I read it as a flowery, archaic way of saying something along the lines of “in the name of God”, without needing to map it away from a modern meaning, so that’s one data point for you. I don’t recall hearing the phrase elsewhere, but there are lots of religious invocations along similar lines from various eras, and I may unconsciously be drawing an inference between them.
(My favorite might be “God’s teeth!”, although that conveys shock rather than supplication.)
I read it as a flowery, archaic way of saying something along the lines of “in the name of God”, without needing to map it away from a modern meaning, so that’s one data point for you. I don’t recall hearing the phrase elsewhere, but there are lots of religious invocations along similar lines from various eras, and I may unconsciously be drawing an inference between them.
(My favorite might be “God’s teeth!”, although that conveys shock rather than supplication.)
In Henry V, Shakespeare has the Duke of Exeter say:
So it seems to have been a fairly common idiom in 17th C English.