Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament

¹¹ So let us act; and so must we act not only when the sin is committed against ourselves, but when the sin is so committed by any one as that it is unknown by the other. In secret ought we to rebuke, in secret to reprove him; lest if we would reprove him publicly, we should betray the man. We wish to rebuke and reform him; but what if his enemy is looking out to hear something that he may punish? For example, a Bishop knows of some one who has killed another, and no one else knows of him.

I wish to reprove him publicly; but you are seeking to prosecute him. Decidedly then I will neither betray him, nor neglect him; I will reprove him in secret; I will set the judgment of God before his eyes; I will alarm his bloodstained conscience; I will persuade him to repentance. With this charity ought we to be endued. And hence men sometimes find fault with us, as if we do not reprove; or they think that we know what we do not know, or that we hush up what we know. And it may be that what you know, I know also but I will not reprove in your presence I because I wish to cure, not to act informer.

There are men who commit adultery in their own houses, they sin in secret, sometimes they are discovered to us by their own wives, generally through jealousy, sometimes as seeking their husband's salvation; in such cases we do not betray them openly, but reprove them in secret. Where the evil has happened, there let the evil die. Yet do we not neglect that wound; above all things showing the man who is in such a sinful state, and bears such a wounded conscience, that that is a deadly wound which they who suffer from, sometimes by an unaccountable perverseness despise; and seek out testimonies in their favour, I know not whence, null certainly and void, saying, “God cares not for sins of the flesh.” Where is that then which we have heard today, “Whoremongers and adulterers God will judge”? Lo!

Whosoever you are that labourest under such a disease attend. Hear what God says; not what your own mind, in indulgence to your own sins, may say, or what your friend, your enemy rather and his own too, bound in the same bond of iniquity with you may say. Hear then what the Apostle says; “Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled. But whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.”