Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	great_a	life_n	time_n	2,672	5	3.2697	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A51229	A sermon preach'd before the King at St. James's, April 16, 1696 being a day of publick thanksgiving for the discovery of a horrid design to assassinate His Majesty's person, and for the deliverance of the Nation from a French invasion / by ... John, Lord Bishop of Norwich.	Moore, John, 1646-1714.	1696 (1696)	Wing M2554; ESTC R321	17,039	38

killed the King the Nobility and the Representatives of the People And is there not reason to believe that the same Evil Spirit which pusht on the Romanists in the days of our Fathers to such horrid impiety did govern these wretched Men in the Present Plot which in some respect does exceed that former Treason For at the same time that the Life of the King was to be taken away by Wicked Traytors at home there was an Army in readiness to have made a Descent upon us from abroad sufficient not only to destroy the Lords and the Commons who represent the People but the People themselves and there is great cause to think they would have made the Sword drunk with Blood before they had put it up It is most unaccountable how any Protestant should have been concern'd in it and yet it cannot be denied that some there were of that Religion and Church which abhorreth such Doctrines they were of that Church but had departed from it before they did engage in these Horrible Designs I say it is unaccountable since in the time of the late King they wish restored their Religion the Laws the Rights and the Liberties of the Nation were in a manner all subverted and the King on whose Power all their hopes of restoring him are built is one that caused all his own Protestant Subjects who would not forsake their Religion to be imprisoned banisht or put to death by which Severities he hath rooted them out of their Native Soil and left no appearance of them in their own Countrey Is it to be thought he would treat Strangers more tenderly than he has done his own People or that he would tolerate the Exercise of the Reformed Religion in this Kingdom after he had conquered it who has extirpated it in his own where his Subjects had a right by Law to enjoy it and were not guilty of the least undutiful Behaviour to provoke him to violate their Rights And here I should have thought it necessary to do an Act of Justice to our Religion in renouncing and disavowing the late Proceedings of those Clergy-men who absolved two Persons that were condemned for Treason and at their death shewed no tokens of Repentance for that Detestable Crime as being contrary to the Doctrine and Practice of the Church of England and scandalous to all good Christians in her Communion had it not been done already as far as can be in the present Circumstances by the Bishops of the Church and I doubt not with the hearty Concurrence of the rest of the Clergy While such Pernicious Opinions as these find favour in the World and there are men bad enough to practise them we have great need to fly unto God for Protection We cannot reflect upon the inhumane Slaughter intended both of our King and of our People without horror and detestation we cannot think of our Wonderful Deliverance without hearts full of Joy Praise and Thanksgiving ready to be offer'd to God our Gracious Deliverer Great is the Lord and marvellous Worthy to be praised there is no end of his greatness Whoso is wise and will observe these things even they shall understand the loving-kindness of the Lord. Men shall fear and declare the works of the Lord for they shall wisely consider of his doings Indeed a little consideration and thought will convince us that all Deliverances whether private or publick whether of single Persons or of whole Nations are due to God All men are sensible that they cannot preserve themselves they find no power within them either that was the cause of their being or that can certainly secure their Estates their Credit or Friends or prolong even their own Lives Men seemingly to themselves and others in sound health are in a day or two's time carried off by a Malignant Disease Death surprizing them when they had set it at a great distance and scarce allow'd it any room in their thoughts So Thefts and Fires and other Accidents sweep away their Estates against which the nicest Care and strictest Guards are no absolute Security Greater Uncertainties do attend War and Peace Publick Councils and the State of Kingdoms Counsels through want of knowledge of many things may be wrong taken or the Wisest by Treachery may be discovered or defeated small circumstances of things change the fate of Battels things which were not observed or so much as thought of when they began and they that assured themselves to return Conquerors from the Field have been carried away Prisoners Such as pretend to be our Friends may be plotting against us and our truest Friends may not have skill and strength to deliver us or be out of the way when we stand in most need of their help And as we discover no sufficiency in our selves or Friends on Earth to save us from trouble and danger so have we no ground or warranty to address our selves to the Souls in Heaven of Saints departed since we have no assurance they know how or what we do nor that they could help us if they had knowledge of our Affairs Much less can we apprehend how they should hear the Prayers of some Millions of Persons dispersed thro' all Countries put up at the same time which is in effect to allow them Omniscience and Omnipresence two of the Properties of the Divine Nature It is therefore intolerable Presumption in the Writers of the Church of Rome to suppose such Powers and Authorities to be lodged in the Virgin Mary and St. Ann her Mother and other Saints which are peculiar to God himself They must have very false Notions of God and of his Creatures who imagine either that he can transfer or that a Creature is capable of receiving those Attributes which are in their own nature incommunicable and which without a Contradiction cannot be separated from a Being infinitely perfect There is therefore nothing we can firmly rely on either for the safety of our Persons or the private Comforts of this Life or the Publick Good of our Country but God himself Upon him it is we must call in time of trouble and he will deliver us The Heathens had such a just sense of humane Frailty that they did attribute all the great Turns in their Condition to something above their own power To the Will of God they ascribed the good success of their Affairs and hoped by his Aid to be delivered from Calamities That the happiness of his planting was the more durable That when he will punish there is no escaping for the Strong That his displeasure might be appeased by their humbly addressing themselves to him And tho sometimes they talk of the influence Fortune has over humane Affairs yet they acknowledg it to be subject to the pleasure of God Wherefore in their Prayers they style God their Father that is the Author of their Life Health and Goods They dedicated Honses to Religious Uses and had several

might take possession from the malice of their cruel Enemies that thirst after their blood and from a vast number of dangerous Accidents which are not to be imputed either to their own folly or the ill will of other men He also protects the Reputation of the Innocent and delivers them from the Slanders of lying Lips he secures mens Estates not only from the Assaults of Robbers and Thieves but from the violence of Fires Tempests and Floods and from all other Casualties But though there is no Creature so small and inconsiderable that God does not take care of it yet for the most part the Acts of his Providence are more apparent and discernable in the ordering and management of the greater portions of the World his hand is more visible in the government and disposal of Countreys and Kingdoms than of particular Places and Families of Kings and Men in Authority than of private Persons whether in their ruin when they turn their hearts from the Lord their God and give themselves up to commit evil or in their Preservation when they do that which is right in his eyes and keep the Covenants and Statutes which he has commanded them And it is to the extraordinary Providence of God that we are beholden for this joyful Occasion of assembling our selves together who hath delivered our King from the hands of cruel and barbarous Men that had conspired to Assassinate and Murther his Sacred Person and preserved our Nation from an Invasion for which all things were prepared and made ready by a Powerful Neighbour with design to conquer our Countrey and to bring that Bondage and Slavery upon us under which his own Subjects do labour and groan Had God justly incensed by our Iniquities permitted these Hellish Plots to have taken effect against the Person of our Dread Sovereign and the Land of our Nativity it is not easy to conceive the Fears Horror and Confusion with which we should have been overwhelmed nor the Rage and and Cruelty with which our Enemies would have follow'd their Blow to have obtained a full Conquest and made us compleatly miserable We could with no reason have expected the least degree of tenderness or pity from them who had so far divested themselves not only of Religion but Humanity it self as to murther the Father of their Countrey under whose Protection they for many years had lived safely neither should we have had more ground to hope for favour from that Prince by whose Arms we were to be invaded who in his whole Conduct seems to have greater regard to the amplifying of his Glory and Power and the enlargement of his Dominions than to the honesty of his Cause and the Rights of them with whom he does contend and whose Mercy or even Faith and Justice the unhappy whom he has conquered have no reason to applaud Neither perhaps are these Failings so much to be charged upon the Ambition of his Natural Temper as upon an unenlightned Zeal he has to promote a Religion which allows men to do very many ill things For where Popery has a full Influence upon men they will break through all Tyes Natural Civil or Divine to serve that Interest Neither Laws nor Edicts nor Promises nor Oaths nor Vows nor sense of former Kindnesses have been found Bands strong enough to hold them There are indeed Doctrines taught in that Church which are great hindrances to good Life and dispose men to violate the Moral Duties of Nature and Religion without any great shock of their Consciences or fear of Future Punishment They get rid of their Fears by the Doctrines of Penance Purgatory Masses for the Dead and make their Consciences easy by those of Equivocation Absolution and that they are not bound to keep the Faith they have engaged to Hereticks which is the good Name they are pleased to give us whom they will not allow to have any Right to Truth or Justice or so much as to their own Lives Hereupon many of that Communion think it no Sin at all to kill us and the most zealous and bigotted among them believe it a Good Work and that they shall merit Heaven by doing God and their Church such Laudable Service Since these Principles have found Entertainment in the World what Havock has been made of the Lives of Men what Effusion of Christian Blood During a short Reign in our own Kingdom Men and Women of Holy and Peaceable Lives to a great number were burnt at the Stake because they would not embrace Opinions devised by the Church of Rome and imposed for Articles of Faith which are not contained in the Holy Scripture nor known to the Primitive Christians In the Countrey from whence we now were threatned with an Invasion as we are inform'd by some of their own Authors the Throats were cut of near a Hundred thousand Protestants in the space of a few days When Tidings of it reach'd the Court of Rome his Holiness the Pope received them with in-expressible Joy he went to St. Lewis's Church in Procession to give God Thanks for the Success heard Panegyrical Orations on that Occasion with extreme Satisfaction and Pleasure granted ample Indulgences and on a Medal stamp'd for that purpose he caused this Hellish Tragedy to be represented as the work of an Angel Which none could have undertaken before they had by a long custom of sinning brought themselves to hope that there were no Invisible Powers no Angels nor God to observe the Wickedness of men and to punish it Queen Elizabeth sat a long time on the Throne lov'd and honour'd by her Subjects for her Wise and Righteous Government and yet there was hardly any part of her Reign without a Plot carried on by her restless Enemies of that Religion At one time several Gentlemen Zealots of the Roman Church some of whose Accomplices had undertaken to make out That it was Lawful to take off Princes excommunicated and that if Right and Justice are ever to be violated it is allowable in such Cases as tend to advance the Catholick Religion did readily and chearfully enter into a Conspiracy and bind themselves by an Oath to Murther her Majesty But the Providence of God which now discovered the late Traitors brought then their black Contrivances to light and they suffered condign Punishment for them But of all bloody Designs that Popish Counsels have hatch'd and they seem to outdo all others there is none that had so contracted its Venom and Malignity together like the Rays of the Sun in a glass and which in the most compendious manner would have destroyed so many and of such high Quality as the Gunpowder Plot. Caligula wish'd the People of Rome had but one Neck that he might cut it off at one Blow and the Horrible Cruelty which the Pagan Tyrant had only in his Wishes and Speculation the Christians of the Church of Rome would have put in Practice and with one Stroke have