Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	believe_v	faith_n	promise_n	1,407	5	7.2554	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A85837	Publick good without private interest, or, A compendious remonstrance of the present sad state and condition of the English colonie of Virginea [sic] with a modest declaration of the severall causes ... why it hath not prospered better hitherto ... / humbly presented to His Highness the Lord Protectour, by a person zealously devoted, to the more effectual propagating of the Gospel in that nation ...	Gatford, Lionel, d. 1665.	1657 (1657)	Wing G337; ESTC R43857	30,958	46

of truth hating covetcousness so they ought to be men of more than ordinary publick Spirits preferring the publick good of the Plantation before their own gain or privat interest such as have travelled and been used to trade and commerce with other Nations as well as in their own whereby having knowledge of the commodities and profits of several Countries they may be able to introduce the planting of such in that Colonie as the foil and climat is most proper for and the trading therein with other Nations will bring most advantage by And though there have been some Governours transmitted thither so qualified in the most and cheifest qualifications yet they have been so very few and their refidence there of so small continuance that either they wanted time to work any reformation amongst them that was considerable or else other inexperienced indiscreet careless covetous Governors soon pulled down or suffered to ruine what any knowing prudent carefull generous Governour had builded or at least layd the foundation of 2. The Ministers and publick dispensers of the Gospel which are sent into that Plantation are for the most part not only far short of those qualifications required in Ministers 1 Tim. 3. and Tit. 1. but men of opposite qualities and tempers such as either by their loose lives and un-Gospel-becoming conversation or by their known weakness and unsufficiency of understanding and parts do not only not gain or win upon those that are without the Indian heathen but cause to go more astray and lose many very many of those that pretend to be within the English Christians 3. The people that are sent to inhabit in that Colonie are the most of them the very scum and off-scouring of our Nation vagrants or condemned persons or such others as by the loosness and viciousness of their lives have disabled themselves to subfist any longer in this Nation and when they come thither either know not how or will not betake themselves to any sober industrious course of living And if they chance to get ought to maintain them in their licentiousness and wickedness fall to practising their old abominable practices there as much or more than ever they did heer So that if they come to be rulers or officers in the said Colonie whereby they are rendered more conspicuous in their true colours their idleness and otherwise evil examples do not only corrupt and taint others of the same Colonie but cause the very Heathen to loath both them and the very profession of Christianity for their sakes And can any Colonie expect to prosper or to obtain any blessings from God upon themselves and their Plantation when they sin more against God and do more provoke his wrath and indignation than those heathen whom the Lord removed out of the same parts of that Land and gave it them to possess No 't is to be feared that as it will be more tollerable for those heathens in the day of judgement than for them so some more intollerable judgments will likewise without speedy repentance ere they are aware be inflicted on them in the day of Gods visiting their iniquities than ever those Heathen felt whom God Cast out before them And it must be Gods infinite mercy to this sinfull Nation if besides our other crying fins This our sending out such from amongst us that so dishonour Gods name amongst those Heathen and cause them to blaspheme it and his Gospel to be a reproach to them far beyond what could have been done by them had they been kept and punished heer as they ought to have been do not so inflame and increase the fiery wrath and indignation of God against us as that he therefore cause too many of us to be cast forth or led forth captives into some heathenish barbarous or Idolatrous Nation to be a curse and a reproach amongst them 4. That very many Children and servants sent into that Plantation that were violently taken away or cheatingly duckoyed without the consent or knowledge of their Parents or Masters by some praestigious Plagiaries commonly called Spirits into some private places or ships and there sold to be transported and then resold there to be slaves or servants to those that will give most for them A practice proper for Spirits namely the Spirits of Devils but to be abhorred and abominated of all men that know either what men are or whose originally they are even his that made them or what their relations are either natural civil or Christian A practice condemned by the very Heathen and a Law called Lex plagiaria made by them against it And if it should be tollerated or connived at by Christians and known so to be of the Heathen Let it never be expected that any of those Heathen should turn Christians For they may well conclude That they that will take by force or fraud those that are Christians either children from their Parents or servants from their Masters or any of any relation from their friends and relations and sell them for slaves or servants to others will never make any conscience or scruple at all either of taking away by force or surreptitiously stealing or otherwise unjustly possessing or selling those Heathen themselves or their children servants goods lands or ought else they can lay their hands on And if they should become Christians they are foretaught by sufficient examples that their being Christians would be no securitie or protection to them or theirs And how this diabolical practise does in this and many other respects cry unto God for vengeance in the cries and moanes and complaints and lamentations made by those poor inslaved children and servants and by all their Parents friends and relations may be more eafily gessed at than expressed and may in probability be enough of it self to pull a curse and vengeance upon the whole Plantation Amos 2. v 6. Joel 3. v 6 7 8. II. The Miscariges of the Planters towards the Indians and amongst themselves are chiefly these Towards the Indians 1. The Planters generally keep neither their word nor their faith with the Indians whereas the Indians very seldome or never break their word or faith with them Thus iniquity is not only folly but sometimes a vary contradiction to it self as well as to reason for some that call themselves believers are real infidels and prove themselves so to be and worse when some that are real infidels prove themselves to have more faith than such hypocritical believers And it would be found presumption not faith or charity in any to believe or hope that such dishonourers of the Christian faith should ever prevail with the poor unbelieving Indians to believe Gods word or his promises declared to be his by them whose word and promise they have just cause not to believe Or if God should make such fowl falls of such false Christians to be an occasion to his own raising up those unbelieving Indians bringing them to Christ as he did the falling

of the Jewes to be the riches of the gentiles Rom. 11. t is to be feared such a calling in of those Indians would be the utter casting off of those Christians which the Lord of his mercy forbid And for the Indians fidelity to the English take that for a memorable testimony amongst many and indeed it may stand for many when the Masacre was made by the indians upon the English in that Colonie They assaulted no persons nor invaded any man offessions or goods that they knew had bought their lands of them covenanted with them for them and made good their covenants 2. The Planters have taken the Indians goods from them by force when the Indians have come peaceably to trade with them An act to be detested of all that love peace and truth much more of those that have any desire of the propagating of the Gospel of peace and truth amongst those with whom they trade 3. The Planters have turned some of the Indians out of their places of abode and subsistence after that the Indians have submitted to the Colonie and to their Government and have taken up their own lands after the custome used by the Colonie As they did otherwise also very unchristianly requite the service which one of the Indian Kings did them in fighting against other Indians that were presumed to be enemies to the English and to draw towards them to do them mischief For that when the said King desirous to shew his fidelity to the English if not in obedience to some of their Commanders orders did adventure too far with his own Indians in the pursute of those other Indians and thereby loft his life in that action as some report though others thought him to be taken alive by the enemies His wife and children that were by him at his expiring recommended to the care of the English as some of his servants have given out or to be sure ought to have been taken into their special care whether so recommended or not and might have been such an advantage either of reducing that whole family with their friends allies to the embracing the Christian faith or at least such an endearing them to the English as they have never or seldome had the opportunity of were so far from receiving the favour and kind usage merited by their father that they were wholly neglected and exposed to shift for themselves And though it be alleged by some as to the former part of this grievance that that portion of Lands which was taken from the sayd King before his death by an English Colonel was acknowledged openly in Courtto be with the consent of the said King that hee was satisfied for it Yet t is generally believed by some stoutly asserted that the sayd King was affrighted and threatened into that acknowledgement by the said Colonel 4. The Planters have by their several and frequent acts of injustice and cruelty exercised upon the Indians in invading their rights and assaulting their persons made the Indians in a manner to despair of ever living peaceably by them or having any fair converse or commerce with them as by their not suffering the Indians to hunt in those woods or to fish in those rivers wherein they challenge a right and are believed by divers sober and discreet men of the Colonie to have a right as well as themselves as also by not permitting the Indians though single or but two or three in a company to approach neer to any of the habitations of the English unless it be of some few of the better sort and rank who have more civility and humanity and know better how to improve that advantage And if any of the Indians do chance to come into any of their Plantations and are taken the English oftentimesty them alive to trees and burn them to ashes or else otherwise murder them without shewing any cause farther than the pretending that the Judians are not to be trusted though as I but now said in their faithfulness and firmness to their promises they much surpass the English 5. The Planters did lately viz. Anno 1656 when a numerous people of the Indians more remote from the Colonie came down to treat with the English about setling of a Peace and withall a liberty of trade with them most perfidiously and barbarously after a declaration of their desires and intention murther five of their Kings that came in expectation of a better reception and brought much Beaver with them to begin the intercourse of the commerce This unparallel'd hellish treachery and antichristian perfidy more to be detested than any heathenish inhumanity cannot but stink most abominably in the nosethrils o● as many Indians as shall be infested with the least sent of it even to their perpetual abhorring and abandoning of the very sight and name of an English man till some new generation of a better extract shall be transplanted amongst them as also cry incessantly in the eares of the Almighty for his avenging those bloods upon those English who made their calling themselves his their prime advantage of betraying those poor wretches lives into their bloody hands and by their murthering their bodies did as much as in them lay slay also their very soules and sacrifice them to the Devil as they have likewise by that complicated iniquity unless the detestation thereof by the rest of that Colonie and this Nation be openly manifested in the sight of the surviving Indians in some exemplarie punishment of those murtherers beaten off many thousands of thousands of soules from embracing that faith which would save them 6. To justify all these and many other of their matchless iniquities and impieties especially their rapines murthers and all sorts of cruelties exercised upon the poor Indians some of the Planters having usurped the office of publike preachers have Proclaimed from their speaking-places That the Planters are the Saints that have just right to whatsoever the Indians call theirs may when they have opportunity and power turn the Indians out of all their lands and estates take them into their own possession So far have they extended that opinion dominium fundatur in gratiae and so much have they abused that Apostolical compellation of Saints in those parts your Highness cannot but know the danger of their conjunction in these Amongst themselves 1. The Planters some of them have not only dealt unjustly and inhumanely with the poor heathen Indians but to the farther dishonour of this Nation and the greater scandal of our religion professed by them they did lately commit a most hainous outrage and bloody fact upon some of their own English Nation that had seated themselves in Mary-land that not upon a suddain provoked boyling of their own blood but so far as circumstances could demonstrate their intention out of a Cain-like thirsting after their brethrens blood and a sordid coveting of their estates and what less can the Indians from thence infere than that