SIN.
Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.—Psalm xxxii. 1.
I will declare my iniquity; I will be sorry for my sin.—Psalm xxxviii. 18.
Hide Thy face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.—Psalm li. 9.
I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins: return unto me; for I have redeemed thee.—Isaiah, xliv. 22.
By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.—Romans, v. 12.
All things are of God, who hath reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ.
For He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.—II. Corinthians, v. 18, 21.
Sin ever must
Be tortured with the rack of his own frame;
For he that holds no faith, shall find no trust,
But sowing wrong, is sure to reap the same.
Daniel.
O, how unsufferable is the weight
Of sin! how miserable is their state,
The silence of whose secret sin conceals
The smart, till justice to revenge appeals!
*****
Who loves to sin, in hell his portion’s given;
Who dies to sin shall, after, live in heaven.
Quarles.
’Tis not to cry God mercy, or to sit
And droop, or to confess that thou hast failed:
’Tis to bewail the sins thou didst commit;
And not commit those sins thou hast bewailed.
He that bewails, and not forsakes them too,
Confesses rather what he means to do.
Quarles.
That sin does ten times aggravate itself,
That is committed in a holy place;
An evil deed done by authority,
Is sin and subornation; deck an ape
In tissue, and the beauty of the robe
Adds but the greater scorn unto the beast;
The poison shows worst in a golden cup;
Dark night seems darker by the lightning’s flash;
Lilies that fester smell far worse then weeds;
And every glory that inclines to sin,
The same is treble by the opposite.
Old Play. (1597.)
Much have we sinned to our shame,
But spare us who our sins confess;
And for the glory of Thy name,
To our sick souls afford redress.
Drummond.
It is a shame, that man, that has the seeds
Of virtue in him springing unto glory,
Should make his soul degenerate with sin,
And slave to luxury; to drown his spirits
In lees of sloth; to yield up the weak day
To wine, to lust, and banquets.
Shackerly.
Sin, like a bee, unto thy hive may bring
A little honey, but expect the sting.
Watkyns.
Woe unto those who countenance a sin,
Siding with vice that it may credit win,
By their unhallowed vote; that do benight
The truth with error, putting dark for light,
And light for dark; that call an evil good,
And would by vice have virtue understood.
Bishop King.
O, the dangerous siege
Sin lays about us! And the tyranny
He exercises, when he hath expunged:
Like to the horror of a winter’s thunder,
Mixed with a gushing storm, that suffers nothing
To stir abroad on earth but their own rages,
Is sin, when it hath gathered head above us:
No roof, no shelter will secure us so,
But he will drown our cheeks in fear or woe.
Chapman.
To threats the stubborn sinner oft is hard,
Wrapped in his crimes, against the storm prepared;
But when the milder beams of mercy play,
He melts, and throws his cumbrous cloak away.
Dryden.
For he that but conceives a crime in thought,
Contracts the danger of an actual fault;
Then what must he expect, that still proceeds
To finish sin, and work up thoughts in deeds?
Dryden.
What if the sinner’s magazines are stored
With the rich spoils that Ophir’s mines afford?
What if he spends his happy days and nights
In softest joys, and undisturbed delights?
Where is his hope at last, when God shall wrest
His trembling soul from his reluctant breast?
Blackmore.
What havoc hast thou made, foul monster, Sin!
Greatest and first of ills! The fruitful parent
Of woes of all dimensions! But for thee,
Sorrow had never been!
Blair.
Lord! with what care hast Thou begirt us round!
Parents first season us; the schoolmasters
Deliver us to laws; they send us bound
To rules of reason; holy messengers:
Pulpits and Sundays; sorrow, dogging sin;
Afflictions sorted; anguish of all sizes;
Fine nets and stratagems to catch us in;
Bibles laid open; millions of surprises;
Blessings beforehand; ties of gratefulness;
The sound of glory ringing in our ears;
Without, our shame; within, our consciences;
Angels and Grace; eternal hopes and fears!
Yet all these fences and their whole array,
One cunning bosom sin blows quite away.
George Herbert.
As the fond sheep that idly strays,
With wanton play, through devious ways,
Which never hits the road of home,
O’er wilds of danger learns to roam,
Till, wearied out with idle fear,
And passing there, and turning here,
He will, for rest, to covert run,
And meet the wolf he strove to shun:
Thus wretched I, through wanton will,
Ran blind and headlong on in ill.
’Twas thus from sin to sin I flew,
And thus I might have perished too;
But mercy dropped the likeness here,
And showed and saved me from my fear,
While o’er the darkness of my mind
The sacred Spirit purely shined,
And marked and brightened all the way
Which leads to everlasting day;
And broke the thickening clouds of sin,
And fixed the light of love within.
Parnell.
On His pale brow the drops are large and red
As victim’s blood at votive altar shed—
His hands are clasped, His eyes are raised in prayer—
Alas, and is there strife He cannot bear,
Who calmed the tempest, and who raised the dead?
There is! there is! for now the powers of hell
Are struggling for the mastery—’tis the hour
When death exerts his last permitted power,
When the dead weight of sin, since Adam fell,
Is visited on Him who deigned to dwell—
A man with men, that He might bear the stroke
Of wrath divine, and break the captive’s yoke—
But O, of that dread strife, what words can tell?
Those, only those which broke, with many a groan,
From His full heart—“O, Father, take away
The cup of vengeance I must drink to-day—
Yet, Father, not My will, but Thine, be done!”
It could not pass away, for He alone
Was mighty to endure and strong to save:
Nor would Jehovah leave Him in the grave,
Nor could corruption taint His Holy One.
Dale.
When at first from virtue’s path we stray,
How shrinks the feeble heart with sad dismay!
More bold at length, by powerful habit led,
Careless and sered, the dreary wilds we tread;
Behold the gaping gulf of sin with scorn,
And plunging deep, to endless death are borne.
James Scott.