Selected quad for the lemma: sin_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
sin_n	apostle_n	law_n	transgression_n	5,619	5	10.4785	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A45744	A treatise of moral and intellectual virtues wherein their nature is fully explained and their usefulness proved, as being the best rules of life ... : with a preface shewing the vanity and deceitfulness of vice / by John Hartcliffe ...	Hartcliffe, John, 1651-1712.	1691 (1691)	Wing H971; ESTC R475	208,685	468

of another mind Temperance tends to our Happiness in this that it tends to our Health without which all the Enjoyments of this Life are but little worth on the other side the intemperate Man is an Enemy to himself continually making Assaults upon his own Life the Apostle adviseth that we should abstain from fleshly Lusts that war against the Soul and it ought to be no small Argument to us that they war against the Body also so for Kindness and Love besides that they are good to others they are of much use and benefit to our selves for there is unspeakable pleasure in Love a great deal of ease in a charitable Temper on the contrary how fretting and vexatious to the Mind of Man are Malice Envy and Hatred they do not only raise Enemies abroad but they set a Man against himself and deprive him of the Peace of his own Mind Compassion and Mercy is profitable to others and delightful to our selves so Compassion and Mercy are not more profitable unto other Men than they are delightful to our own Souls and we do not only gratifie our selves by doing Services to others but we thereby provoke Mankind by our Example to the like Kindnesses and so turn the pity of others to our selves when it shall come to be our turn to stand in need of their help In like manner our Reason directs us to the practice of Truth Fidelity and Justice as the surest Arts of thriving in this World these beget Confidence and give Men a Reputation in their Neighbourhood and these Vertues our Reason tells us have the force of a Law and there needs nothing to give the force of a Law to any matter but the stamp of divine Authority upon it Now God that made us and all other Creatures and by virtue of his Authority over us hath imprinted on our Natures the Principles of Good and Evil and hath so wrought 'em into the frame of our Souls by which as by a natural instinct Men are carried to approve what is good and disapprove what is evil and supposing that our natural Reasons do tell us that it is for our Interest to live in the practice of what we call Vertue and to dislike and avoid what we call Vice this is a sufficient declaration that we should do the one and avoid the other and if we live contrary to this we violate the Law of him that made us for there needs nothing to make a thing become a Law to us but that it is the Will of our Sovereign who hath Right to require it of us And this God hath declared to Mankind by the frame of their Natures and by those principal Faculties he hath endued us withal for no Man can imagine but that we should follow the Instruction of our Nature and be governed by the natural Notions of our own Minds And those natural Passions of Hope and Fear Hope and Fear are two very strong Passions that are so rooted in our Souls we cannot without great force to our selves act contrary to them And this is all the Law that great part of Mankind comes under and which is no other than that which the Apostle calls the Work of the Law written upon their Hearts and they having no other Revelation made to them shall be judged by it and those that offend against this Law shall be found guilty before God as well as those that have sinned against an express Revelation which is a plain Evidence that these natural Dictates have the force of a Law otherwise Men would not be guilty of any Crime by acting against them for it is a Rule universally true that where there is no Law there is no Transgression and this I take to be the meaning of that obscure Passage of the Apostle Rom. v. 13. for until the Law Sin was in the World that is before the Law was given unto Moses Men were capable of Sinning and therefore there was another Law against which they offended for Sin is not imputed where there is no Law But Death reigned from Adam to Moses even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's Transgression that is tho they did not sin against any express Law of God as Adam did Thus Reason discovers to us how that the natural Dictates of our Minds have the force of a Law HENCE we may infer that Mankind would have been under the Obligation of Religion tho God had never made any immediate Revelation of his Mind and Will unto them if this was not so the Heathen who had no supernatural Revelation from God could not have been guilty of Sin nor liable to his Judgment for if nothing were Vertue or Vice but what was either expresly commanded or forbidden by God then all Actions would have been alike to the Heathen But there are some things naturally good and some things naturally evil and Men are bound to do the one and fly the other tho God had never made any supernatural Revelation of his Will to them For if God had never forbidden Hatred and Malice with Deceit Oppression Violence and the like Passions they would have appeared evil in themselves and ought not to have been done by us because they are inconsistent with the Peace of Human Society and contrary to the Nature and Reason of Mankind so on the other hand the Vertues opposite to these as Love to God together with Truth and Justice one towards another have such Goodness in them that they are commended to the liking of Mankind without the need of any absolute Declaration to oblige Men to the practice of them If these things were not so the Tables might have been turned and all that which we now call Vertue might have been forbidden by God and things would have been every whit as well and there would have been no difference only the Names of things would have been changed The nature of Good and Evil is unalterable BUT I appeal to any ones Reason whether he can think it as vertuous an Action to hate God as to love him to contemn as to honor him and whether Malice Envy Hatred and Ingratitude would have made as much for the Peace of Mankind as the practice of Love and Goodness would have done if they would not then it is manifest that there is something in the Nature of Things that made the difference and so long as the Nature of God and Man remain what they are some Things will be in their own Natures unalterably good and some things evil which doth not depend upon any arbitrary Constitution but is founded in the Nature of the Things themselves The general consent of mankind shews what is Virtue and what is Vice Thirdly WHAT is Virtue and what is Vice is shewn to us by the general vote and consent of Mankind which we do not extend to all the instances of Virtue and Vice but only to the great and more essential parts of it