Selected quad for the lemma: death_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
death_n	law_n	punishment_n	sin_n	9,072	5	5.3449	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A31083	A sermon upon the passion of Our Blessed Saviour preached at Guild-Hall Chappel on Good Friday, the 13th day of April, 1677 / by Isaac Barrow ...	Barrow, Isaac, 1630-1677.	1677 (1677)	Wing B954; ESTC R12876	31,756	46

Davies Mayor Martis xxiiij die Aprilis 1677 Annoque Regis Caroli Secundi Angliae c. vicesimo nono THis Court doth earnestly desire Dr. Barrow to Print his Sermon Preached at the Guild-Hall Chappel on Good Friday last before the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of this City Wagstaffe A SERMON UPON THE PASSION OF OUR Blessed Saviour PREACHED At Guild-Hall Chappel on Good Friday the 13th day of April 1677. By ISAAC BARROW D.D. late Chaplain in Ordinary to His Majesty and Master of Trinity-Colledge in Cambridge Sacramentum salutis humanae non licet tacere etiamsi nequeat explicari P. Leo I. Serm. de Pass 7. LONDON Printed for Brabazon Aylmer at the Sign of the three Pidgeons in Cornhill over against the Royal Exchange MDCLXXVII A SERMON UPON THE Passion of our Blessed Saviour Phil. 2.8 And being found in fashion as a man he humbled himself and became obedient unto death even the death of the cross WHen in consequence of the original apostacy from God which did banish us from Paradise and by continued rebellions against him inevitable to our corrupt and impotent nature mankind had forfeited the amity of God the chief of all goods the fountain of all happiness and had incurred his displeasure the greatest of all evils the foundation of all misery When poor man having deserted his natural Lord and Protector other Lords had got dominion over him so that he was captivated by the foul malicious cruel Spirits and enslaved to his own vain mind to vile lusts to wild passions When according to an eternal rule of justice that sin deserveth punishment and by an express Law wherein death was enacted to the transgressors of Gods command the root of our stock and consequentially all its branches stood adjudged to utter destruction When according to St. Paul's expressions all the World was become guilty before God or subjected to Gods Judgment all men Jews and Gentiles were under sin under condemnation under the curse all men were concluded into disobedience and shut up together as close Prisoners under sin all men had sinned and come short of the glory of God Death had passed over all because all had sinned When for us being plunged into so wretched a condition no visible remedy did appear no possible redress could be obtained here below for what means could we have of recovering Gods favour who were apt perpetually to contract new debts and guilts but not able to discharge any old scores what capacity of mind or will had we to entertain mercy who were no less stubbornly perverse and obdurate in our crimes than ignorant or infirm How could we be reconciled unto Heaven who had an innate antipathy to God and goodness sin according to our natural state and secluding evangelical grace reigning in our mortal bodies no good thing dwelling in us there being a predominant law in our members warring against the law of our mind and bringing us into captivity to the law of sin a main ingredient of our old man being a carnal mind which is enmity to God and cannot submit to his law we being alienated from the life of God by the blindness of our hearts and enemies in our minds by wicked works How could we revive to any good hope who were dead in trespasses and sins God having withdrawn his quickning Spirit How at least could we for one moment stand upright in Gods sight upon the natural terms excluding all sin and exacting perfect obedience When this I say was our forlorn and desperate case then almighty God out of his infinite goodness was pleased to look upon us as he sometime did upon Jerusalem lying polluted in her blood with an eye of pity and mercy so as graciously to design a redemption for us out of all that woful distress And no sooner by his incomprehensible wisdom did he fore-see we should lose our selves than by his immense grace he did conclude to restore us But how could this happy design well be compassed how in consistence with the glory with the justice with the truth of God could such enemies be reconciled such offenders be pardoned such wretches be saved Would the omnipotent Majesty so affronted design to treat with his rebels immediately without an intercessour or advocate Would the sovereign governour of the world suffer thus notoriously his right to be violated his authority to be slighted his honour to be trampled on without some notable vindication or satisfaction Would the great Patron of justice relax the terms of it or ever permit a gross breach thereof to pass with impunity Would the immutable God of truth expose his veracity or his constancy to suspicion by so reversing that peremptory sentence of death upon sinners that it should not in a sort eminently be accomplished Would the most righteous and most holy God let slip an opportunity so advantageous for demonstrating his perfect love of innocence and abhorrence of iniquity Could we therefore well be cleared from our guilt without an expiation or re-instated in freedom without a ransome or exempted from condemnation without some punishment No God was so pleased to prosecute his designs of goodness and mercy as thereby no wise to impair or obscure but rather to advance and illustrate the glories of his sovereign dignity of his severe justice of his immaculate holiness of his unchangeable steddiness in word and purpose He accordingly would be sued to for peace and mercy nor would he grant them absolutely without due compensations for the wrongs he had sustained yet so that his goodness did find us a mediatour and furnish us with means to satisfie him He would not condescend to a simple remission of our debts yet so that saving his right and honour he did stoop lower for an effectual abolition of them He would make good his word not to let our trespasses go unpunished yet so that by our punishment we might receive advantage He would manifest his detestation of wickedness in a way more illustrious than if he had persecuted it down to Hell and irreversibly doomed it to endless torment But how might these things be effected where was there a mediatour proper and worthy to intercede for us Who could presume to sollicit and plead in our behalf Who should dare to put himself between God and us or offer to skreen mankind from the Divine wrath and vengeance Who had so great an interest in the Court of Heaven as to ingratiate such a brood of apostate enemies thereto Who could assume the confidence to propose terms of reconciliation or to agitate a new covenant wherewith God might be satisfied and whereby we might be saved Where in heaven or earth could there be found a Priest sit to atone for sins so vastly numerous so extremely hoinous And whence should a sacrifice be taken of value sufficient to expiate for so manifold enormities committed against the infinite Majesty of Heaven

proxy to undergo such a judgement and such a punishment whereby he received a doom as it were from Gods own mouth uttered by his Ministers and bare the stroke of justice from Gods hand represented by his instruments whence very seasonably and patiently did he reply to Pilate Thou hadst no power over me or against me except it were given thee from above implying that it was in regard to the originally Supreme authority of God his Father and to his particular appointment upon this occasion that our Saviour did then frankly subject himself to those inferiour powers as to the proper ministers of divine justice Had he suffered in any other way by the private malice or passion of men Gods special providence in that case had been less visible and our Lords obedience not so remarkable And if he must dy by publick hands it must be as a criminal under a pretence of guilt and demerit there must be a formal process how full soever of mockery and outrage there must be testimonies produced how void soever of truth or probability there must be a sentence pronounced although most corrupt and injurious for no man is in this way persecuted without colour of desert otherwise it would cease to be publick authority and become lawless violence the prosecutor then would put off the face of a Magistrate and appear as a cut-throat or a robber 4. In fine our Saviour hardly with such advantage in any other way could have displayed all kinds of vertue and goodness to the honour of God to the edification of men to the furtherance of our salvation The judgement Hall with all the passages leading him thither and thence to execution attended with guards of souldiers amidst the crouds and clamours of people were as so many theaters on which he had opportune convenience in the full eye of the world to act divers parts of sublimest vertue to express his insuperable constancy in attesting truth and maintaining a good conscience his meekness in calmly bearing the greatest wrongs his patience in contentedly enduring the saddest adversities his entire resignation to the will and providence of God his peaceable submission to the law and power of man his admirable charity in pitying in excusing in obliging those by his good wishes and earnest prayers for their pardon who in a manner so injurious so despiteful so cruel did persecute him yea in gladly suffering all this from their hands for their salvation his unshakeable faith in God and unalterable love toward him under so fierce a trial so dreadful a temptation All these excellent vertues and graces by the matter being thus ordered in a degree most eminent and in a manner very conspicuous were demonstrated to the praise of Gods name and the commendation of his truth for the settlement of our faith and hope for an instruction and an encouragement to us of good practice in those highest instances of vertue It is a passable notion among the most eminent Pagan Sages that no very exemplary vertue can well appear otherwise then in notable misfortune whence 't is said in Plato that to approve a man heartily righteous he must be scourged tortured bound have his two eyes burnt out and in the close having suffered all evils must be impailed or crucified And it was saith Seneca the cup of poyson which made Socrates a great man and which out of prison did transferr him to heaven or did procure to him that lofty esteem affording him opportunity to signalize his constancy his equanimity his unconcernedness for this world and life And The vertue saith he again and the innocence of Rutilius would have lien hid if it had not by condemnation and exile received injury while it was violated it brightly shone forth And he that said this of others was himself in nothing so illustrious as in handsomly entertaining that death to which he was by the bloody tyrant adjudged And generally the most honourable persons in the judgement of posterity for gallant worth to this very end as such Philosophers teach were by divine providence delivered up to suffer opprobrious condemnations and punishments by the ingrateful malignity of their times So that the Greeks in consistence with their own wisdom and experience could not reasonably scorn that cross which our good Lord did not only as did their best Worthies by forcible accidental constraint undergo but advisedly by free choice did undertake to recommend the most excellent vertues to imitation and to promote the most noble designs that could be by its influence So great reason there was that our Lord should thus suffer as a criminal II. We may consider that in that kind his suffering was most bitter and painful Easily we may imagine what acerbity of pain must be endured by our Lord in his tender limbs being stretched forth racked and tentered and continuing for a good time in such a posture by the piercing his hands and his feet parts very nervous and exquisitely sensible with sharp nails so that as it is said of Joseph the iron entred into his Soul by abiding exposed to the injuries of the Sun scorching the wind beating the weather searching his grievous wounds and sores Such a pain it was and that no stupifying no transient pain but one both very acute and lingring for we see that he together with his fellow-sufferers had both presence of mind and time to discourse Even six long hours did he remain under such torture sustaining in each moment of them beyond the pangs of an ordinary death But as the case was so hard and sad so the reason of it was great and the fruit answerably good Our Saviour did embrace such a passion that in being thus content to endure the most intolerable smarts for us he might demonstrate the vehemence of his love that he might signifie the heinousness of our sins which deserved that from such a person so heavy punishment should be exacted that he might appear to yield a valuable compensation for those pains which we should have suffered that he thoroughly might exemplifie the hardest duties of obedience and patience III. This manner of suffering was as most sharp and afflictive so most vile and shameful being proper to the basest condition of the worst men and unworthy of a free man however nocent and guilty It was servile supplicium a punishment never by the Romans under whose law our Lord suffered legally inflicted upon free men but upon slaves only that is upon people scarce regarded as men having in a sort forfeited or lost themselves And among the Jews that execution which most approached thereto and in part agreed with it for their Law did not allow any so inhumane punishment hanging up the dead bodies of some that had been put to death was held most infamous and execrable for Cursed said the Law is every one that hangeth upon a tree cursed that is devoted to reproach and