MOST SURE AND JUST PUNISH- MENT OF SINS.. THE TENTH SERMON, We have lastly now to discourse of sin, which, as I told you, is to be referred to the treatise of the law. Of which that I may lawfully, religiously, rightly, and profitably speak to the edifying of you all, 1 shall desire you to make your humble prayers with me to God the Father, in the name of Christ his Son, our gracious Lord and Mediator. of Sin is of most men taken for error; for that, I mean, whereby we do not only err from the thing which is true, right, just and good, but do also follow and decline to that which is naught. The Latins derive their word peccatum, sin, of pellicatus, whore-hunting; which is a fault of wedded people that are corrupted with the spirit of fornication, as when men prefer harlots before their lawful wives. And this definition, verily, doth wonderfully agree to this present treatise. For all we that do believe are by faith hand-fasted to our God, as to our spouse and husband: if therefore we prefer other gods before him, or choose rather to serve them; if, I say, we let pass the true goods in deed, to follow the shadow of goods, vain hopes, and the pernicious pleasures of this world; then”do we sin indeed, and commit fornication against our spouse and husband?, But the learned sort do for the most part put a difference betwixt peccatum and delictum, which both, in effect, do signify sins: but they call that delictum, when the thing is not done that should be done; and that they call peccatum, when that is done that should be left undone. St Hierome seemeth to have taken delictum for the first fall to sin
[1 The Father—Mediator, added by the translator.] [2 and—husband, an addition of the translator’s.] [8 which—sins, the translator’s.] [ —queerimus quid significent (delicta), quove distent a peceatis..]
[Aiunt enim quod παραπτώματα (delicta) quasi initia peccatorum sint:]
[cum cogitatio tacita subrepit, et ex aliqua parte conniventibus nobis,]
[necdum tamen nos impulit ad ruinam.Peccatum vero esse, quum]
St Augustine sayeth that peccatum is committed of him that sinneth wittingly, and delictum of him that sinnneth of ignorance. I see that those words are in some places confounded, and that the one is used for the other. In some places the error, or delictum, is used as the milder term; peccatum, in a more grievous sense; and an heinous crimea mischief, a revolting or wickedness, for the greatest of 4116, For St Augustine saith: “Neither is every peccatum crimen?, because every erimen is peccatum.” Therefore we say, that the life of a man living in this transitory world may be found to be without that heinous offence, crimen, for which all the world doth cry out upon and accuse him?: but “if we say we have nullum peccatum, no sin,” (as the apostle saith,) “we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” Among the Hebrews sin is called by sundry names, which do import and signify overthwartness, perverseness, a fault, an error, a revolting, infirmity, vice, ignorance, and transgression. For to transgress doth signify to depart from the truth, from our duty or office, not to keep the right path, but to turn away from the preseript rule of the law of God. Now that rule, or law of God, is of the Hebrews called Thora, that is to say, a direction, or a leading by the hand; for it doth direct a man in the ways that are acceptable to the Lord: and therefore the Greeks call sin by the names of ἀνομία καὶ παρανομία. Again, in the Hebrew tongue, sin is as much to say as a turning away from good to evil; also a revolting, as when thou drawest thy neck from out of the yoke of his power to whom thou art a servant: finally, it signifieth the crime or guilt whereby we endanger ourselves to the rod of punishment.
[quid opere consummatum pervenit ad finem.—Hieron. Comment. in]
[Ep. ad Ephes. cap. 2, Tom. 1v. col. 338, Par. 1706.] [> Potest etiam videri illud esse delictum quod imprudenter, id est,]
[ignoranter; illud peccatum quod ab sciente committitur.—Aug. Queest.]
[sup. Levit. cap. 20, Opp. Tom. 1v. fol. 43, col. 2, Par. 1531.) [6 Crimen vero, scelus, defectionem et impietatem multo gravis-]
[simam, Lat.; but erimen for heinous wickedness, &e.] [7 Neque enim quia peccatum est omne crimen, ideo crimen est]
[etiam omne peccatum.—Aug. Enchir. ad Laurent. cap. 64, Opp. Tom.]
[1 fol. 37, col. 4.] [8 sanctorum hominum, Lat.; of saints.] [9 for which—accuse him, added by the translator. ] [10 a recto, Lat.] [11 See Decade 1. Serm. 1. p. 49. ]]
Verily St Augustine taketh much pains to find out a proper definition of sin. In his second book De Consensu Evangelistarum he saith: “Sin is the transgression of the lawl.” Ad Simplicianum, Lib. 1.: “Sin is an inordinateness or perverseness of man; that is, a turning from the more excellent Creator, and a turning to the inferior creatures.” De Fide contra Manicheos, cap. 8, he saith: “What is it else to sin, but to err in the precepts of truth, or in the truth itself3?” Again, Contra Faustum Manicheum, Lib. xxIL. cap. 27: “Sin is a deed, a word, or a wish, against the law of God%” The same Augustine, De duabus animabus contra Manicheos, cap. 11, saith: Sin is a will to retain or obtain that which justice forbiddeth, and is not free to abstain” And In Retract. Lib. 1. cap. -15, he saith: “That will is a motion of the mind, without compulsion, either not to lose or else to obtain some one thing or others.”