the fittest Engine to get into Power by which by the way when they are once possessed of they generally manage with as little Tenderness as they do with Conscience Of which we have had but too much Experience already and it would be but ill venturing upon more In a word Conscience not acting by and under a Law is a boundless daring and presumptuous thing and for any one by vertue thereof to challenge to himself a Privilege of doing what he will and of being unaccountable for what he does is in all Reason too much either for Man or Angel to pretend to 3 ly The third and last Property of Conscience which I shall mention and which makes the Verdict of it so Authentick is its great and rigorous Impartiality For as its wonderfull Apprehensiveness made that it could not easily be deceived so this makes that it will by no means deceive A Iudge you know may be skilfull in understanding a Cause and yet partial in giving Sentence But it is much otherwise with Conscience no Artifice can induce it to accuse the Innocent or to absolve the Guilty No we may as well bribe the Light and the Day to represent White things Black or Black White What pitifull things are Power Rhetorick or Riches when they would terrifie disswade or buy off Conscience from pronouncing Sentence according to the Merit of a Man's Actions For still as we have shewn Conscience is a Copy of the Divine Law and though Iudges may be bribed or frightened yet Laws cannot The Law is Impartial and Inflexible it has no Passions or Affections and consequently never accepts Persons nor dispenses with it self For let the most potent Sinner upon Earth speak out and tell us whether he can command down the Clamours and Revilings of a guilty Conscience and impose silence upon that bold Reprover He may perhaps for a while put on an high and a big Look but can he for all that look Conscience out of Countenance And he may also dissemble a little forced Jollity that is he may Court his Mistress and quaff his Cups and perhaps sprinkle them now and then with a few Dammees but who in the mean time besides his own wretched miserable self knows of those secret bitter Infusions which that terrible thing called Conscience makes into all his Draughts Believe it most of the appearing Mirth in the World is not Mirth but Art The wounded Spirit is not seen but walks under a disguise and still the less you see of it the better it looks On the contrary if we consider the vertuous Person let him declare freely whether ever his Conscience checked him for his Innocence or upbraided him for an Action of Duty did it ever bestow any of its hidden Lashes or concealed Bites on a mind severely Pure Chaste and Religious But when Conscience shall complain cry out and recoyl let a Man descend into himself with too just a Suspicion that all is not right within For surely that Hue and cry was not raised upon him for nothing The spoils of a rifled Innocence are born away and the Man has stoln something from his own Soul for which he ought to be pursued and will at last certainly be over-took Let every one therefore attend the Sentence of his Conscience For he may be sure it will not dawb nor flatter It is as severe as Law as impartial as Truth It will neither conceal nor pervert what it knows And thus I have done with the Third of those four Particulars at first proposed and shewn whence and upon what account it is that the Testimony of Conscience concerning our spiritual Estate comes to be so Authentick and so much to be relyed upon Namely For that it is fully empowered and commissioned to this great Office by God himself and withall that it is extremely Quick-sighted to apprehend and discern and moreover very Tender and Sensible of every thing that concerns the Soul And lastly That it is most exactly and severely Impartial in judging of whatsoever comes before it Every one of which Qualifications justly contributes to the Credit and Authority of the Sentence which shall be passed by it And so we are at length arrived at the Fourth and last Thing proposed from the words Which was to assign some particular Cases or Instances in which this Confidence towards God suggested by a rightly informed Conscience does most eminently shew and exert it self I shall mention Three 1. In our Addresses to God by Prayer When a Man shall presume to come and place himself in the Presence of the Great Searcher of Hearts and to ask something of him while his Conscience is all the while smiting him on the Face and telling him what a Rebel and a Traitour he is to the Majesty which he supplicates surely such an one should think with himself that the God whom he prays to is greater than his Conscience and pierces into all the filth and baseness of his Heart with a much clearer and more severe Inspection And if so will he not likewise resent the Provocation more deeply and revenge it upon him more terribly if Repentance does not divert the Blow Every such Prayer is big with Impiety and Contradiction and makes as odious a noise in the Ears of God as the Harangues of one of those Rebel Fasts or Humiliations in the year Forty One invoking the Blessings of Heaven upon such Actions and Designs as nothing but Hell could reward One of the most peculiar Qualifications of an Heart rightly disposed for Prayer is a well grounded Confidence of a Man's fitness for that Duty In Heb. 10. 22. Let us draw near with a true Heart in full assurance of faith says the Apostle But whence must this Assurance spring Why we are told in the very next Words of the same Verse Having our Hearts sprinkled from an evil Conscience Otherwise the voice of an impure Conscience will cry much louder than our Prayers and speak more effectually against us than these can intercede for us And now if Prayer be the great Conduit of mercy by which the Blessings of Heaven are derived upon the Creature and the noble Instrument of Converse between God and the Soul then surely that which renders it ineffectual and loathsome to God must needs be of the most mischievous and destructive Consequence to Mankind imaginable and consequently to be removed with all that Earnestness and Concern with which a Man would rid himself of a Plague or a moral Infection For it taints and pollutes every Prayer it turns an Oblation into an Affront and the Odours of a Sacrifice into the Exhalations of a Carcass And in a word makes the Heavens over us Brass denying all Passage either to descending Mercies or ascending Petitions But on the other side when a Man's Breast is clear and the same Heart which endites does also encourage his Prayer when his Innocence pushes on the Attempt and vouches the Success Such an one goes boldly to
nor yet towards themselves who are far from being either And thus I have shewn you the First ground upon which the Testimony of Conscience concerning a man's spiritual Estate comes to be so Authentick and so much to be relied upon to wit the high Office which it holds as the Vicegerent of God himself in the Soul of Man Together with the Two grand Inferences drawn from thence The first of them shewing the Absurdity Folly and Impertinence of pretending Conscience against any Thing when there is no Law of God mediate or immediate against it And the other setting forth the intolerable Blasphemy and Impiety of pretending Conscience for any Thing which the known Law of God is directly against and stands in open defiance of Proceed we now to the second Ground from which Conscience derives the Credit of its Testimony in judging of our spiritual Estate and that consists in those Properties and Qualities which so peculiarly fit it for the discharge of its fore-mentioned Office in all things relating to the Soul And these are Three First The Quickness of its Sight Secondly The Tenderness of its Sense And Thirdly and Lastly It s Rigorous and Impartial way of giving Sentence Of each of which in their Order And first For the Extraordinary quickness and sagacity of its Sight in spying out every Thing which can any way concern the Estate of the Soul As the Voice of it I shew was as loud as Thunder so the Sight of it is as piercing and quick as Lightning It presently sees the Guilt and looks through all the Flaws and Blemishes of a sinfull Action and on the other side observes the Candidness of a Man's very Principles the sincerity of his Intentions and the whole Carriage of every Circumstance in a Vertuous performance So strict and accurate is this spiritual Inquisition Upon which Account it is That there is no such Thing as perfect Secresie to encourage a rational Mind to the Perpetration of any base Action For a Man must first extinguish and put out the Great Light within him his Conscience he must get away from himself and shake off the Thousand Witnesses which he always carries about him before he can be alone And where there is no Solitude I am sure there can be no Secresie 'T is confessed indeed that a Long and a Bold Course of Sinning may as we have shewn elsewhere very much dimn and darken the discerning Faculty of Conscience For so the Apostle assures us it did with those in Rom. 1. 21. and the same no doubt it does every Day but still so as to leave such Persons both then and now many notable lucid Intervals Sufficient to convince them of their Deviations from Reason and Natural Religion and thereby to render them inexcusable and so in a word to stop their Mouths though not save their Souls In short their Conscience was not stark Dead but under a kind of Spiritual Apoplexy or Deliquium The Operation was hindred but the Faculty not destroyed And now if Conscience be naturally thus apprehensive and sagacious certainly this ought to be another great Ground over and above its bare Authority why we should trust and rely upon the Reports of it For Knowledge is still the Ground and Reason of Trust and so much as any one has of Discernment so far he is secured from Error and Deception and for that Cause fit to be confided in No Witness so much to be credited as an Eye-witness And Conscience is like the great Eye of the World the Sun always open always making Discoveries Justly therefore may we by the Light of it take a View of our Condition 2 ly Another Property or Quality of Conscience enabling it to judge so truly of our spiritual Estate is the Tenderness of its Sense For as by the Quickness of its Sight it directs us what to doe or not to doe so by this Tenderness of its Sense it excuses or accuses us as we have done or not done according to those Directions And it is altogether as nice delicate and tender in Feeling as it can be perspicacious and quick in Seeing For Conscience you know is still called and accounted the Eye of the Soul and how troublesome is the least Mote or Dust falling into the Eye and how quickly does it weep and water upon the least Grievance that afflicts it And no less exact is the Sense which Conscience preserved in its Native Purity has of the least Sin For as great Sins wast so small ones are enough to wound it and every Wound you know is painfull till it festers beyond Recovery As soon as ever Sin gives the Blow Conscience is the first Thing that feels the Smart No sooner does the poysoned Arrow Enter but that begins to bleed inwardly Sin and Sorrow the Venom of one and the Anguish of the other being Things inseparable Conscience if truly tender never complains without a Cause though I confess there is a new fashioned Sort of Tenderness of Conscience which always does so But that is like the Tenderness of a Bog or Quagmire and it is very dangerous coming near it for fear of being swallowed up by it For when Conscience has once acquired this Artificial Tenderness it will strangely enlarge or contract it Swallow as it pleases so that sometimes a Camel shall slide down with Ease where at other times even a Gnat may chance to stick by the Way It is indeed such a Kind of Tenderness as makes the Person who has it generally very tender of obeying the Laws but never so of breaking them And therefore since it is commonly at such Variance with the Law I think the Law is the fittest Thing to deal with it In the mean time let no Man deceive himself or think that true Tenderness of Conscience is any Thing else but an awfull and exact Sense of the Rule which should direct and of the Law which should govern it And while it steers by this Compass and is sensible of every Declination from it so long it is truly and properly Tender and fit to be relied upon whether it checks or approves a Man for what he does For from hence alone springs its excusing or accusing Power All accusation in the very Nature of the Thing still supposing and being founded upon some Law For where there is no Law there can be no Transgression and where there can be no Transgression I am sure there ought to be no Accusation And here when I speak of Law I mean both the Law of God and of Man too For where the Matter of a Law is a Thing not Evil every Law of Man is vertually and at a second Hand the Law of God also For as much as it binds in the strength of the Divine Law commanding Obedience to Every Ordinance of Man as we have already shewn And therefore all Tenderness of Conscience against such Laws is Hypocrisie and patronized by none but Men of Design who look upon it as
the Throne of Grace and his Boldness is not greater than his Welcome God recognizes the voice of his own Spirit interceding within him and his Prayers are not only followed but even prevented with an Answer 2ly A Second Instance in which this Confidence towards God does so remarkably shew it self is at the Time of some notable Tryal or sharp Affliction When a Man's Friends shall desert him his Relations disown him and all Dependencies fail him and in a word the whole World frown upon him certainly it will then be of some moment to have a Friend in the Court of Conscience which shall as it were buoy up his sinking Spirits and speak greater Things for him than all these together can Declaim against him For it is most certain that no Height of Honour nor affluence of Fortune can keep a Man from being Miserable nor indeed Contemptible when an enraged Conscience shall fly at him and take him by the Throat so it is also as certain that no Temporal Adversities can cut off those inward secret invincible Supplies of Comfort which Conscience shall pour in upon distressed Innocence in spight and in defiance of all Worldly Calamities Naturalists observe that when the Frost seizes upon Wine they are onely the slighter and more waterish parts of it that are subject to be congealed but still there is a mighty Spirit which can retreat into it self and there within its own Compass lie secure from the freezing impression of the Element round about it And just so it is with the Spirit of a Man while a good Conscience makes it firm and impenetrable An outward Affliction can no more benumb or quell it than a blast of Wind can freeze up the Bloud in a Man's Veins or a little Showr of Rain soak into his Heart and there quench the Principle of Life it self Take the two greatest Instances of Misery which I think are incident to Humane Nature to wit Poverty and Shame and I dare oppose Conscience to them both And first for Poverty Suppose a Man stripped of all driven out of House and Home and perhaps out of his Countrey too which having within our memory happened to so many may too easily God knows be supposed again yet if his Conscience shall tell him that it was not for any failure in his own Duty but from the success of anothers Villainy that all this befell him why then his Banishment becomes his Preferment his Rags his Trophies his Nakedness his Ornament and so long as his Innocence is his Repast he feasts and banquets upon Bread and Water He has disarmed his Afflictions unstung his Miseries and though he has not the proper Happiness of the World yet he has the greatest that is to be enjoyed in it And for this we might appeal to the Experience of those great and good Men who in the late Times of Rebellion and Confusion were forced into foreign Countries for their unshaken Firmness and Fidelity to the oppressed Cause of Majesty and Religion whether their Conscience did not like a Fidus Achates still bear them company stick close to them and suggest Comfort even when the Causes of Comfort were invisible and in a word verify that great saying of the Apostle in their Mouths We have nothing and yet we possess all Things For it is not barely a Man's Abridgement in his External Accommodations which makes him miserable but when his Conscience shall hit him in the Teeth and tell him that it was his Sin and his Folly which brought him under these Abridgements That his present scanty Meals are but the natural Effects of his former over full ones That it was his Taylor and his Cook his fine Fashions and his French Ragou's which sequestred him and in a word that he came by his Poverty as sinfully as some usually do by their Riches and consequently that Providence treats him with all these Severities not by way of Trial but by way of Punishment and Revenge The Mind surely of it self can feel none of the Burnings of a Fever but if my Fever be occasioned by a Surfeit and that Surfeit caused by my Sin it is that which adds Fuel to the fiery Disease and Rage to the Distemper 2 ly Let us consider also the Case of Calumny and Disgrace Doubtless the Sting of every reproachfull Speech is the Truth of it and to be conscious is that which gives an Edge and Keenness to the Invective Otherwise when Conscience shall plead not guilty to the Charge a Man entertains it not as an Endictment but as a Libel He hears all such Calumnies with a generous Unconcernment and receiving them at one Ear gives them a free and easie Passage through the other They fall upon him like Rain or Hail upon an oiled Garment they may make a Noise indeed but can find no Entrance The very Whispers of an acquitting Conscience will drown the Voice of the loudest Slander What a long Charge of Hypocrisie and many other base Things did Iob's Friends draw up against him But he regarded it no more than the Dunghill which he sate upon while his Conscience enabled him to appeal even to God Himself and in Spight of Calumny to assert and hold fast his Integrity And did not Ioseph lie under as black an Infamy as the Charge of the highest Ingratitude and the lewdest Villainy could fasten upon him Yet his Conscience raised him so much above it that he scorned so much as to clear himself or to recriminate the Strumpet by a true Narrative of the Matter For we read nothing of that in the whole Story Such Confidence such Greatness of Spirit does a clear Conscience give a Man always making him more solicitous to preserve his Innocence than concerned to prove it And so we come now to the 3 d. and last Instance in which above all others this Confidence towards God does most eminently shew and exert it self and that is at the Time of Death Which surely gives the grand Opportunity of trying both the Strength and Worth of every Principle When a Man shall be just about to quit the Stage of this World to put off his Mortality and to deliver up his last Accounts to God at which sad Time his Memory shall serve him for little else but to terrify him with a frightfull Review of his past Life and his former Extravagances stripped of all their Pleasure but retaining their Guilt What is it then that can promise him a fair Passage into the other World or a comfortable Appearance before his dreadfull Judge when he is there Not all the Friends and Interests all the Riches and Honours under Heaven can speak so much as a Word for him or one Word of Comfort to him in that Condition they may possibly reproach but they cannot relieve him No at this disconsolate Time when the busie Tempter shall be more than usually apt to vex and trouble him and the Pains of a dying Body to hinder and discompose him