PENALTY OF SIN; A SERMON, DELIVERED IN THE ORCHARD ST. (UNIVERSALIST) CHURCH IN REPLY TO A SERMON AGAINST UNIVERSALISM, DELIVERED IN THE BROOME ST. (PRESBYTERIAN) CHURCH ON BY REV. EDWIN F. HATFIELD. BY T. J. SAWYER, PASTOR OF THE ORCHARD ST. CHURCH. 2 "The wages of Sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." NEW YORK: UNIVERSALIST UNION PRESS, 130 FULTON STREET. 1839. BOOKS PUBLISHED AND FOR SALE AT THE UNIVERSALIST UNION PRESS, No. 130 FULTON STREET, NEW YORK, Between Broadway and Nassau. THE LAYMAN'S LEGACY; or Twenty-five Sermons on Important Subjects. By HENRY FITZ. Vol. I. 406 pages, large 12mo. Price $1. The 2d volume will probably appear in the fall of 1839. The volumes are not specially connected. A THEOLOGICAL DISCUSSION, on the question, Is the doctrine of Endless Misery taught in the Scriptures? between EZRA STILES ELY, D. D. (Presbyterian,) and ABEL C. THOMAS, (Universalist.) One vol. 18mo. Price 62 cents. AN ARGUMENT FOR THE TRUTH OF CHRISTIANITY. By I. D. WILLIAMSON. One vol. 18mo. Price 50 cents. THE SUNDAY SCHOOL HYMN Book; designed for the use of Sunday Schools throughout the United States. SCRIPTURE LESSONS-an excellent Lesson Book for Sunday Schools. A great variety of PAMPHLETS, doctrinal and practical, which are put at low price, for convenience of distribution. -ALSO MAY BE HAD Most of the works treating of the doctrine of the Restitution, together with a variety of Sunday School Books, Certificates, etc. The UNIVERSALIST UNION, a Weekly Periodical, is issued at the same place, in two forms-Quarto, at $2 and Octavo at $250 per annum. THE PENALTY OF SIN. A Sermon, BY T. J. SAWYER. The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord. ROMANS VI. 23. It must be acknowledged by all that it is a matter of the greatest importance for us individually to ascertain what are the wages of sin, or in other words, what is the punishment with which we are threatened on account of our transgressions against God. We are all sinners; and as such we have a deep personal interest and concern in this inquiry. We should all be sensible, moreover, that we can gain nothing truly valuable and permanent, either by neglecting the inquiry altogether, or by deceiving ourselves in its solution. To know the truth is undoubtedly desirable on all subjects, but it is especially so on subjects of Revelation, which are fundamentally important to our hopes and happiness. Of this class do I regard the subject before us. For if we err here, it will incline us, on the one hand, to lessen that just and salutary fear which our gracious Creator designed to restrain us from sin; and on the other, to increase it to such a degree as shall annihilate all other and purer motives to obedience, and leave us mere slaves trembling and cringing at the feet of a tyrannical master. In one case our opinions will approach to blank atheism; in the other we shall be involved in a dark and miserable superstition. Which result is most to be dreaded, it might be difficult to determine, but certain it is that both should be cautiously avoided, as alike, though perhaps not in an equal degree, derogatory to God and injurious to man. It is the truth alone that can make us free indeed-that can properly adjust the balance between hope and fear, and subject us to their united and well proportioned influence, as accountable creatures of a wise, just, and gracious God. To attain this truth is the object of my present labors ; and may we come to the investigation of the subject before us with that spirit of candor and prayerfulness which its importance obviously demands, and which God is generally pleased to guide and bless. Let us lay aside our prejudices, and going with becoming docility to the oracles of God, let us endeavour dispassionately to examine, and frankly to receive what they teach. THE WAGES OF SIN IS DEATH. There is no reason to doubt that by death the Apostle here expresses the penalty of sin. In doing so he speaks in accordance with the established custom of the sacred writers. God was pleased to attach to his first prohibitory command the penalty of death. When he had placed man in the garden, he said to him, Gen. ii. 17. "Of every tree in the garden thou mayest freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." One of the prophets also says, "the soul that sinneth, it shall DIE.” Ezek. xviii. 3. Ít is in obvious conformity to this mode of expression that the Apostle speaks in our text. But since there is more than one kind of death mentioned in the Scriptures, the word is ambiguous, and it therefore becomes necessary for us to determine its meaning in the various places where it occurs, either from the connexion in which it stands, or by an appeal to other and more definite passages of the divine word. I have said that there is more than one kind of death spoken of in the scriptures. Christians generally believe in three. The first is called natural or temporal death, by which is meant the cessation of animal life, or the dissolution of the soul and body. The second is called moral or spiritual death, and is defined to be a deprivation of spiritual life, or a state of ignorance, insensibility and disobedience to the divine commands, in which an individual, though living a natural life, is still "dead in trespasses and sins." The third and last kind is generally called eternal death. This, according to Christian Stock, a celebrated German divine of the last century is "the deprivation of eternal life, which was lost by Adam, and regained by the sufferings and death of Jesus Christ." Lactantius says that eternal death is the feeling of everlasting pain, or the suffering of eternal torments.* But perhaps it will be sufficient to say that in the common acceptation of the phrase, it means simply endless misery in hell. It was before observed that death is used by the sacred penmen to express the penalty of the divine law. Prof. Stuart in his Commentary on Romans, under ch. v. verse 12, after speaking of the extent of meaning in which the word death is used in the scriptures, says, that the usus loquendi,† then permits DEATH to be construed as designating the penalty of sin, yea the whole penalty, there can be no good ground of doubt. The only question now is, whether death is employed in this sense in the passage before us? The antithesis in verses 15, 17, 21, and vi. 23, as produced above, would seem to go far toward a final settlement of this question. Indeed, there is no philological escape from the conclusion that death in the sense of penalty for sin, must be regarded as the meaning of the writer here." So also Mr, Barnes speaks of death in our text, as expressing "the proper reward-of sin," what the sinner "deserves," and "just what was threatened." That is, it includes in its meaning the penalty of sin, and as Prof. Stuart says, "the whole penalty." In the same manner Prof. Hodge on Romans v. 12, says "The death here spoken of is not mere natural death, but the penalty of the law, or the evils threatened as the punishment of sin." This being conceded on all sides, it will be observed that the whole controversy between Universalists and * Institut. divin. lib. i. c. 13. Gregory is rather paradoxical in his definition of eternal death, for he says, Moral. lib. vi. c. 39, "it is death without death, because the sufferer dies and yet does not die." Bernard is still worse. "It is," says he, Meditat. devotiss. c. 3, "a mortal life and an immortal death, a death of the life and of the soul; when one so dies that he lives forever, and so lives that he dies forever." † By the usus loquendi is meant, the sense which usage attaches to the words in any language. What is here said, applies with equal force to our text, which Prof. Stuart regards as a parallel passage. |