Digital Paxton: Digital Collection, Critical Edition, and Teaching Platform

The Quakers Assisting to Preserve the Lives of the Indians - 5

or indeed ever has been: But what has had something of divine Law imprest upon their Minds in such strong Terms, that they have fell upon Measures of some Sort to deter every Person from the executing that horrid Crime; but if perpetrated to punish the Criminal even with Death.-----Cain Cryed out my punishment is greater than I can bare,-----There was no outward Law to punish him,----What then? An inward Conviction. A wounded Conscience.-----He first envied his brother, and then murdered him the same with Lameck. Genesis iv. vers 23, “He said unto his Wives Adah Zillah, hear my Voice ye Wives of Lameck, harken unto my Speach; for I have slain a Man to my wounding, and a young Man to my Hurt.” We read no outward Law at that Time, it being (if the Word may be allowed) in the infancy of Time before the civil Power was so well established as afterwards. The Apostle Paul tells us, that there was some of the Gentiles, who had not the Law, were a Law unto themselves,----But why don’t every Christian believe it? if he deserves that Name, for my part, I am confident in that Belief:----And I likewise believe, that where the Apostle is speaking of the Gentiles being endowed with the Spirit of Grace, that they by strictly adhering to that in themselves, walked as order-

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