Selected quad for the lemma: knowledge_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
knowledge_n	law_n	sin_n	sinner_n	2,820	5	9.3094	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A32812	A skirmish made upon Quakerism being a brief confutation of a most gross principle or point of doctrine published and maintained by one William Penn, a Quaker, in a certain book entituled Quakerism a nick-name for old Christianity, subverting religion and all duty both to God and man / by J.C.	J. C. (John Cheyney)	1676 (1676)	Wing C3827; ESTC R24826	11,214	16

who has not out-lived their dayes and on whom the night is not come among the Indians themselves but would readily say these are true and weighty And so he wipes himself and his Brother Burroughs as he thinks clean and acquits himself from all crime against the Scriptures and evades John Faldo's Charge But not to stand answering every word the sum of Penn's Defence and come off to give it the Reader in more intelligible words is this That such commands in Scripture as be of universal and perpetual obligation such as holiness purity innocency and generally all that concerns honest and godly living all these be obliging to all because there is no man so sottish and impious but his conscience assenteth to these commands But Mr. Penn what do you say if men be so sottish and impious as to be ignorant that these are commands of God and to live without God in the World and to have abominable and filthy and reprobate consciences It is plain from your Position and defence of it that you make conviction the ground and spring of obedience So that where there is no conviction there is no obedience due where the conviction is but partial the obedience due is but partial where the conviction is erroneous the obedience must be erroneous It this Divinity and is this your Religion Why then do you not speak out and say fully and plainly Every man follow his own Lusts every man follow his own conscience every man burn his Bible and make Conscience and Conviction your Bible For this is the genuine product of your Opinion It is a Rule in Logick That what is not in the premises cannot be in the conclusion and that every redundancy in the conclusion exceeding the Arguments laid down in the premises in vicious and that the conclusion is vertually contained in the two fore-going Propositions Now you make conviction one of your premises and you lay down this Proposition That where there is no conviction there is no obedience and that obedience can rise no higher than conviction Now may one not admire that a man of your reading and bringing up should be so perswaded of the holiness and goodness of Man-kind as to write and publish to the World That none that hath a reasonable soul no not among the Indians themselves can be unconvinced of that faith in God and an holy self-denying life are necessary both to temporal and eternal happiness Quis ●alia fando temperet à lachrymis The Lord forgive me my want of compassion to this man Alas how many thousands are there in the World that know not God not what faith in God is that know not what a holy self-denying life is that worship Devils that make the Belly their God and with them a holy self-denying life is to live as if the must never dye and follow their pleasures and Religion with them is meer Epicurism and sensuality let us eat and drink for to morrow we shall dye You would have us to believe that all the World is perfectly holy and that there is never a corrupted and defiled conscience in the World and that Adam's fall is no such thing and that the redemption of Man-kind by Christs blood and regeneration by the Holy Ghost and original sin and hereditary corruption and mans deadness in sins and trespasses by nature are no such things O marvellous that you can be perswaded no man that hath a reasonable soul not a savage Indian but he hath a conscience within him assenting to all the rules and precepts of holiness self-denyal godliness charity and heavenly conversation or that no man in the World hath a blind understanding a seared conscience an impotent foul needing no purgation and cure from Jesus Christ and his good spirit by the new covenant I do grant you this that no man stands bound to obey any command which it is utterly impossible for him to know and be convinced of And by granting this I do sufficiently assoil and clear the justice of God God doth not enjoyn any man that which is simply and totally impossible God and Conscience will never smite and condemn for meer and total impossibilities But where nothing hinders a man from knowing his duty but his own neglect and wilful carelesness and where a man shall by sin debauch and sear his Conscience and Conscience misguided and seduced shall put him on to worship Idols to bow to a wooden God to blaspheme the true God to murder persecute commit all or any crimes will you excuse this man from sin for going according to his Conscience and exempt him from all going against his erroneous Conscience If indeed the case were so that no conviction could be or none that I could any way compass then I were in no fault but where it is my fault if I be unconvinced and I might know my duty were I not wanting to my self and there is no defect in the means but all the defect is in me in such case God may justly charge me with the omission of duty and the commission of evil though I know not of it for I might have known if I would and my not knowing my duty which I might have known it cannot excuse me from sin nor nullify the command of God If God should command a Beast to do him reasonable worship it were an unreasonable command because the beast hath no reasonable powers or capacity thereto the command to him is simply impossible So if God should command a man to reach the Stars with his hands such a command would not oblige because it is naturally and simply impossible But when God commandeth the Jews to believe on the same Jesus and own him for the true Messias this command is reasonable because Jesus Christ doth abundantly testifie by his doctrine life and miracles that he is the Christ of God And if the Jews will not believe but contrariwise look upon Christ as a deliverer and put him to death and all this in blind zeal and think they do God good service shall we say These men are excused because they did it ignorantly and of errour In all cases where God doth afford due means of knowledge and conviction there ignorance and base want of conviction is sinful and Gods command both written and unwritten doth oblige though the sinner be never convinced For mans sin and neglect cannot make void Gods Law It is true I grant that without the light within we could not at all come to the knowledge of the Scriptures What then will it thence follow That no command in Scripture doth oblige without conviction Had we no light within we should be very brutes Every man hath a reasonable soul which soul doth essentially contain a principle or power of rational light by which man as man is differenced from a beast and is Animal rationale by the help of his reason or that light which is graven in his mind by the Creatour and cultivated by