Master Bezaes sermons upon the three chapters of the canticle of canticlesMaster Bezaes sermons vpon the three chapters of the canticle of canticles

5 If therefore we demand these goodly Doctors and teachers of theirs, how the fruits of this vice are pardoned us, they will answer with us that it is by the death and passion of our Lord Jesus Christ. But if we desire to have a farther declaration of this answer, then Satan, who was before disguised, beginneth to show his horns. For it is he in deed who hath learned them certain distinctions, by which this goodly first answer of theirs vanisheth away as smoke, namely the distinction, first between mortal and venial sins, which deserve (say they) nothing but temporal punishment, whereof a man is purged by some displeasance and remorse of them, with one Asperges of holy water, one bishops blessing, and other such inventions. Whence it would follow in sound logic, that such sins have nothing at all to do with the death and passion of the Lord, seeing the evil requireth no such pain in him who committeth it. Thus you see how these good Physicians in steed of using one purgative remedy only, and without which every sin becometh deadly, cast the poor consciences of men in a sleep (as the empirical practics use the medicines which they call narcoticall, that is to say such as benumb and dead the diseased) until at the length they become senseless and past feeling in all sin and wickedness, Ephes. 4.19. and swollen and puffed up until they be ready to break again with the false opinion of their satisfactions and merits. Now in place of this we are taught by the holy scriptures, that it is true in deed that all sins are not equal in quality, Joh. 19.11. But as touching the effect generally considered, ⟨p. 422⟩every offence against God, yea both our perverse nature & every motion thereof, be it never so small, & depart it never so little aside from the commandments of the law, which is spiritual (that is to say, respecteth principally that within, although no consent, nor any effect of deed or of word do follow, Rom. 5.12.14. and 7.14,) is worthy of death, yea of everlasting death, Rom. 6.23. As this Priest is he alone, who by means of the payment which he hath made for the malediction and curse which was due unto us, and he alone without exception which taketh away the sins of the world,