A64834:467
Sin, the Plague of Plagues
Sin, the plague of plagues, or, Sinful sin the worst of evils a treatise of sins trial and arraignment, wherein sin is accused for being, proved to be, and condemned for being exceeding sinful : and that 1. as against God, his nature, attributes, works, will, law, image, people, glory and existence, 2. as against man, his good and welfare of body and soul, in this life, and that to come : with the use and improvement to be made of this doctrine, that men may not be damned, but saved, &c. : being the substance of many sermons preached many years ago in Southwark / by Ralph Venning ...Sin, the plague of plagues, or, Sinful sin the worst of evils a treatise of sins tryal and arraignment, wherein sin is accused for being, proved to be, and condemned for being exceeding sinful : and that 1. as against God, his nature, attributes, works, will, law, image, people, glory and existence, 2. as against man, his good and welfare of body and soul, in this life, and that to come : with the use and improvement to be made of this doctrine, that men may not be damned, but saved, &c. : being the substance of many sermons preached many years ago in Southwark / by Ralph Venning ...
London: printed for John Hancock, 1669
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
3. Death is killing, but sin much more; death deprives of natural and temporal, but sin deprives of spiritual and eternal life; death kills but the body, sin kills the soul, and brings it u• der a worse death then the first, viz. the second: Men may kill us, but only God can destroy us, i. e. damn us, and that he never doth but for sin; so that sin is more •i•ling then death is.
4. Death is corrupting, it brings the body to corruption, and makes it so loathsome, that we say of our dearest relations (as Abraham of Sarah when she was dead) bury her out of my sight; death makes every man say to the worm, thou art my mother, and to corruption and putrefaction, thou art my sister, Job 17.14 But sin corrupts us more then death (for he that dyed without sin, saw no corruption) it defiles us, and makes us a stink in the nostrils of God and men, Gen. 34.30. the old man and its lusts are corrupt and do corrupt us, Eph. 4.22. They corrupt our souls, and that which corrupts souls (the principal man of the man) is much worse then that which corrupts the body only; but sin corrupts the body too while alive, intemperance, uncleanness corrupts soul and body; so that sin is even in this worse then death. Our Saviour tells the Jews, that their great misery was not ⟨p. 223⟩that they should dye, but that they should dye in their sins, Job. 8 21. intimating that sin was worse then death, and that which made death a misery; better dye in an Hospital or a Ditch then in sin; 'tis better to dye any how, then sin, and dye in sin, and therefore the Father told Eudoxia the Empress, when she threatened him, Nil nisi peccatum timeo, I fear nothing but to sin. And 'ewas a Princely Speech of a Queen, who said, She had rather hear of her children's death, then that they had sinned. And they of whom the world was not worthy, being too good to live long, chose rather to dye then sin,