The Sinfulness Of Sin - Preach The Word

The Sinfulness Of SinRalph Venning3.10,11). what more shall I say? I will close the whole matter with what was longsince excellently spoken by a great Doctor in our Israel, which is worthy to bewritten in the hearts of all men and often to be before their eyes and in theirthoughts.At the last, he says, there will come a day when all mankind shall be summonednaked (without differences or degrees) before the same tribunal; when the crownsof Kings and shackles of prisoners; when the robes of princes and the rags ofbeggars; when the gallants' finery, the peasants' home-spun, the statesmen'spolicy, the courtiers' luxury and the scholars' learning shall all be laid aside; whenall men shall be reduced to an equal plea, and without respect of persons shall bejudged according to their works. Then those punctilios and formalities, cuts andfashions, distances and compliments which are now the darling sins of the upperend of the world, shall be proved to have been nothing else but well-acted vanities.Then the pride, luxury, riot, swaggerings, interlarded and complemental oaths,sophisticated and quaint lasciviousness, newly-invented courtings and adorations ofbeauty, the so much studied and admired sins of the gallantry of the world, shall bepronounced out of the mouth of God himself to have been nothing else butglittering abominations. Then the adulterating of wares, the counterfeiting of lights,the double weight and false measures, the courteous equivocations of men greedyof gain, which are now almost woven into the very art of trading, shall bepronounced nothing else but mysteries of iniquity and self-deceivings. Then thecurious subtleties of more choice wits, the knotty questions and vain strife ofwords, the disputes of reason, the variety of reading, the very circle of general andsecular learning, pursued with so much eagerness by the more ingenious spirits ofthe world, shall be all pronounced but the thin cobwebs and vanishing delicacies ofa better-tempered profaneness.Lastly, then, the poor despised profession of the power of godliness, a trembling atthe word of God, a scrupulous and conscientious forbearance not only of oaths butof idle words, a tenderness and aptness to bleed at the touch of any sin, a boldnessto withstand the corruptions of the times, a conscience of but the appearance ofevil, a walking humbly and mournfully before God, an heroic resolution to be strictand circumspect, to walk in an exact and geometrical holiness in the midst of acrooked and perverse generation, which the world esteems and scorns as thepeevishhess of a few silly impolitic men, shall in good earnest from the mouth ofGod himself be declared to have been the true and narrow way which leads tosalvation; and the enemies thereof shall then, when it is too late, be driven to thatdesperate and shameful confession: 'we fools counted their life madness, and theirend to have been without honour. And now they are reckoned among the saintsand have their portion with the Almighty!''Consider what hath been said, and the Lord give thee understanding in all things'(2 Timothy 2.7).160