Selected quad for the lemma: sin_n
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A59568
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A sermon preached before the King & Queen at White-hall on Christmas-Day, 1691 by ... John, Lord Archbishop of York ...
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Sharp, John, 1645-1714.
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1692
(1692)
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Wing S2996; ESTC R15087
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14,546
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31
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they might rather be inclined to believe that he would not pardon such Criminals For as their Reason told them that God was Good So the same Reason told them that He was Just and had an infinite Regard to the Honour and Reputation of his Laws Which Laws their own Consciences told them they had heinously transgressed nor had they any thing wherewith to compensate or make satisfaction for the Transgression of them And therefore what could they expect from so Just a God but to undergo the punishment they had deserved This was a very uncomfortable Reasoning And yet such a one it was as there was no answer to be given to in the State of Nature and therefore in what a melancholy Condition were Mankind all the while What encouragement had they seriously to set upon the Amendment of their wicked Lives Or if they did what Fruit what Comfort could they promise to themselves by such amendment But Blessed be God that hath removed us out of these uncertainties Blessed be God that hath given us the greatest assurance that is possible of his Love and Kindness to the greatest of Sinners and consequently laid the greatest Obligation upon all Mankind to turn from their evil Ways He hath sent his Son his only Son into the World on purpose to assure us of his good Will to us to give a demonstration of the unfeigned Love and Kindness that He bears to every Soul of the Sons of Adam that he would not have any of them perish but that they should all come to the knowledge of the Truth and be saved This Son of His doth most Solemnly in the Name of his Father proclaim Pardon and Remission of Sins to every one that should believe in Him There is no Sinner excepted even the Oldest the Greatest the most Enormous of Sinners if they will come in and and submit to the Yoke of Jesus Christ have his certain Promise that they shall be received And least any one should fear the Divine Justice upon account that there is no satisfaction made to it for his Sins Our Lord hath taken care to remove that Objection For he by the unvaluable Merits of his Person and the free unconstrained Offering up of Himself to an ignominious Death upon the Cross on the behalf of Mankind hath made a full compleat and entire Satisfaction to God's Justice for all the Sins of the World from the beginning to the end thereof So that now every one hath free Access to God and a Right to his Favour through the Blood of Jesus Christ. And tho we have been never so bad never so unworthy yet if we have but the Hearts to forsake our Sins and to come to Jesus Christ we shall as certainly obtain the Acceptance and the Love of our Heavenly Father as if we had been Innocent and never sinned at all Nay God is not only willing to receive us but he earnestly begs and sollicits us to take his Mercy And so pleased he is at the Return of a Sinner that our Saviour has told us there is joy in Heaven over such a one Nay more joy among the Angels over a sinner that repenteth than over ninety nine just persons that need no Repentance O how welcome ought this News to be to us How transported should we be at the infinite Kindness of God manifested to us by our Saviour O! praised be God for his astonishing Love For ever adored be our Lord Jesus that has made a Propitiation for us by his Blood O let us for ever kiss and hug the pretious unvaluable Scriptures of the New Testament if there was nothing else in them but that faithful Saying that Saying worthy of all Men to be received That Iesus Christ came into the world to save sinners to save you and me and all Sinners even the greatest of Sinners O who is there that is in his Wits would chuse to be out of the Christian Dispensation or be left to the Methods of Nature and Philosophy for the attaining their Happiness as some loose People among us do sometimes talk Were the natural Talents of Mankind exalted far above what they either are or ever have been yet I would value that one Saying That Jesus Christ came into the World to save Sinners more than all the Notions and Speculations of Reason and Philosophy I would desire to know nothing but Iesus Christ and him crucified I would with the Apostle count all things as loss nay as Dung in comparison of the Excellency of the Knowledge of Christ Iesus my Saviour and that I may be found in him not having my own Righteousness which is by Nature but that Righteousness which is by the Faith of Iesus Christ who gave himself for me And thus much of Christ's appearing to put away Sin in the first Notion of that Expression But Secondly Christ appeared also to put away Sin in another sense That is to say To destroy the Power and Dominion of it from among Men to abolish it so as that it should not henceforth reign in our mortal Bodies To free us from Sin as the Apostle speaks that is to enable us to lead holy and virtuous Lives So that whereas Mankind heretofore yielded their Members Servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity so they should now yield their Members Servants to righteousness unto holiness Thus to put away Sin was as principal an End of Christ's coming as the other before mentioned nay perhaps more principal For the other in true reasoning may be said to be wholly in order to this Certain it is unless this End be attained the other will signifie nothing to us For we are not capable of any Benefit from the Remission of Sin which was purchased for us by Christ until our Sins be put away by Repentance and we become holy Persons by the change and renewal of our Natures Never therefore let us deceive our selves Though Christ hath actually put away all the Sins of the World in the former sense by his satisfaction that is to say hath procured the Pardon of them hath taken away the Sting of them so as that they shall not be deadly to any Yet all this is upon supposition that the Strength of them he taken away in us that they 〈◊〉 no Dominion over us that we mortifie them in all our Members that we daily die to them and live a Life o◠Righteousness All that Christ merited or purchased for the World will not do us the least good unless we be made conformable to him in his Death and Resurrection by our dying to Sin and living to Righteousness And in truth if we will mind it the putting away Sin in this sense of it hath as great weight laid upon it in Scripture and is as often assigned for the great End and Business of Christs appearance as the other S. John tells us plainly that for this purpose was the son of God manifested that he might destroy the works of the
devil And S. Paul likewise tells us that he therefore gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purifie to himself a peculiar people zealous of good works And lastly S. Peter gives the same account of his coming Acts 3.26 where he tells us that therefore God raised up his Son Iesus that is sent him into the World for his raising up there spoken of as any one will see that looks into the Context was not his being raised from the dead but his being manifested to Mankind For here the Apostle's business is to apply that Promise or Prophesie of Moses unto our Saviour viz. that God would in due thim raise up to his People a Prophet like unto him whom they should all be obliged to hearken to I say therefore God raised up his Son Iesus i.e. sent him into the World that he might bless his People in turning every one of them from their Iniquities This turning every one from their Iniquities was the great End for which our Lord Jesus Christ was manifested unto Mankind And indeed Reason will teach us all this as well as Revelation For in the nature of the thing none can be truly Happy but those that are truly Pious And in the same degree and proportion that any one is wicked or is under the power of his Lusts in the same degree he must needs be miserable So that if Christ came to be our Saviour and in that meant either to make us happy or to keep us from being miserable there was an absolute necessity that his first and principal Design must be to root our of our Nature all Sin and Wickedness and to restore the Image of God in our Minds which consists in unchangeable Purity and Holiness and Goodness Away therefore with all those Hypotheses that give such an account of Christs coming into the World as to make the ultimate End of it to be the freeing us from Hell and Damnation and purchasing Heaven and eternal Life for us but without any respect had to the renewing our Natures or the making us sincerely Holy and Virtuous All such Accounts of Christ's Undertaking are monstrously unreasonable and absurd For not to insist upon the manifest Affront they put upon God's Justice and Holiness in making Him the great Patron of Sin whilst they assert Him to be the Justifier of wicked Men even whilst they continue wicked You cannot as I said but see in the first place how very much such Doctrins do disparage the Love of our Saviour and lessen his Undertaking For whilst He is here supposed to have Redeemed us only from his Fathers Wrath and the Punishment consequent thereupon leaving us in the mean time to the wickedness and impurity of our own Nature which alone without the accession of any other external Evil is a misery great enough He is hereby rendred but half a Saviour One that freed us indeed from an External Evil but left us irremediably exposed to an internal one as grievous as the other One that delivered us from the apprehensions of a Gibbet or an Executioner but could not or would not cure us of the inward Sicknesses and Maladies under which we languished But this is not all In the second place it ought to be taken notice of what an absurd inconsistent Notion this kind of Doctrine gives us of the Happiness of Mankind For whilst they suppose that a Man under the Power and Dominion of Sin is capable of that Happiness which Christ purchased for us in the other World which Happiness as both Scripture and Reason testifie doth chiefly consist in the enjoyment of God and of his Excellencies and Perfections They must at the same time suppose that a Man may be rendred happy by the enjoyment of that of which he has no Sense no Perception or rather to speak properly that he is the happiest Creature alive in the enjoyment of an Object to which he has the greatest a version and antipathy in the World Which if it be not an absurdity I know not what is When Light can have Communion with Darkness when God can have Fellowship with Belial Then and not till then can a wicked Man a Man that lives in Sin and loves it he capable of that Happiness which Jesus Christ hath purchased for us IV. The Fourth thing I should speak to from this Text is the Means by which our Saviour brought to pass the great End of his Appearance viz. the putting away of sin Which Means are said to be the Sacrifice of himself Now once in the end of the World hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself Two things should be done in order to a just Discourse upon this point First To give an account how the Death of Christ was a Means for the putting away of sin in the first Sense I gave that is the procuring the Pardon of it Secondly How it was a Means of putting it away in the other Sense that is the destroying or mortifying it in us But these things being Foreign to our present Business and more proper for the Argument of a Good-Friday Sermon I shall say no more of them but proceed to my last point V. The Fifth and last thing observable from the Text is the difference of Christ's sacrifice whereby he put away sin from the Mosaical ones Which difference so far as it is here taken notice of consists in this That the Legal Sacrifices for the Expiation of Sin were daily offered But Christ offered the Sacrifice of himself but once Once in the end of the World c. The Apostle in this Chapter is discoursing of the Difference between the Law and the Gospel And as to that Point he insists much on the Difference of their Sacrifices The Christians that owned the Gospel had but one Sacrifice the Sacrifice of Christ once offered whereas those that were under the Law were forced to have many Nay even the most solemn Sacrifice that God had appointed for the Expiation of their Sins was repeated once a Year as the Apostle tells us in the Verse before my Text. But now the Sacrifice of Christ which he puts by way of opposition to theirs that was but once offered and was never to be repeated This is the Point with which he concludes this Chapter two Verses after my Text Christ saith he was once offered to bear the sins of many and unto there that look for him shall be appear the second time unto salvation This is the Apostle's Doctrine and I insist on it now because all those that design on this day to receive the Holy Sacrament are concerned in it Let us from hence take notice that in this Service of the Holy Communion we are not to pretend to offer Christ as a Sacrifice to his Father His Sacrifice was but once to be offered and that was done 1600 Years ago and in the Virtue of that Sacrifice once offered all faithful Christians and sincere