Selected quad for the lemma: conscience_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
conscience_n	die_v	fire_n	worm_n	1,088	5	9.7140	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A50672	A moral paradox maintaining, that it is much easier to be vertuous then vitious / by Sir George Mackeinzie.	Mackenzie, George, Sir, 1636-1691.	1667 (1667)	Wing M181; ESTC R19878	25,281	86

fret them Vertue afflicts at most but the body and in these pains Philosophie consols us but Vice afflicts our Souls and the Soul being more sensible then the body seing the body owes its sensiblenesse to it Certainly the torments of Vice must be greatest and this seems the reason why our Saviour in describing the torments of Hell placeth the worm which never dies before the fire that never goeth out And that the rebukes of a natural Conscience are of all torments the most insupportable appears from this that albeit death be the most formidable of all torments men suffering Tortures Physick Contumelies Poverty and the sharpest of afflictions to shun its encounter yet men in exchange of these will not only welcome Death but will assume it to themselves adding the guilt and infamy of self-murder the confiscation of an Estate and the infamous want of Burial to the horrours of an ordinary death and al this to shift the present gnawings of a Conscience The horrours likewise of a guilty Conscience doth in this appear most disquieting that those who have their Conscience so burden'd do acknowledge that after confession they find themselves as much eased as a sick Stomack is relieved by vomiting up these humours whose disquietnesse maks such as suffered them rather sick persons then Patients Whereas what ever be the present troubles which ariseth from vertue yet if they continue not they are tolerable and if they continue custome and the assistance of Philosophy will lessen their weight and at best the pain is to be but temporary because the cause from which they descend is but momentany If they be not sharp and violent they are sufferable and if they be violent they cannot last or at least the Patient cannot last long to endure them Whereas these reflections that disquiet us in Vice arising from the soul it self cannot perish whilst that hath any being And so the vitious soul must measure its grief by the length of Eternity though Vice did let out its joys but by the length of a moment and did not fill even the narrow dimensions of that moment with sincere joy the knowledge that these were to be short lyv'd and the fear of succeeding torment possessing much of that little room The first objection whose difficulty deserves an answer is that Vertue obliges us to oppose pleasurs and to accustome our selves with such rigors seriousnesse and patience as cannot but render it's practice uneasie and if the Readers own ingenuity supply not what may be rejoyn'd to this it will require a discourse that shall have no other design besides its satisfaction and really to shew by what means every man may make himself easily happy and how to soften the appearing rigours of Philosophy is a design which if I thought it not worthy of a sweeter pen should be assisted by mine and for which I have in my current experience gather'd together some loose reflections and observations of whose cogency I have this assurance that they have often moderated the weildest of my own straying inclinations and so might pretend to a more prevailing ascendent over such whose reason and temperament makes them much more reclaimable But at present my answer is that Philosophy enjoyns not the crossing of our own inclinations but in order to their accomplishment and it proposes pleasure as it's end as well as Vice though for it's more fixt establishment it sometimes commands what seems rude to such as are strangers to it's intentions in them Thus temperance resolvs to highten the pleasurs of enjoyment by defending us against all the insults of excesse and oppressive loathing and when it lessens our pleasurs it intends not to abridge them but to make them fit and convenient for us even as Souldiers who though they propose not wounds and starvings yet if without these they cannot reach those Lawrels to which they climb they will not so far disparage their own hopes as to think they should fix them upon any thing whose acquist deserve not the suffering of these Physick cannot be called a cruel employment because to preserve what is sound it will cut off what is tainted and these vitious persons whose laziness forms this doubt do answer it when they endure the sicknesse of Drunkennesse the toiling of Avarice the attendance of rising Vanity and the watchings of Anxiety and all this to satisfie inclinations whose shortness allowes little pleasure and whose prospect excluds all future hopes Such as disquiet themselves by Anxiety which is a frequently repeated self murther are more tortour'd then they could be by the want of what they pant after that long'd for possession of a Neighbours estate or of a publick employment maks deeper impressions of grief by their absence then their enjoyment can repair and a Philosopher will sooner convince himself of their not being the necessar integrants of our happinesse then the miser will by all his assiduousnesse gain them There are but three instances of time and in each of these vitious persons are much troubled the prospect of usual insuccessefulness difficulties or inconveniences do torment before the commission horrour trembling and reluctancy do terrifie in the act and conscience succeeds to these after commission as the last but not the least of these unruly torments And as to the pleasurs of Vice it can have none in any of these parcels of time beside the present which present is by many Philosophers scarce allowed the name of time and is at best so swift that it's pleasurs most be too transient to be possest I confess that revenge is the most inticeing of all Vices and so much so that a wicked Italian said that GOD Almighty had reserv'd it to himself because it was too noble and satisfying a Prerogative to be bestowed upon mortals yet it discharges at once it's pleasure with it's fury and like a bee languishes after it hath spent it's sting and when it is once acted which is oft in one moment it ceaseth from that moment to be a pleasure and such as were tickled once with it are afraid of it's remembrance and think worse of it then they did formerly of the affront to expiat which it was undertaken Thirty Pieces of Silver might have had some letchery in them at Iudas first touch but they behooved to have a very unresembling effect when he took no longer pleasure in them then to have come the next week to offer them back and because they were refused to rid himself of his life and them together The pains of Vice may be conluded greater then these of Vertue from this that vertuous persons are in their sufferings assisted by all the world vitious persons doing so to expiat their own crimes and vertuous persons doing the same to reward the Vertue they adore and if these endeavours prove insuccessful every man by bearing a share in their grief do all they can to lessen it but vitious persons have their sufferings augmented by the disdain