many who were not Circumcis'd such as Job Melchisedech Lot and others of whose Salvation we can in no ways doubt the Females also amongst the Jews were uncapable of Circumcision and yet we doubt not but great Numbers of them were sav'd so likewise since the time of the Gospel we may charitably believe that the Children of Christian Parents who dyed before Baptism may be capable of Salvation also 2. The foremention'd place therefore is of the same Latitude with that of John the 16th Except ye eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink his Blood ye have no Life in you from which place some of the Ancients and the Greeks to this day hold the Eucharist necessary to Infants but notwithstanding that the form of Words be the same in both Places yet we do not believe that Children are oblig'd to come to the Lord's Supper and even Men who dye immediately after Baptism are undoubtedly sav'd though they were never Partakers of the Holy Communion It has been a Maxim I know amongst the Ancients that Extra Ecclesiam non est salus which throughout all Ages with due Reverence do I speak it hath been by many so strain'd and stretch'd or rather straitened and confin'd as to exclude all other Christians also from Salvation who are not of the same Communion with themselves Nay even amongst us of this Age and Nation we have a sort of Grinning Censorious Prick-ear'd Hypocrites who will hardly believe any to have a true Call who are not of their own Brotherhood Sisterhood I might say For their Devotion leans or rather lies much that way The former Maxim then with all submission to the venerable asserters of it does not so much concern those who never were within the Communion of the Church as them who having been sometimes within its Bosome are afterwards cut off by Excommunication and ejected out of it for Schism Heresie or some grievous crimes as the practices of all Ages do amply testifie though which of the contending parties was in the right or was the true Church was many times a matter of endless Dispute Emulation and private Animosities being oftentimes the Cause and Fomenter of such severe Censures And to shew that this is the true sense of the foremention'd Maxim I would only ask of what Communion were the Magi or the wise Men in the East who came to worship Christ Not of the Jewish Synagogue certainly nor of the number of those who were Baptiz'd into the Christian Faith And yet no Man doubts but that they who were the first to worship Christ with their rich Offerings and came so long a Journey were made partakers of the Benefits of his Life and Passion The Jewish Church was a Type of the Christian and much narrower whether we consider its Dimensions or the Terms of its Communion for they were under stricter Covenants of Salvation and Mercy under divers Burthensome Ordinances and more especially oblig'd to Circumcision and yet by God's special Mercy great numbers were sav'd who were strangers to the Church For besides such aforemention'd as Job Melchisedech and others with their Families we read of Nineveh the greatest City in the World together with its King the most Potent Temporal Prince then reigning upon the Earth that upon the Preaching of Jonah they turn'd from their evil way to the true God with such humility and severity of Repentance as we no where read the like For even their very Cattle were oblig'd to fast and were cloath'd with Sack-cloth Now can we think that all they whom God by such an especial care did call to Repentance and who testified such an universal and ready Obedience to his heavenly Will were deliver'd only from Temporal judgements to be afterwards overwhelm'd all of them with Eternal Torments But it may be said that this was an Extraordinary Case and so say I too The ordinary and safest way to Salvation is by a belief on Jesus Christ and of his Mysteries and by the Administration of the Sacraments and the observance of Evangelical Duties But notwithstanding God who may and often doth dispense with his own Methods may in some extraordinary Cases shew Mercy to a few and call them by some special means unto Salvation In the last place it may be alleadg'd perhaps That the works of the best Men amongst the Heathens cannot be acceptable in the sight of God for as much as they want Charity Now Charity is one of the Graces of God's holy Spirit not acquirable but insus'd under the dispensation of the Gospel 'T is true Charity is an excellent Grace and the noblest of all those which we are capable to receive from the inspiration of God's holy Spirit for other Graces tend chiefly to the private benefit of him on whom they are bestowed but Charity is a Ray of the divine Beauty and Excellence and dilates it self in the good of others extending it self through the whole World without the least prospect of advantage to it self It carries the Soul as on the Wings of a Cherubim into the divine Presence where contemplating its own unworthiness in the infinite Perfection and Goodness of God it sallies out into Acts of Admiring and Adoration and thinks all too little for an All-merciful and Omnipotent Creatour Now if the Heathens had Speculations of this kind though imperfect ones but suitable to the means of knowledge I cannot see why they might not exert them by some efforts which might hold a kind of Analogy with those purer Emanations of that true flaming Charity which is no ways attainable but by the free Grace and infusion of the Holy Ghost for though the better Heathens did not always do good works or perhaps but seldom with a reference of them to God as the ultimate end and chiefest good yet for as much as they propos'd good by what they did and practis'd Vertue for its own reward the sole Intention of a good end without farther reward was an implicite devolution of the action it self upon God as the first Mover and grand Scope to which it tended And if to make an action good it be requisite that the Agent have God always before his Eyes some good works even of the best Christians will be found defective upon this account for even the best of Men may many times do good works because they are good not thinking of God the Original of all good and into whom as into the Ocean all streams of Goodness at last return The summ of what I have hitherto spoken upon this Argument does amount to this That an explicite Belief of the Mysteries of the Christian Religion accompanied with an Oral Confession and the Administration of the Sacraments though they be points of greatest Moment and exceeding helpfull and the only safe way to Man's Salvation yet are they not so absolutely and indispensably necessary but that 't is possible in some extraordinary cases Salvation may be obtain'd