Selected quad for the lemma: city_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
city_n	day_n	time_n	year_n	5,874	4	4.7366	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A62599	A sermon preached at Lincolns-Inn-Chappel, on the 31th of January, 1688 being the day appointed for a publick thanksgiving to Almighty God for having made His Highness the Prince of Orange the glorious instrument of the great deliverance of this kingdom from popery & arbitrary power / by John Tillotson ...	Tillotson, John, 1630-1694.	1689 (1689)	Wing T1236; ESTC R6939	16,918	45

When God sees that all the means which he can use do prove ineffectual and to no purpose he will then give over a People as Physicians do their Patients when they see that nature is spent and their case past remedy When men will not be the better for the best means that Heaven can use God will then leave them to reap the fruit of their own doings and abandon them to the demerit of their Sins That which now remains is to apply this to our selves and to the solemn Occasion of this Day And if this be our Case let us take heed that this be not also our Doom and Sentence First The Case in the Text doth very much resemble Ours And that in three respects God hath sent great Judgments upon us for our evil deeds and for our great trespasses He hath punish'd us less than our iniquities have deserv'd And hath given us a very great and wonderful Deliverance 1. God hath inflicted great Judgments upon us for our evil deeds and for our great trespasses Great Judgments both for the quality and for the continuance of them It shall suffice only to mention those which are of a more ancient Date Scarce hath any Nation been more calamitous than this of Ours both in respect of the Invasions and Conquests of Foreigners and of our own Civil and intestine Divisions Four times we have been Conquer'd By the Romans Saxons Danes and Normans And our intestine Divisions have likewise been great and of long continuance Witness the Barons Wars and that long and cruel Contest between the two Houses of York and Lancaster But to come nearer to our own Times What fearful Judgments and Calamities of War and Pestilence and Fire have many of us seen And how close did they follow one another What terrible havock did the Sword make amongst us for many years and this not the Sword of a Foreign Enemy but of a Civil War the mischiefs whereof were all terminated upon our selves and have given deep wounds and left broad scars upon the most considerable Families in the Nation Alta manent civilis vulnera dextrae This War was drawn out to a great length and had a Tragical end in the Murtber of an excellent King and in the Banishment of his Children into a strange Countrey whereby they were expos'd to the Arts and Practices of those of another Religion the mischievous Consequences whereof we have ever since sadly labour'd under and do feel them at this day And when God was pleas'd in great mercy at last to put an end to the miserable Distractions and Confusions of almost twenty years by the happy Restoration of the Royal Family and our ancient Government which seem'd to promise to us a lasting settlement and all the felicities we could wish yet how soon was this bright and glorious morning overcast by the restless and black Designs of that sure and inveterate Enemy of ours the Church of Rome for the restoring of their Religion amongst us And there was too much encouragement given to this Design by those who had power in their hands and had brought home with them a secret good will to it For this great Trespass and for our many other Sins God was angry with us and sent among us the most raging Pestilence that ever was known in this Nation which in the space of eight or nine Months swept away near a third part of the Inhabitants of this vast and populous City and of the Suburbs thereof besides a great many thousands more in several parts of the Nation But we did not return to the Lord nor seek him for all this And therefore the very next year after God sent a terrible and devouring Fire which in less than three days time laid the greatest part of this great City in ashes And there is too much reason to believe that the Enemy did this that perpetual and implacable Enemy of the peace and happiness of this Nation And even since the time of that dreadful Calamity which is now above twenty years agone we have been in a continual fear of the cruel Designs of that Party which had hitherto been incessantly working under ground but now began to shew themselves more openly and especially since a Prince of that Religion succeeded to the Crown our eyes have been ready to fail us for fear and for looking after those dreadful things that were coming upon us and seem'd to be even at the door A fear which this Nation could easily have rid it self of because they that caused it were but a handful in comparison of us and could have done nothing without a foreign force and assistance had not the Principles of Humanity and of our Religion too restrain'd us from violence and cruelty and from every thing which had the appearance of undutifulness to the Government which the Providence of God had set over us An Instance of the like patience under the like provocations for so long a time and after such visible and open attempts upon them I challenge any Nation or Church in the World when they had the Laws so plainly on their side from the very foundation of it to produce Insomuch that if God had not put it into the hearts of our kind Neighbours and of that incomparable Prince who laid and conducted that great Design with so much skill and secrecy to have appear'd so seasonably for our rescue our Patience had infallibly without a Miracle been our ruine And I am sure if our Enemies had ever had the like Opportunity in their hands and had overbalanced us in numbers but half so much as we did them they would never have let it slip but would long since have extirpated us utterly and have made the remembrance of us to have ceas'd from among men And now if you ask me for what Sins more especially God hath sent all these Judgments upon us It will not I think become us to be very particular and positive in such determinations Thus much is certain That we have all sinn'd and contributed to these Judgments every one hath had some hand more or less in pulling down this vengeance upon the Nation But we are all too apt to remove the meritorious cause of God's Judgments as far as we can from our selves and our own Party and upon any flight pretence to lay it upon others Yet I will venture to instance in one or two things which may probably enough have had a more particular and immediate hand in drawing down the Judgments of God upon us Our horrible contempt of Religion on the one hand by our Infidelity and Profaneness and our shameful abuse of it on the other by our gross Hypocrisie and sheltering great wickedness and immoralities under the cloak and profession of Religion And then great Dissentions and Divisions great uncharitableness and bitterness of Spirit among those of the same Religion so that almost from the beginning of our happy Reformation the Enemy had sown these Tares