Selected quad for the lemma: nation_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
nation_n	gentile_n	jew_n	people_n	3,930	5	4.9285	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A65548	Miserere cleri, a sermon, presenting the miseries of the clergy, and assigning their true causes in order to redress preached before the right honourable Sir John Vaughan Knight, Lord Chief Justice of His Majesties Court of common pleas, and Sir John Archer Knight, one of the justices of the same court : in the cathedral of Saint Peter, Exon, at the Assizes, on Sunday, July 26, 1688 / by Edw. Wetenhall ...	Wettenhall, Edward, 1636-1713.	1668 (1668)	Wing W1505; ESTC R3625	18,089	31

than Woe is me my Mother that thou hast borne me a man of strife and contention to the whole earth But blessed be God it is to Earth only that we are reputed such Our contention being in the cause of Heaven we have it our Friend And not to every one on earth neither but to such onely who bear the Character of Earth are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sons of Violence or obscurity the meaner or worser sort as earth the dregs of nature and such whose souls seem made of mud too as minding onely earthly or more vile things There are some more generous and heaven-born minds and I am confident I speak before several such at present who having renounced the hidden things of dishonesty and dishonourableness all infidely and bad principles and vileness both stand up for the worship of God and think a slovenly and disorderly worship not worthy his glory who are not fond to see their priests in rags nor the faces or of them or theirs pale with leanness The Lord give mercy unto such in that day And to all such who are conscious to themselves of so worthy minds and it is not our fault if any be not we in all humility addressing our selves beseech what we complain of as the reception we find from the generality none of them think in the least to reflect upon himself Even in the text those general words A man of contention to the whole earth and Every one of them or rather All them that is the generality and some of all sorts curse me were not intended by Jeremiah to design the whole humane nature no nor all of the Jewish nation There were of them that hid Jeremiah and Baruch and stood as a skreen between him and the wrath of the King There were that visited him in the dungeon and lift him thence and brought him again unto the King and procured favour and kinder usage for him And verily Except the Lord had left unto us such a remnant we should have been as Sodom and we should have been like unto Gomorrah But blessed be him that remembred us in our low estate and hath made Kings our nursing Fathers and Queens our nursing Mothers Insomuch that still our remnant God be thanked is larger much than was that of the Prophets friends And we hope he will yet remember us For truly such still is our low estate if to be matter of the common trample be to be low that we need the constancy and endeavours of all our friends were they more numerous much than they are And in confidence of the kind reception of what we speak to such we will adventure to lay our misery yet farther open by proceeding unto its grounds first Negatively expressed in the text I have neither lent on usury nor have men lent to me on usury I intend not here at all to enter upon the common place of Usury It shall suffice onely to say that the Old Usury in practice amongst the Jews was widely different from that which our Law permits The precept which allowed it to them was so far from setting bounds to their avarice that it seems to have enlarged its mouth at least as sin took occasion by the law For the Law determining Usury lawful to be exacted onely upon Gentiles not brethren Jews and most probably on the seven Nations whom God had commanded them to afflict and cast out though afterwards for their punishment he suffered the remains of them to co-inhabit the Holy Land with his people the Jews thought themselves not onely allowed but in a sort obliged by the precept of afflicting them by all means to extort from them all they could Hence it came to pass that where-ever they lent on usury which by degrees they did to other than those seven Nations indeed to any whose needs made them borrowers they made all the advantages they could on the necessity of the borrower and oppression extortion or grinding the face of the poor became the same thing with Usury as not onely the Hebrew but many of the Oriental names for Usury still import Whereas I suppose our laws which state Usury punish Extortion Whence it is conclusible that they who urge texts of the Old Testament with so much heat against the present Use amongst us do not speak Ad idem if ad idem nominis not rei Now as to the Clergy in this case I wish fa●re the greatest number of them were as able to purge themselves of the latter clause that they have not taken on usury as they are of the former that they have not lent But to quit the whole matter in so strict an acception It is the observation of a learned Textuary that under the one kind of Borrowing and Lending he comprises all other matters which men use to transact among themselves in point of dealing or Traffick And so undoubtedly the summe of what the Prophet meant is more general yet reducible to these two points He had neither been guilty in any case of rigorous exaction of what was his own nor of Detention or undue holding what was anothers No one had matter of contention with him in things of this nature nor could for these any man curse him I am sure for the Clergy generally I have the same plea to enter 1. It is not for any Extortion or severe Exaction that we meet with such opposition and obloquy as what at present we labour under I know indeed there are who account receiving of Tithes and such revenues which antient nursing Fathers and Mothers bequeathed to the Church to be Exaction But such must pardon us if we think what bounty gives indigent industry may harmlesly receive and further crave it may be thought hard that such who will not give us any thing themselves should seek to take away from us the antient Donations of others I have heard that they who have been unquestionably learned in the Law have said that he understands not how he holds his Lands who thinks his Tithes his own and that there is not the Family now in being which can plead in an uninterrupted line to have enjoyed any Possessions neer so long as the Church hath done this of Tithes much less which hath had revenues settled by half so many Statutes and legal Securities as these But as to this of Tithes and other Church-revenues I shall onely be bold to speak in my own Profession using too the words of one vastly abler than my self therein That God accepts of things Dr. Hammond given him and so holds a Propriety as well in the New as Old Testament and That God gets this Propriety in those things he holds as well by an acceptation of what is voluntarily given as by a command that such things should be presented to him is most clear from Scripture The known case of Ananias and Sapphira will prove it And that he accounts himself to receive by the hands of his servants who want