Selected quad for the lemma: act_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
act_n	believe_v	faith_n	object_n	6,980	5	9.0206	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A35074	A sermon preached at Holy-Rood House, January 30. 1681/2. before Her Highness the Lady Anne. Tho. Cartwright ...	Cartwright, Thomas, 1634-1689.	1682 (1682)	Wing C704; Wing C704A; ESTC R170908	23,302	36

give you Epimetronti something more than the measure of an ordinary Sermon upon such an Extraordinary Theme and Time at least when your patience gives me over endure the rest as an easie Penance for the heavy Sin of the day And I hope you will not think that I shake hands with my Text whilst I take this just occasion of showing you how well it does accord with the Time comparing the Eternal stain of this day with the Sin of that and the guilt of the Regicides with that of the Jews by which we may be the better convinced that as the King himself of his Princely Pity to us did so had we need to cry aloud for our Pardon humbling our selves and renouncing that abhorred murder of God's Anointed Servant and our lawful Soveraign least when he come to make inquisition for Blood his innocent Royal blood be still justly required of us and our Posterities Now though the Charitable Martyr hid his Enemies sin in such a terminus diminuens as the close Phrase of this sin yet the faithful Minister may not 't is for him to search it that he may see whether it be not like that of Cain greater than could be forgiven The sin therefore though but express'd in two words must be explain'd in many more 't is a comprehensive Villany its name is Legion never any sin had so great a train of Hell as this it is like a Mathematick Line divisible in semper divisibilia I shall but reckon up its Aggravations as the unjust Steward did his Masters debts of a thousand set down but fifty and yet I expect to tire my self and you too before I leave it Gentle Language does but water Sin and make it grow again and he who treats it civilly is guilty of its increase which I would be loath to be of Rebellion and yet should we strain courtesie with this the most plausible term we could give it would be Murder a sin which like an armed Gyant will first or last set upon its Authors and rend them with inward torments And 't is therefore above all other sins so hedg'd about with Thornes even in this life 't is ten to one but Vengeance meets it 'T is scelus infandum a wickedness too great for any expression The Act it self is abominable but the Object makes it execrable a sin out of measure sinful such a stupendious Villany it was as our posterity will hardly find Faith enough to believe 'T is the Murder not of a private man but of a King the best of men And if Alexander's killing of Calisthenes was in Seneca's Judgment crimen aeternum what shall so damnable a Paracide this Regicide be in ours If ever any Corps deserved to swim in Teares 't was his And if ever any Villany did match that of the Jews in the Crucifying of Our Saviour 't was theirs in the Beheading of Our most gracious Sovereign For he was not such a Pharoah to us as to change a Kingdom of Free-men into an House of Bondage He neither enslaved us in our Persons Labours Possessions nor Vnderstandings and 't is a great Truth which may be said without danger of Flattery that His Son walkes after him nay so much greater was His care for us than himself that how much soever our encroaching fingers itch'd to be tampring with his Prerogative as they still do with His Son's he took care we should be abridged no liberty of the Subject unless it were a Licence of destroying our selves of which we in this Age seem as fond as in the last and so far was He from invading our Rights that none was ever so forward to part with his own in which I pray God His Son Our gracious Soveraign walk not too much after him diminishing it in so many particulars as left him open at last to the losing of all the rest Witness the Petition of Right passed by him in June 1628. An Act of such Royal grace as might easily have put us into an extasy of admiration In so much as that when he passed that Bill he almost dealt with his People as Trajan did with his Praetorian prefect put his Sword into their hands and bid them use it for him if he ruled well if not against him he acted rather like a Steward for his people than a Lord over them and so would his Son do too if we would let him Had he without any tryal of Law made his pleasure pass for Sentence and lop'd off these rebellious Members and the rest of the Senators heads as Tarquin did Poppyes Had he made them feel such times as Tacitus describes where no man durst be vertuous least he should be thought to out-brave his Prince and yet to complain of their hard usage had been Capital and had his Subjects like Naboth been stoned for their Vineyards they might have used the Churches arms Prayers and Tears not Swords or Guns as they did against him but God knows so far was he from bearing justly the vast load and guilt of all that blood which had been shed in our unhappy Wars which some men would needs charge upon him to ease their own Souls that he was evermore afraid to take away any mans Life unjustly than to lose his own He resisted our enemies to the blood and chose to lose His own Head rather than one hair should fall from ours So that next to God and his good Angels we were most beholding to him for our safety Rerum prima Salus una Caesar He was indeed the Tutelar Angel of his 3 Kingdoms whom when God called to himself he quickly sent a destroying Angel among us And yet such was the touchiness of those times and it more than begins to be the same in these that though he intended not only to oblige his friends but his enemies also being perswaded that he could neither grant too much nor distrust too little yet his matchless favours did rather exasperate than win them their poysoned hearts turning all into venome The Martyr saw it clearly before he dyed and His Son cannot choose but see it now that malice is not abated by time nor appeased by any good turns M●…chiav l. 3. c. 6. And that the Prince who would be wary of conspirators should be most jealous of those to whom he has afforded most savours With what monstrous ingratitude was his indulgence repayed whilst it forced him to observe that his letting some men go up to the pinacle of the Temple was a temptation to them to cast him down headlong and that others hydropicke insatiableness learned to thirst the more by how much the more they drank in so much that the fountain of his Royal bounty could not satisfie them An Epidemical disease it is which rages as much among the people of this age as of the last Nor is it any wonder that he did not answer the unreasonable expectations of these people For the least they expected from him was