Selected quad for the lemma: conscience_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
conscience_n	law_n	sin_n	transgression_n	2,525	5	10.8527	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A38061	A preservative against Socinianism. The first part shewing the direct and plain opposition between it, and the religion revealed by God in the Holy Scriptures / by Jonath. Edwards.	Edwards, Jonathan, 1629-1712.	1693 (1693)	Wing E217; ESTC R24310	65,484	89

to the good nature of his Creatures that they yield any obedience to his commands Perhaps you will say there may be other obligations besides those of punishment which men may be under to practise their duty such as are those of Honour and Gratitude and the strong tye of Reason which will bind a man to comply with his Duty if there were no other motive to it but this that to do otherwise will be to act unsuitably to the dignity of his nature All this may be fine in speculation but will signifie little when reduced to practice the generality of men being governed by sense the motions of which are too headstrong and furious to be curbed by the bare commands of reason when they are not enforced with the fear of punishment the voice of which will be as feeble as that of old Eli to his rebellious Sons far too weak to master their violence and therefore that Frantick Woman that some have talked of who brought fire in one hand to burn up Paradise and water in the other to quench the flames of Hell if she had succeeded in her design instead of promoting would have extinguished all virtue and soon have rooted it out of the world In short to summ up what hath been said upon this subject if there be no Justice naturally in God there might have bin no Providence and if no providence then men might have bin left to the conduct of their own giddy and unruly passions which would soon break through the restraints of reason and when men were thus left to the government of Lust and Sense the unavoidable consequence of this must have bin that the world would have bin filled with Blood and Murders with Impurity and Vncleanness with Theft and Rapine with Injustice and Oppression and the gentle race of men would soon have become worse then the worst of wild Beasts preying upon and devouring one another And to suppose that God could be unconcerned at all this as if there be no Justice in him which enclines him to punish such wickedness he might be is to have such a notion of God as it is reported Lewis the 11 th of France had of his Leaden God which he carried about him and when he had caused any man to be Murder'd or done the like mischief he would take it into his hands and kiss it and beg pardon and then all was well again and he himself became immediately safe if not innocent In short at this rate we should not dishonour God if we so conceived of him as of one who did not necessarily act according to the eternal and unalterable Rules of Wisdom Goodness and Righteousness that he might be a God not of Order but Confusion which is not only an Impious but a Blasphemous assertion 2 dly My second reason why I account this Position of Socinus about Gods justice to be false and dangerous is because it takes away the distinction between Laws Positive and Natural which distinction hath hitherto bin looked upon not only to be true but sacred sorasmuch as the contrary would open a Gap to all manner of impiety and wickedness Now positive Laws are accounted such as owe their original only to Gods free will and pleasure and therefore as they cannot be known so they cannot oblige any but those to whom he hath made such a declaration and discovery of his pleasure Natural Laws are those which are discovered by the light of nature as being the necessary result of our Constitution and that relation which we hear to God as rational Creatures many of which tho revealed in Scripture yet in themselves are obligatory antecedent to any such revelation Now these Laws do necessarily suppose Justice in God without which they would be insignificant for tho natural Laws owe their Original to the holyness of God as being but a transcript of those essential Rules of righteousness which make up his nature yet all their force and obligation without which they are not properly Laws results from his Justice that is from the fear of punishment which the Law threatens and Justice inflicts without which they would be perfectly insignificant From which by a just and necessary consequence it unavoidably follows that if their be natural Laws there must be Justice naturally in God so on the other hand if there be no Justice there can be no Laws of nature forasmuch as without the former they can have neither Force nor Obligation nor consequently have the formal reason of Laws 3 dly And Lastly This Opinion of Socin is both false and Impious because it tends to overthrow all natural Religion by supplanting that which is the chief if not the only support of it in the world and that is the fear of God For take away his Justice as this Socinian hypothesis doth and then you have left nothing in him which a man governed by the light of nature need to fear not his unity nor his eternity nor immensity not his holyness nor his goodness to be sure nor lastly his power which in conjunction with the former as it necessarily is in God is as harmless and innocent as either of the former Attributes when it is not moved nor excited by a just displeasure and indignation Imagine therefore a Socinian were to discourse a Pagan I would fain know how upon this principle he could convince him that it were his Duty to worship God and to live a virtuous life he might tell him indeed and tell him with great truth that the Divine nature and perfections are in themselves a just ground of Esteem and Adoration That virtue hath many and those powerful though invisible charms as being both agreeable to our Reason and at the same time serving to promote our wellfare and happiness in this world yet all this would lay him under no obligation to do that which otherwise would be highly reasonable and fitting to be done suppose it be honest suppose it rational suppose it his Interest yet he is left to his liberty and may and no doubt will do what he pleases for all that he may act indeed like a fool and a Brute yet he is guilty of no sin in the mean time for where there is no Justice there can be no fear of punishment where there is no punishment there is no obligation nor consequently Law and where there is no Law there can be no transgression So that tho his reason may upbraid him with the folly his Conscience in this case would never check him for the guilt of his vices which if the Laws of his Country did not take some care to prevent he might securely practice without any fear of Gods displeasure In short notwithstanding all the fine discourses about the beauty and amiableness of religion and virtue the inclinations of sense would soon bear down the dictates of Reason and the slightest temptations would prove too strong for these very speculations and as to the generality the

conclusion which they would draw from this principle would be Let us eat and drink for to morrow we dye and after death comes no reckoning or account Come on let us enjoy the good things that are present and let us speedily use the Creatures like as in youth Let us fill our selves with costly Oyntments and let no flower of the spring pass by us Let us crown our selves with Rose-buds before they are withered Let none of us go without his part of our voluptuousness Let us leave tokens of our joyfulness in every place for this is our portion and our Lot is this Wisd 2. ver 6 7 8. But tho this notion overturns all natural Religion yet it is it self effectually overthrown by the dictates of natural Conscience which are an unanswerable proof both of the existence and the Justice of God for we must know that Conscience is something more than bare Reason for Reason may direct but Conscience will prescribe Reason gives us a Rule for the government of our actions Conscience passes that Rule into a Law gives it its force and obligation The prescribing of a Law is the act of a Superior and no man is properly Superior to himself and consequently no man can by his own act peremptorily oblige himself except that act be enforced by some other and higher obligation And therefore Conscience is not bare Reason but reason as it is Gods Vicegerent cloathed with his Authority armed with his Justice and therefore in a more Imperious way it commands our obedience not only perswading us to our duty but threatning for the neglect of it it puts on a Majestick Aire tells us this must be done or refuse it at your peril indeed it executes the office and sustains the person of a Legislator a Witness and a Judge first prescribes a Law then accuses for our disobedience and lastly solemnly arraigns the Sinner for his guilt and then passes sentence upon him So that these actions of Conscience and the Tribunal that God hath erected there are one of the clearest and most uncontrolled proofs of a future Judgement of which the former are a kind of Anticipation And indeed if we look back to former times and consult the History of Ages and Countries the most ignorant and barbarous we shall find that as the Light of Nature hath directed them to the belief and acknowledgement of a God so one of the earliest notions that arose in their minds when they have thought of him hath bin the Apprehension of his Justice of which among other things the numerous tho many of them Impious and Ridiculous rites which they made use of to appease the anger of their incensed Deities are an irrefragable Argument And this apprehension of divine Justice was as one of the principal causes so one of the chiefest if not the only support of natural Religion in the world Now to apply this to our present purpose and to bring the parts of our argument a little closer together If men by the light of nature could discover this Attribute of Justice in God it must unavoidably follow that Justice in him is natural for the light of nature can discover nothing in God but what is so whatever is the effect of Gods meer pleasure and the result of his free will can never be known but by Revelation and it is impossible it should be otherwise discovered except we should suppose men to be Omniscient and that they may know more of God than they can of one another For what man knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of man that is within him 1 Cor. 2. 11. so much less can any man discern the things of God but the spirit of God He indeed searches the deep things of God such as are the results of his free pleasure and the counsel of his will which lay hidden in the breast of God and must for ever have done so had not he who lay in the bosom of his Father revealed them unto us and therefore if justice were as the Socinians tell us the effect only of Gods free will it must have lain undiscovered to the Gentile world to whom God vouchsafed no revelation of his will which yet is contrary to the account which the Histories of all times and ages have given us of this matter from whence it is evident that the belief of Gods Justice among men is coeval with that of their being written in the same Characters and engraven by the same Hand that implanted the notion of a God in the minds of men and if so then the same hand that defaces the notion of Gods Justice must at the same time and for the same reason erase the belief of his existence out of the Souls of men and I doubt not if the Socinians had lived in those days by this Hypothesis of theirs they would have been extreamly serviceable to Theodorus Diagoras Democritus and Epicurus in the design they were engaged in of rooting the belief of a God and Religion out of the world for they might have told men not only with great plausibility but truth if this opinion were true that all those accusations of Conscience and anxieties of Mind which were occasioned by the belief and dread of divine Justice were the effect only of fancy and delusion and did owe their Original not to a divine Impress but to the Craft and Contrivance of Priests and Polititians who instilled into the minds of weak and unwary men the vain fears of invisible powers representing them armed with Thunder and with the Sword of Justice in their hands whereas really there was no such thing But all this they did to keep the world in awe and thereby to compass the designs of their interest and ambition What further design Socinus himself might have or whether he had any other design by advancing this Opinion than the overturning that great Article of our faith concerning the satisfaction of Christ I shall not positively determine Only this I cannot but acquaint the Reader with which hath bin long since observed likewise by others that Socinus and his followers in all their books and disputations have made it their business chiefly to cavil and make exceptions to their adversaries not careing what became of Religion so that they might with any colour avoid the Arguments with which they were pressed as is in some measure made evident by several passages which we have quoted out of their writings in the foregoing discourse And I have this further to add that as Socinus by denying the divinity and satisfaction of Christ hath plainly overturned the foundation upon which the Christian Church and Religion have bin built so by this assertion about Gods justice and by several others dispersed and slily insinuated through his writings he hath given a shrewd blow to all Religion whatsoever whether natural or revealed so that an unwary Reader by perusing his writings may find himself an Atheist before he well perceives