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The Prayer-book Considered Especially in Reference to the Romish System
The Prayerbook Considered Especially in Reference to the Romish System Author:Frederick Denison Maurice Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SERMON III. THE ABSOLUTION. Preached on the Second Sunday in Advent, Dec. 10, 1848. Lukb V. 21. And the Scribes and the Pharisees began to reason, sa... more »ying, Who is this which speaketh blasphemies ? Who can forgive sins, but God alone? THE Scribes and Pharisees did not merely pretend to feel horror when our Lord said to the paralytic man, ' Son, thy sins be forgiven thee.' Such horror as they were capable of they did actually feel. They could not doubt that the formula was a correct one—' None can forgive sins, but God only.' And if it was correct, it could not safely be trifled with. If sins could be forgiven at once, and so easily, what security was there against the continual commission of them ? If the people began to fancy that they might at the word of a man be discharged from the apprehension of future punishment which haunted them, what would become of religious awe ? What need could there be for any religious practices ? All arguments of civil and spiritual policy were against the tolerance of so monstrous a claim. We cannot deny that there may have beensomething more in their minds than this calculation of consequences. A recollection that sin was that against which Sinai had uttered its thunders; against which the whole Divine Word had been directed; which was the contradiction to the Nature of God; which only He knew, and only He could remit—this no doubt was in their minds, a witness of truth, not yet extinguished by all the dryness, selfishness, cruelty, which dwelt beside it. The two convictions together— mingling strangely with rage at one who was exercising a secret power of which they knew nothing—led them to say in their hearts, ' Who is this that speaketh blasphemies ? Was their fear unreasonable that men might contract an indifference to the ...« less