Aggravation of sin and sinning against knowledge. Mercy. Delivered in several sermons upon divers…Aggravation of sinne and sinning against knowledge. Mercie. Delivered in severall sermons upon divers…

Again, thirdly, the knowledge of the law binds §3the person so much the more to obedience,¹ by how much the more he knows it: so as though it would be a sin, when he knows not the Law to transgress it, yet when he knows it, it is a greater ⟨p. 46⟩sin. 'Tis true indeed, that conscience and the Law, when they meet, make up but one Law, not two distinct Laws: and therefore in sinning against knowledge, though a man doth not commit two distinct sins, yet the knowledge of it doth add a further degree of sinfulness to it: As a cloth is the same cloth when it is white, that it was when it is dyed with a scarlet dye; yet then it hath a dye, a tincture given it, which is more worth than the cloth: and so when you sin, not knowing the Law, the sin is the same for substance, it would be if you had known it; yet that knowledge dyes it, makes it a scarlet sin, as Isaiah speaks, far greater and deeper in demerit than the sin it self: and the ground of this is,² because Laws then come to be in force, when they are promulged, and made known: so as the more they are promulged and known, the more is the force of their binding, and so the greater guilt. Therefore Deut. 11. 12. 3. 8. God straitens the cords more, the binding force of the law more upon those Jews consciences, to whom he at the first personally with majesty had promulgated it, than upon their children, though upon theirs also. Now if all Gods Laws, being made known to Adam, bind us, and are in force, and this when we know them not; then if we do know them, or might know them, they bind much more: and still the more clearly we know them, the obligation increaseth, and the guilt ensuing with it: and the rather, because now when we come to know them, they are anew promulged, in a way of a peculiar mercy; we having defaced ⟨p. 47⟩the knowledge of them in our fall.

Againe, thirdly, the knowledge of the law binds §3