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…

Thirdly, on the contrary, the more hardness of heart there is,¹ and want of tenderness, in committing that sin, which a man knows to be a sin, it is argued thereby to be the greater sin against knowledge; not only the greater sin, but the greater sin against knowledge. For hardness of heart in sinning, is an effect of having formerly sinned much against knowledge before. For as the light of the Sun hardeneth clay, so the beams of knowledge and conscience, lighting upon mens hearts, use to harden them, and do make them in the end past feeling. And therefore in 1 Tim. 4. 2. sinning against knowledge is made the cause of a seared conscience, they speak lies in Hypocrisy: and therefore knowingly that they are lies, and such lies as damn others as well as themselves, which who believe are damned, 2 Thes. 2. 11, 12. and if so, no wonder if it follows, having their Consciences seared with an hot iron. It is not a cold iron will sear their consciences, and make them insensible, but an hot iron, a burning and a shining light, which once having had place in their consciences, and being rejected, they begin to be hardened ⟨p. 77⟩and seared. For knowledge makes sins and the apprehensions of them, familiar to a man, and so less terrible and frightful in the end, as Bears and Lyons do become to their keepers, through custom. Judas had a hard heart, when he came to betray his Master, surely his conscience had smitten him at first more for nimming out of the bag, than it did now for this of murder. He could never have had such a hard heart, had he not had much knowledge: was it not a hard heart, that when he was challenged to his face, he could set a brazen face on it, and did ask as well as the rest, Is it I? when also Christ cursed him to his face, who should do it, and the Disciples all abhorred it: had not Judas lived under such blessed and glorious means, and sinned long against knowledge, all this would have startled him, and have staggered in his purpose: but he goes on as if it were nothing, though when he had done it, his conscience was then opened too late; when a man formerly hath been troubled with a small sin, more than now with a gross lye, which he can digest better than once the other: