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SERMON

PREACHED at the

Parish-Church of St. James, Westminster,

January 9, 1739-40:

And at

King-Street CHAPEL, in the faid Parish,

February 4, 1740-1.

Being Days appointed, by HIS MAJESTY's Proclamation for GENERAL FASTS on Occafion of the War against S PAIN.

2 CHRON. XV. 2.

The Lord is with

you,

while ye

be with

Him: and if ye feek Him, He will be found of you: but if ye forfake Him, He will forfake you.

T

HESE Words are the Beginning of a ferious Admonition, given by the Direction of Heaven to the Nation of the Jews, as they returned from obtaining, under the Conduct of Afa their King, one of the greatest Victories recorded in Scrip

ture.

Their Condition, after This, might have appeared to human Policy a very fecure one: But the Divine Wisdom saw the greatest of all Dangers impending over them, that which proceeds from forgetting God, and abandoning Virtue. And the Spirit of the Lord came upon Azariah the Son of Oded, and he went out to meet Afa, and faid unto him, Hear me, Afa, and all Judab and Benjamin : The Lord is with you, while ye be with Him; and if ye feek Him, He will be found of you;

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but if ye forfake Him, He will forsake you. Now these great Truths, of which Heaven thought it needful to remind them, at the Conclufion of a profperous War, it must be very much more needful that we should attend to, who seem to be only at the Beginning of a doubtful one. And accordingly we are met. here, by the Command of Authority, to confider our Ways, and humble ourselves before God for our Sins, as the neceffary Means for deriving a Bleffing on our Arms, and restoring and perpetuating Peace and Profperity to our Country.

It is a melancholy Confideration, that Creatures endued with Reafon and Humanity fhould ever come to employ Force against one another, and make the dreadful Addition of the Miseries of War to the many unavoidable Sufferings of Life. But wicked as this is, when Paffion and Resentment, Defire of unjuft Gain, or Fondness of infamous Glory prompts to it; yet when Injuries of pernicious Confequence are done to a Nation, and perfifted in, and no competent Redress can be obtained, it becomes then, both neceffary for particular Societies, and beneficial to human Society in general, that invaded Rights be

vigorously

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