the hostile designs
and insidious acts of a foreign nation, as well as by the dissemination
among them of those principles, subversive of the foundations of
all religious, moral, and social obligations, that have produced
incalculable mischief and misery in other countries; and as, in fine,
the observance of special seasons for public religious solemnities is
happily calculated to avert the evils which we ought to deprecate and to
excite to the performance of the duties which we ought to discharge by
calling and fixing the attention of the people at large to the momentous
truths already recited, by affording opportunity to teach and inculcate
them by animating devotion and giving to it the character of a national
act:

For these reasons I have thought proper to recommend, and I do hereby
recommend accordingly, that Thursday, the 25th day of April next, be
observed throughout the United States of America as a day of solemn
humiliation, fasting, and prayer; that the citizens on that day abstain
as far as may be from their secular occupations, devote the time to the
sacred duties of religion in public and in private; that they call to
mind our numerous offenses against the Most High God, confess them
before Him with the sincerest penitence, implore His pardoning mercy,
through the Great Mediator and Redeemer, for our past transgressions,
and that through the grace of His Holy Spirit we may be disposed and
enabled to yield a more suitable obedience to His righteous requisitions
in time to come; that He would interpose to arrest the progress of that
impiety and licentiousness in principle and practice so offensive to
Himself and so ruinous to mankind; that He would make us deeply sensible
that "righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any
people;" that He would turn us from our transgressions and turn His
displeasure from us; that He would withhold us from unreasonable
discontent, from disunion, faction, sedition, and insurrection; that He
would preserve our country from the desolating sword; that He would save
our cities and towns from a repetition of those awful pestilential
visitations under which they have lately suffered so severely, and that
the health of our inhabitants generally may be precious in His sight;
that He would favor us with fruitful seasons and so bless the labors of
the husbandman as that there may be food in abundance for man and beast;
that He would prosper our commerce, manufactures,