Verse 19
19. Known The fact that man by understanding or conscience can know God’s truth, though it elevates his nature in the scale of being, does not diminish but increases the amount of his guilt and actual self-depravation. The very great wrong is that so noble an intrinsic nature, in its created elements, is abased by self-prostitution. The depravity does not lie in the will exclusively, as Tholuck suggests; but in the disordered affections first, and the will’s obeying and then redoubling the depravity of the affections, and spreading it over the whole nature.
Known of God The knowable things of God include not his substance, nor the fulness and mystery of his infinity, but his power, rectitude, and divine requirements over man.
Manifest in them Not merely among them collectively, but within each one individually. This does not affirm the existence in man of what is sometimes uncouthly styled the “God-consciousness.” It does not even affirm that man intuitively knows God’s existence. What it does affirm is explained in the next verse.
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