Selected quad for the lemma: sin_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
sin_n	law_n	transgress_v	transgression_n	5,886	5	10.8651	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A66467	The necessity & extent of the obligation, with the manner & measures of restitution in a sermon preached the 9th of October, 1681, before the corporation of Haverford-West, at Saint Mary's in Haverford / by William Williams ...	Williams, William, Minister of St. Mary's in Haverford.	1682 (1682)	Wing W2787; ESTC R9189	16,784	31

Members of it of the sincerity of the sinners Repentance they do not only allow but judge it very convenient But as by Satisfaction may be meant Restitution Amends made by the offending or injuring Person to the Offended or Injured as far as it may possibly lye in the power of the offending Person they do all joyn in the Necessity of it and particularly the Church of England in its Exhortation upon the bidding of the Sacrament moves Men in order to their shewing themselves true Penitents which they should be before they presume to partake of That to it And St. Augustine is very clear and positive Peccatum non remittitur nisi restituatur ablatum The Sin continues Unpardoned till such time as what is taken away or which is the same thing injuriously detained be Restored And common reason tells us That if the taking what is another's upon terms the right Owner consents not to must be a Sin the keeping must be so too But since the fore-sight of Beggery or the shame of acknowledging such a Guilt which the injurious Person may apprehend must follow a due Restitution of what is taken or detained Since Covetousness and Pride and Ambition may be of so much more Authority with such a Sinner than the Voice of all the School-men and Fathers in the World the Church he lives in and his own Reason since those Sins will in all likelyhood soon prevail with him To conclude from the possibility that all those may err that they really and actually do so since I say the foresight of Beggery that may ensue a Restitution since the shame of such an acknowledgement as it must imply since Covetousness Pride and Ambition seconded with the Arts and Industry of a wicked Spirit will likely soon frame in the Mind of the injuring Person such a Discourse as this Grant that all these this Preacher mentions the Fathers the School-men and generally all Writers Antient and Modern which yet we have but his word for the Church of England and my own Reason for the present agree in the Necessity of Restitution as being that without which Repentance cannot be sincere and entire and consequently without which a Man that hath taken away or detained from one or more Persons or a Community their Right cannot be saved yet it being acknowledged that all of them may err in any point so they may in this and therefore I am not sure they do not and this shall have no Force upon me Since an Argument of this nature may be so Eluded let us try the Force of such as may be drawn from Holy Scripture of which there can be Colour for offering any such Evasion Now that the sence of Holy Scripture touching this matter is the same That there can be no true and perfect Repentance without Restitution of what is Injuriously taken or detained will I hope be granted sufficiently proved if I can from it prove That he that doth not make Restitution of what he hath wrongfully taken away or detained is Guilty of transgressing the whole Law Certainly he that in God's Judgement is guilty of Transgressing the whole Law cannot be thought to be a true Penitent and consequently as long as he is not so cannot be Saved And either non-Restitution must be no Sin at all or in the judgement of St. James c. 2. v. 10. it is a Transgression of the whole Law for there he saith plainly Whosoever shall keep the whole Law and yet Offend in one point he is Guilty of all and in the following Verse gives the reason of it Now there is no sort of possibility of avoiding this Charge but by the effrontery of denying it to be a Sin To such a one as should be so shameless as to suspect much more deny That the not Restoring of what is wrongfully detained from others is a Sin I 'd ask him What he thinks makes Theft a Sin Is it the taking away by one what he hath no right to It is so here when a person takes that which is not his Right and keeps it longer than he should or Is it only the Violence used to the person in the Act Not so for some Stealths are without violence offered the persons from whom it is made Nay the detaining of others Rights against their declared Wills or because they dare declare nothing to the contrary increases the numbers of the Thefts with the numbers of the Minutes whereby the Detainer's time is told Three Hours not restoring what ought to be Restored is so many Hours Stealing in the sence of the Law of God and Reason But that I do not only say it is but shew God's Sentence of it as a Sin See in the 33d of Ezekiel how he particularizes Restoration as the means of loosening of a Sin and sign of Conversion of a Sinner which he had not if in his Judgement keeping another's Right had been no Sin for after he had said in the 14th verse Again when I say unto the Wicked Thou shalt surely Dye if he turn from his Sin and do that which is Lawful and Right he Exemplifies doing Lawful and Right in the 15th ver by If the Wicked restore the Pledge give again that he had Robbed c. he shall surely Live and shall not Dye If the Wicked restore the Pledge give again that he had Robbed Wicked then it seems he was in God's Judgement while he kept it If after all this it should be said That Penitence is an inward Act of the Mind Restitution an outward Expression and that God regardeth the Inwards and lays not so much Stress upon outward Actions I 'd ask the person Whether he would be so Cheated Such a Fool as to believe that an High-way Robber that takes his Purse would by ever so much solemn Declarations of his Sorrow for the Injury he had done make him believe he were truly Sorry while he saw his Purse in his hand What God's estimate of Penitency is we may judge by St. John's calling upon those that came to his Baptism to Bring forth Fruit meet for Repentance by our Saviour's declaration That we might know Men by their Fruit by the Apostle's challenging of the sincere Believer which also must be a true Penitent to Shew his Faith by his Works Having so shewed and I hope Convincingly the indispensableness of Restitution from injurious Offenders in general I come now to represent the extent of the Concernment of it And that as to Persons and Things with the measures or degrees of Restitution that ought to be made First as to Persons Where the Question is How far this Guilt of not Restitution or not Restoring what is Injuriously taken or detained may extend it's self Whether the Guilt dies with the Person that did at first do the Injury and never made Amends for it or touches his Posterity that they become Guilty of it And if it do How far and what obligation of Restitution it lays upon them

To which I thus Answer That that Declaration Almighty God made in the Second Commandment That He would Visit the Iniquity of the Fathers upon the Children is very general because it is to the Children of all them that hate Him that is not only to the Children of them that Worship the Host of Heaven as some of the Gentiles did or any thing upon Earth or the Water under the Earth or the Images of any of them but such as preferred any thing before Him that Preference of a Thing being counted an hatred of Him because it supposes an incompetency of Love to Him And if so sure to them that gratify their Lust or Covetousness their Pride and Ambition or any Sin proceeding from them or any thing else whatsoever contrary to God's clear Commands I say This Declaration which God there made so general was never absolutely repealed In Ezekiel indeed we find That to the Children of Israel that had taken upon the Execution likely of this part of the Law up a Proverb that The Fathers had Eaten sowr Grapes and that the Childrens Teeth were set on Edge God promises something that looks like the Contrary The Reason and Import whereof yet may probably be this That the Sins of that Age of the Jews were so great and provoking that when God Avenged them to the full upon Recollection and just Examination of themselves they might find no reason to think that there was any need from the heap of their Father's Trespasses to take in any to aggravate their Sins and so bring down a greater proportion of Judgement but that their own every Man 's singly or the present Communities might be sufficient to provoke more Judgements than they saw Executed upon them or else That their Provocations had been and were so great that whereas God formerly had in some cases suspended the Execution of a Vengeance due upon the Father's Trespasses to the time of his Posterity as he did in the case of Ahab That he would not then shew so much Mercy but Punish as fast as they Offended but whether for such or some other Reason He did to the Children of Israel for some season determine it should be otherwise yet that he did finally and universally that is That he did for ever resolve and to all People that it should be otherwise doth no ways and no where appear but the contrary by the Observation of all Ages So that you see That whatever the Sin of the Father be his Children have no warrant from Holy Scripture other than the first Sinner had that they will escape the Punishment that is have no other Warrant no Condition than Repentance and that a true sincere One attended with all the genuine Fruit and Effects of it but on the other side God's Truth that can never fail to assure them they may be Avenged upon for the Sins of the Father and for the manner to inquire since God hath made no Discovery would be a sinful and useless Curiosity When he saies He will do a thing we may assure our selves He will find a way to do it But whatever mitigation the Children of other Sinners may have of this Menace surely he that comes into the unjust Possession of his Father as such will have none for look whatsoever he hath in his Substance derived from his Father more than he would have had in case his Father had done all Right paid all their own so much hath he that was not his Fathers and consequently more than his Father could justly Derive to him And his continuing a Possession of them doth not only entail upon him the Vengeance denounced in the Second Commandment which if he had had none of those unlawful Possessions from his Father he had been obnoxious to but doubles it by practising and continuing in the Sin His Father's Sin was detaining unjustly another's and he Succeeds him as his Son naturally without that liable to the Punishment and as continuing the Sin in his own person And be sure the Guilt tho the sence of it may doth not lessen the longer the Sin is practised but increases with time and the Advantage made of it For see how much the first wrong quick stock hath advanced any Man's Estate above what it would have been without it so much it might have advanced the right Owner's if he had not been Injured and consequently so much ought to be Restored to the last Mite of a Man's Possession which if it do not rise to a full Restitution it ought to be Weighed out as much as possibly he can in Sorrow before God for the Injuries which if he had been able he ought to have testified by a full Restitution by his hearty Prayers to God to make the injured person Amends and his Recommendation of him to such Men as he can influence that are of Ability to make him nor indeed in order to Restitution ought a Man to take his measures from the Advantage himself hath made of things wrongfully Detained but account upon the best Husbandry could be used about them This I presume a clear and full Solution of the Question proposed with this notice That what I said of the Son of the first Offender must be applyed to all continuing the unjust Possession and making Advantages of it proportionably to the Advantages they have and the right Owner might have made of it in such a time Now I come more particularly to the things a person may injure and be injured in They are Goods or Body or Name or All. First Goods we know comprehend all the Possessions or things a Man may have Right to a Propriety whereunto for the support and comfort of Men God hath approved and himself given general Rules for the determination of The keeping of Money or Land or any Thing else whatsoever of Right belonging to another is a violation of Right which must if a Man would be saved be restored or amended as I shewed before in the general Secondly A Man may Injure and be injured in his Body several ways by several persons In his Infancy for want of due Care in the Nurture of it and so may the Mind also be Injured or in his Maturity and perfect Strength either in part of his Body by being Maimed or so or in the whole by industrious Ministring of pernitious Diet or Physick or vexation of Spirit in all which and the like cases are required all the Amends that may be from the offending Person proportionable to the unhappinesses sustained by any Person by his Means and that extended to his Relations to whom he might have been more useful if he had not sustained those Wrongs in his Body Thirdly The third thing wherein an Injury may be done a Person is his good Name A thing that Solomon pronounces generally Precious but of mighty Consequence to some above others as being that whereupon their own and their Families livelyhood do depend nay of so ill consequence may