Church of England -- Sermons; Sermons, English -- 19th century
And is it not, on the other hand, establishing a righteousness of
one's own, to say that God requires of us belief in certain
doctrines about election, and 'forensic justification,' and
'sensible conversion,' and certain 'frames and feelings and
experiences;' and that without all these a man has no right to
expect anything but endless torture; and all the while to say little
or nothing about God's requiring of men the Ten Commandments? For
my part, I am equally shocked and astonished at the doctrine which I
have heard round us here--openly from some few, and in practice from
more than a few--that because the Ten Commandments are part of the
Law, they are done away with, because we are not now under the Law
but under Grace. What do they mean? Is it not written, that not
one jot or tittle of the Law shall fail; and that Christ came, not
to destroy the Law, but to fulfil it? What do they mean? That it
was harm to break the Ten Commandments before Christ came, but no
harm to break them now? Do they mean that Jews were forbid to
murder, steal, and commit adultery, but that Christians are not
forbidden? One thing I am afraid they do mean, for I see them act
up to it steadily enough. That Jews were forbidden to covet, but
that Christians are not; that Jews might not commit fornication, but
Christians may; that Jews might not lie, but Christians may; that
Jews might not use false weights and measures, or adulterate goods
for sale, but that Christians may. My friends, if I am asked the
reason of the hypocrisy which seems the besetting sin of England, in
this day;--if I am asked why rich men, even high religious
professors, dare speak untruths at public meetings, bribe at
elections, and go into parliament each man with a lie in his right
hand, to serve neither God nor his country, but his political party
and his religious sect, by conduct which he would be ashamed to
employ in private life;--if I am asked why the middle classes (and
the high religious professors among them, just as much as any) are
given over to cheating, coveting, puffing their own goods by
shameless and unmanly boasting, undermining each other by the
dirtiest means, while the sons of religious professors, both among
the higher and the middle classes, seem just as liable as any other
young men to fall into unmanly profligacy;--if I am asked why the
poor profess God's gospel and practise the Devil's works; and why,
in this very parish now, there are women who, while they are
drunkards, swearers, and adulteresses, will run anywhere to hear a
sermon, and like nothing better, saving sin, than high-flown
religious books;--if I am asked, I say, why the old English honesty
which used to be our glory and our strength, has decayed so much of
late years, and a hideous and shameful hypocrisy has taken the place
of it, I can only answer by pointing to the good old Church
Catechism, and what it says about our duty to God and to our
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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