Selected quad for the lemma: nation_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
nation_n	beseech_v	hear_v	please_v	2,144	5	10.0789	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A60388	A sermon preached before the Honourable House of Commons at St. Margarets Westminster, on Wednesday the 5th of April, 1699 being a solemn day of fasting for imploring a blessing on His Majesty and all his dominions, and for averting those judgments we most justly deserve, and for the distressed Protestants abroad / by James Smalwood ...	Smalwood, James, d. 1719.	1699 (1699)	Wing S4009; ESTC R10065	13,377	29

because I think the only Way for this Nation to flourish and be happy and for the Protestant Church to stand pure and uncorrupt is to remove if possible all those far from it whose Business and Study it is not only to distract our Government but also to pollute our Manners But I leave this next to God to the Great and Wise Council of the Nation I proceed now Thirdly To apply what has been said to the Business of the Day And because we have heard First That the chief Design of God's Judgments upon a People is to reclaim them from their Sins and Secondly That the only Way a People had to prevent and avert God's Judgments was to forsake their Sins therefore Conversion from Sin to God must be esteem'd a necessary Spiritual Duty And tho' this Duty is most certainly always very requisite and seasonable yet there are some Seasons when the Church does most chiefly require it and to name no more this present Season is the greatest now in the Time of Lent but more especially in this Magna Hebdomada this Great Week before the Resurrection we are call'd upon to make a strict Re-view of our Lives and to humble our Souls in God's Presence and to bewail our manifold Transgressions and to devote our selves afresh to his Service This Obligation the holy Church lays upon us But still there is another Engagement for our most solemn Humiliation on this Day Publick Authority has added a further Injunction on us To answer therefore this double Obligation and that we may perform the Office of the Day aright let us enquire what we have now to do and that I shall consider of after this Two-fold Manner First Generally What all Days of Humiliation do require of us Secondly Particularly What this Day distinctly requires First All Days of Publick Humiliation seem to require these Three Things at our Hands 1. That we should humble our selves before God every one for his own Personal Sins whereby he has provok'd God and increas'd the publick Guilt and done his part to bring down the Judgments and Vengeance of God upon the Nation 2. That we should likewise heartily lament the Sins of the Publick especially the great and crying Sins of the Nation whereby the Wrath and Indignation of God has been so justly incens'd against us 3. We should prosecute this our Humiliation with an Actual Reformation and Amendment of our Lives for the future I do but just mention these Particulars without any Enlargement on them that I may more fully speak to the Duties of the Day which are these Three 1. We are this Day to pray to God that he would avert those Judgments which our manifold Sins and Provocations have most justly deserv'd 2. That he would in his great Mercy and Goodness relieve and comfort such as suffer abroad for the Protestant Religion 3. We are to implore a Blessing from Almighty God upon His Majesty and all His Dominions 1. We are to make our Supplications unto God for the Averting of those Judgments which our manifold Sins and Provocations have justly deserv'd 'T is true we of this Nation have lately receiv'd no small Tokens of God's favourable Inclinations to us in bestowing upon us a Grateful and an Honourable Peace a Peace that I hope may prove a competent Recompence to us for all our Toils and Fatigues and Expences But if we continue to lead Lives unsuitable to such Blessings receiv'd how easily may God find a Way to let in the same Enemy afresh upon us King David tells us That the Lord gives Strength unto his People the Lord gives his People the Blessing of Peace That is God Almighty defends and protects his People but 't is only so long as they are obedient to him for he says in another place If a Man will not turn God will whet his Sword and will bend his Bow and make it ready and prepare for him the Instruments of Death God Almighty has dealt all along with this Nation as he formerly did with his own peculiar People the Jews He has exercised and made Trial of us by all the wise Arts of his Divine Providence we have felt the Powers both of his Mercy and his Justice Alternately Out of his Mercy he would never destroy us quite yet it has as it were puzzl'd his Justice how to save us We read of four sorts of Judgments wherewith God formerly used to endeavour to reclaim the Antient Jews Plague Fire Sword and Famine we in this Nation have in a few Years felt the former Three and indeed we have some Reason to fear from the remarkable Defect and Decay of the Seasons for some Years last past that if we do not repent in time and deprecare God's heavy Displeasure against us his Providence may be a preparing the Fourth and the most dreadful of them all a Famine for us Let us therefore with the greatest Importunities make our Addresses now to Almighty God that he would be pleas'd to avert those terrible Judgments which we so righteously have deserv'd and to which the great Sins of the Nation do now so justly expose us humbly beseeching him not for us but for his his own Name 's sake and because we are his People and are called after his Name and because his holy Faith and Religion are profess'd among us that he would be pleas'd to hear the Prayers and Supplications of his Servants which they have made before him this Day And together with our selves let us pray unto God that he would please 2. To regard our distressed Brethren in the Faith all the World over particularly to relieve and comfort those that suffer abroad for the Protestant Religion 'T is a mighty Scandal to the Christian Religion and what all Jews Turks and Pagans may justly reproach the Followers of Christ with that there are such implacable Divisions and such barbarous Persecutions practis'd and kept up among us The Doctrine of the great Author of our Faith was made up all of Love this was the distinguishing Character his Disciples were to be known by If they lov'd one another Yet in a certain Church and a Church too that boasts it self the only true Church of Christ we find that Badge and Character quite worn off for instead of loving those who cannot persuade their Consciences to swallow such gross Absurdities as they do themselves these Men think they do God good Service if they kill them I might produce many Instances of this outragious Zeal against the Romish Church The cruel Inhumanities against the Vaudois the Butcheries of the Albigenses and the Poor of Lyons the total Extirpation of the Protestants in Moravia Silesia Bohemia and Hungary the Massacre of the Hugonots in France and the English Protestants in Ireland not to mention those Ignominious Flames that were kindl'd in our own Queen Mary's Days and that terrible and unparallell'd Design that was laid to destroy the Lords and Commons of our Nation at