Reformed Confessions:

Second Helvetic Confession

Second Helvetic Confession 13:
The Ancients Had Evangelical Promises. The Gospel, is indeed, opposed to the law. For the law works wrath and announces a curse, whereas the Gospel preaches grace and blessing. John says: For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ (John 1:17). Yet not withstanding it is most certain that those who were before the law and under the law, were not altogether destitute of the Gospel. For they had extraordinary evangelical promises such as these are: The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head (Gen. 3:15). In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed (Gen. 22:18). The scepter shall not depart from Judah . . . until he comes (Gen. 49:10). The Lord will raise up a prophet from among his own brethren (Deut. 18:15; Acts 3:22), etc.

Second Helvetic Confession 20:
What it Means To Be Baptized. Now to be baptized in the name of Christ is to be enrolled, entered, and received into the covenant and family, and so into the inheritance of the sons of God; yes, and in this life to be called after the name of God; that is to say, to be called a son of God; to be cleansed also from the filthiness of sins, and to be granted the manifold grace of God, in order to lead a new and innocent life. Baptism, therefore, calls to mind and renews the great favor God has shown to the race of mortal men. For we are all born in the pollution of sin and are the children of wrath. But God, who is rich in mercy, freely cleanses us from our sins by the blood of his Son, and in him adopts us to be his sons, and by a holy covenant joins us to himself, and enriches us with various gifts, that we might live a new life. All these things are assured by baptism. For inwardly we are regenerated, purified, and renewed by God through the Holy Spirit; and outwardly we receive the assurance of the greatest gifts in the water, by which also those great benefits are represented, and, as it were, set before our eyes to be beheld.

Second Helvetic Confession 8:
Sin. By sin we understand that innate corruption of man which has been derived or propagated in us all from our first parents, by which we, immersed in perverse desires and averse to all good are inclined to all evil. Full of all wickedness, distrust, contempt and hatred of God, we are unable to do or even to think anything good of ourselves. Moreover, even as we grow older, so by wicked thoughts, words and deeds committed against God’s law, we bring forth corrupt fruit worthy of an evil tree (Matt. 12:33 ff.). For this reason by our own deserts, being subject to the wrath of God, we are liable to just punishment, so that all of us would have been cast away by God if Christ, the Deliverer, had not brought us back.

Death. By death we understand not only bodily death, which all of us must once suffer on account of sins, but also eternal punishment due to our sins and corruption. For the apostle says: We were dead through trespasses and sins . . . and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, who is rich in mercy . . . even when we were dead through our tresspasses, made us alive together with Christ (Eph. 2:1 ff.). Also: As sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned (Rom. 5:12).

French Confession

French Confesion 18:
We believe that all our justification rests upon the remission of our sins, in which also is our only blessedness, as says David (Psa. 32:2).[1]  We therefore reject all other means of justification before God,[2] and without claiming any virtue or merit, we rest simply in the obedience of Jesus Christ, which is imputed to us as much to blot out all our sins as to make us find grace and favor in the sight of God.  And, in fact, we believe that in falling away from this foundation, however slightly, we could not find rest elsewhere, but should always be troubled.  For as much as we are never at peace with God till we resolve to be loved in Jesus Christ, for of ourselves we are worthy of hatred.

Thirty-Nine Articles

Article 9:
Original sin stands not in the following of Adam, (as the Pelagians do vainly talk;) but it is the fault and corruption of the Nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam; whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined to evil, so that the flesh lusts always contrary to the Spirit; and therefore in every person born into this world, it deserves God’s wrath and damnation. And this infection of nature doth remain, yea in them that are regenerated; whereby the lust of the flesh, called in Greek, (which some do expound the wisdom, some sensuality, some the affection, some the desire, of the flesh), is not subject to the Law of God. And although there is no condemnation for them that believe and are baptized; yet the Apostle doth confess, that concupiscence and lust hath of itself the nature of sin.

Belgic Confession

Belgic Confession 24:
Therefore He has commanded all those who are His to be baptized with pure water, into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, thereby signifying to us, that as water washes away the filth of the body when poured upon it, and is seen on the body of the baptized when sprinkled upon him, so does the blood of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit internally sprinkle the soul, cleanse it from its sins, and regenerate us from children of wrath unto children of God. Not that this is effected by the external water, but by the sprinkling of the precious blood of the Son of God; who is our Red Sea, through which we must pass to escape the tyranny of Pharaoh, that is, the devil, and to enter into the spiritual land of Canaan.

Synod of Dort

Dort 1:1:
As all men have sinned in Adam, lie under the curse, and are deserving of eternal death, God would have done no injustice by leaving them all to perish and delivering them over to condemnation on account of sin, according to the words of the apostle: That every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may be brought under the judgment of God (Rom. 3:19). And: For all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23).  And: For the wages of sin is death (Rom. 6:23).

Read the rest of this entry »

Latimer:¹

Sins of the world:

1) Christ was sore tormented in his mankind, nothing in his Godhead.

Marry, I will tell you how. We must consider our Savior Christ two ways, one way in his manhood, another in his Godhead. Some places of scripture must be referred to his Deity, and some to his humanity. In his Godhead he suffered nothing; but now he made himself void of his Deity, as scripture saith, Cum esset in forma Dei, exinanivit seipsum, “Whereas he was in the form of God, he emptied himself of it, he did hide it, and used himself as though he had not had it.”He would not help himself with his Godhead; “he humbled himself with all obedience unto death, even to the death of the cross” this was in that he was man.

Christ was
accounted
the greatest
sinner in the
world, because
he took upon
him our sins.

He took upon him our sins: not the work of sin; I mean not so: not to do it, not to commit it; but to purge it, to cleanse it, to bear the stipend of it: and that way he was the great sinner of the world. He bare all the sin of the world on his back; he would become debtor for it.

Christ is the only Purgation of our sin.

Now to sustain and suffer the dolours² of death is not to sin: but he came into this world with his passion to purge our sins. Now this that he suffered in the garden is one of the bitterest pieces of all his passion: this fear of death was the bitterest pain that ever he abode, due to sin which he never did, but became debtor for us. All this he suffered for us; this he did to satisfy for our sins.

The notable
mercy of
Christ showing
to mankind.

It is much like as if I owed another man twenty thousand pounds, and should pay it out of hand, or else go to the dungeon of Ludgate; and when I am going to prison, one of my friends should come, and ask, “Whither goes this man?” and after he had heard the matter, should say, “Let me answer for him, I will become surety for him: yea, I will pay all for him.” Such a part played our Savior Christ with us. If he had not suffered this, I for my part should have suffered, according to the gravity and quantity of my sins, damnation.

The greater
the sin is, the
greater is
the pain.

For the greater the sin is, the greater is the punishment in hell. He suffered for you and me, in such a degree as is due to all the sins of the whole world. It was as if you would imagine that one man had committed all the sins since Adam: you may be sure he should be punished with the same horror of death, in such a sort as all men in the world should have suffered. Feign and put case, our Savior Christ had committed all the sins of the world; all that I for my part have done, all that you for your part have done, and that any man else hath done: if he had done all this himself, his agony that he suffered should have been no greater nor grievouser than it was.

His suffering
in the garden
was bitter
and painful.

This that he suffered in the garden was a portion, I say, of his passion, and one of the bitterest parts of it. And this he suffered for our sins, and not for any sins that he had committed himself: for all we should have suffered, every man according to his own deserts.

Why Christ
suffered such pains.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ussher:

The Satisfaction of Christ¹

“Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” Philippians 2:5-8

You have heretofore heard that point of Christian doctrine which concerns the knowledge of our misery and wretched estate by nature. The substance of all is that we are the children of wrath and disobedience, as well as others. You see then in what state every man stands before he has made his peace with God. You see what the Holy Ghost says, “They are the sons of disobedience, and children of wrath, as well as others.” I tell you this not to discourage a sinner or drive him to desperation, but because it is fitting that he should know the estate in which he is. If they will try arguing with God, if they oppose Him, the Lord will come with a bar of iron, and will break them in pieces like a potter’s vessel. “Those, mine enemies, that will not have Me to reign over them, bring them and slay them before Me.”

It is fitting that every man know this, and it is only to awaken us; otherwise, to what purpose do we preach to you? Till the law awakens us, we sleep securely in our sins till the dreadful trumpet of Mount Sinai comes with thundering and lightning. Ephesians 5:14: “Awake thou that sleeps.” Unless this awaken us, in what case are we? We are sleeping men who are dreaming (Jude 8). A sleeping sinner will be a dreaming sinner: he never sees things they are in their proper shape. He thinks, like the church of Laodicea, that he is rich and lacks nothing, when he is really poor, miserable, blind, and naked. He thinks he be admitted into heaven as soon as the best, but this is a dream. “As the hungry man dreams, and behold he eats, but when he awakes, behold he is empty; or as thirsty man that dreams he drinks, but awakes and behold he is faint” (Isaiah 29:8). Thus it is with us: we think we are entering upon the suburbs of heaven, and yet we are but in a dream and are asleep.

Now being thus awakened, consider what you have to do when the dreadful trumpet of the law has awakened you. Consider your state; if you sleep this night, hellfire will be your portion. It would be better for you therefore to awaken yourself before the flames of hellfire awaken you. Consider likewise that you must not be led by yourself; you must renounce your own will. Our states may be pleasing to us, to enjoy in a dream our heart’s lusts here on earth; but consider that unless you cross your will here, it shall be crossed hereafter; yea, it shall be the main cross a man shall have in hell (besides the eternal weight of God’s wrath) that he can will or desire nothing but he shall be crossed in it-not the least thing he desires but he shall have the contrary. Learn then what a woeful thing it is to be our own lords, to follow our own lusts and pleasures; see what we shall gain by it. We shall never enjoy the least portion of our will in the world to come; if we would have but a drop of cold water, we shall be crossed in it. We shall have the opposite of everything we desire.

Read the rest of this entry »

Griffin:

SERMON 11.
THE BRAZEN SERPENT.
John iii. 14, 15.

And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have eternal life.

Jesus and his salvation were the substance of all the ancient shadows, the end of all the Mosaic rites, and the burden of every prophet’s song. They were the favorite theme of the Old Testament and the New. They are the subject of the highest songs of the upper world. They bring the purest joy to hearts on earth broken for sin.

There are few types of happier influence to illustrate the Gospel remedy and the manner of its application than the brazen serpent. When the Hebrews provoked God in the wilderness, he sent among them fiery serpents of a most deadly bite; so called either from their color, or from the heat and thirst occasioned by the wound. They were

probably of the species of the “fiery flying serpents” mentioned by Isaiah. It is supposed that they hovered in swarms over the camp and suddenly darted upon their prey; none of the congregation being able while on their march, and few being able in their encampments, to defend themselves against the fell attack. What a scene of distress was here! Hundreds lying dead in the camp; hundreds more writhing in torture and crying in vain for relief; every one trembling for himself; now a child and then a wife and then a brother crying out under the tormenting bite; and swarms of the enemy still hovering over the camp. What could they do? They hasted away to Moses and said with tears, “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against thee. Pray unto the Lord that he take away the serpents from us.” And Moses prayed for the people, and the Lord said to him,” Make thee a fiery serpent, [that is, the image of a fiery serpent,] and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass that every one that is bitten, when he looks upon it shall live. And Moses made a serpent of brass and put it upon a pole, [so that it could be seen from every part of the camp:] and it came to pass that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass he lived.” Glorious emblem of him who was “lifted up that whosoever, believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

This brazen serpent was preserved with great veneration seven hundred years, until it had become so much the object of idolatrous worship, that Hezekiah broke it in pieces about a century before the Babylonish captivity. Let us trace a little more particularly the resemblance between this type and the anti-type.

Read the rest of this entry »