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abilities of health and leisure now at last to finish it: but I should have been much longer, if God had not, by the piety of one of his servants, provided for me a comfortable retirement and opportunity of leisure which if I have improved to God's glory, or to the comfort and institution of any one, he and I both have our ends, and God will have his glory; and that is a good conclusion, and to that I humbly dedicate my book.

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THE

RULE OF CONSCIENCE.

BOOK I.

OF CONSCIENCE, THE KINDS OF IT, AND THE GENERAL RULES OF CONDUCTING THEM.

CHAP. I.

THE RULE OF CONSCIENCE IN GENERAL.

RULE I.

Conscience is the Mind of a Man governed by a Rule, and measured by the Proportions of Good and Evil, in Order to Practice; viz. to conduct all our Relations, and all our Intercourse, between God, our Neighbours, and ourselves: that is, in all moral Actions.

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1. GOD governs the world by several attributes and emanations from himself. The nature of things is supported by his power, the events of things are ordered by his providence, and the actions of reasonable creatures are governed by laws, and these laws are put into a man's soul or mind as into a treasury or repository: some in his very nature, some by after-actions, by education and positive sanction, by learning and custom; so that it was well said of St. Bernard ; Conscientia candor est lucis æternæ, et speculum sine macula Dei Majestatis, et imago bonitatis illius: Conscience is the brightness and splendour of the eternal light, a spotless mirror of the Divine Majesty, and the image of the goodness of God.' It is higher which Tatianus said of conscience; Móvov εivaι avveídnow Deòv, Conscience is God unto us;' which saying he had from Menander,

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Βροτοῖς ἅπασι συνείδησις Θεὸς,

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and it had in it this truth, that God, who is every where in

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several manners, hath the appellative of his own attributes and effects in the several manners of his presence.

Jupiter est quodcunque vides, quocunque moverish.

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2. That providence which governs all the world, is nothing else but God present by his providence: and God is in our hearts by his laws: he rules in us by his substitute, our conscience. God sits there and gives us laws; and as God said to Moses, "I have made thee a god to Pharaoh," that is, to give him laws, and to minister in the execution of those laws, and to inflict angry sentences upon him; so hath God done to us. He hath given us conscience to be in God's stead to us, to give us laws, and to exact obedience to those laws, to punish them that prevaricate, and to reward the obedient. And therefore conscience is called οἰκεῖος φύλαξ, ἔνοικος Θεὸς, ἐπίτοπος δαίμων, ' the household guardian,” the domestic god,'' the spirit or angel of the place:' and when we call, God to witness, we only mean, that our conscience is right, and that God and God's vicar, our conscience, knows it. So Lactantius: Meminerit Deum se habere testem, id est, ut ego arbitror, mentem suam, qua nihil homini dedit Deus ipse divinius: Let him remember that he hath God for his witness, that is, as I suppose, his mind; than which God hath given to man nothing that is more divine.'-In sum, it is the image of God: and as in the mysterious Trinity, we adore the will, memory, and understanding,-and theology contemplates three persons in the analogies, proportions, and correspondences, of them: so in this also we see plainly that conscience is that likeness of God, in which he was pleased to make man. For although conscience be primarily founded in the understanding, as it is the lawgiver, and dictator and the rule and dominion of conscience 'fundatur in intellectu,' is established in the understanding part;' yet it is also memory, when it accuses or excuses, when it makes joyful and sorrowful; and there is in it some mixture of will, as I shall discourse in the sequel; so that conscience is a result of all, of understanding, will, and memory.

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3. But these high and great expressions are better in the spirit than in the letter; they have in them something of in

h Lucan, ix. 580. Oudendorp. p. 720.
Lib. 6. de Vero Cultu. cap. 24.

i Exod. vii. 1.

stitution, and something of design, they tellus that conscience is a guard and a guide, a rule and a law set over us by. God, and they are spoken to make us afraid to sin against our conscience, because by so doing we sin against God; he having put a double bridle upon us, society and solitude, that is, company and ourselves, or rather, God and man; it being now impossible for us to sin in any circumstances, but we shall have a reprover: ἵνα μήτε μόνωσις ἐπεγείρῃ σε πρὸς τὸ μὴ πρέπον, μήτε κοινωνία εὐαπολογητόν σοι ποιήσῃ τὴν ἁμαρτ Tíav, as Hierocles' said well; that neither company may give countenance or excuseto sin, or solitariness may give confidence or warranty; for as we are ashamed to sin in company, so we ought to fear our conscience, which is God's watchman and intelligencer.

4. To which purpose it was soberly spoken of TertullianTM, "Conscientia optima testis Divinitatis;' Our conscience is the best argument in the world to prove there is a God :' for conscience is God's deputy; and the inferior must suppose a superior; and God and our conscience are like relative terms, it not being imaginable why some persons in some cases should be amazed and troubled in their minds for their having done a secret turpitude, or cruelty; but that conscience is present with a message from God, and the men feel inward causes of fear, when they are secure from without: that is, they are forced to fear God, when they are safe from men. And it is impossible that any man should be an atheist, if he have any conscience: and for this reason it is, there have been so few atheists in the world, because it is so hard for men to lose their conscience wholly.

5. Quest. Some dispute whether it be possible or no for any man to be totally without conscience. Tertullian's sentence in this article is this: Potest obumbrari, quia non est Deus extingui non potest, quia à Deo est: It is not God, and therefore may be clouded: but it is from God, and therefore cannot be destroyed.'-But I know a man may wholly lose the use of his reason; some men are mad, and some are natural fools, and some are sots, and stupid; such men as these lose their conscience, as they lose their reason: and as some madmen may have a fancy that there is no sun; so some fools may say there is no God: and as they can be! Needham, p. 62, at the bottom.

m Lib. de Testimon. Animæ.

lieve that, so they can lose their conscience, and believe this. But as he that hath reason or his eyes, cannot deny but there is such a thing as the sun, so neither can he that hath conscience, deny there is a God. For as the sun is present by his light which we see daily, so is God by our conscience which we feel continually: we feel one as certainly as the other.

6. (1.) But it is to be observed, that conscience is sometimes taken for the practical intellective faculty; so we say, The law of nature, and the fear of God, are written in the conscience of every man.

(2.) Sometimes it is taken for the habitual persuasion and belief of the principles written there; so we say, He is a good man, and makes conscience of his ways. And thus we also say, and it is true, that a wicked person is of a profligate and 'lost conscience;' he hath no conscience' in him. That is, he hath lost the habit, or that usual persuasion and recourse to conscience, by which good men govern their actions.

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(3.) Or the word conscience is used effectively, for any single operation and action of conscience: so we speak of particulars, I make a conscience of taking up arms in this cause.' Of the first and last acception of the word 'conscience' there is no doubt; for the last may, and the first can never, be lost but for the second, it may be lost more or less, as any other habit can: though this with more difficulty than any thing else, because it is founded so immediately in nature, and is so exercised in all the actions and intercourses of our life, and is so assisted by the grace of God, that it is next to impossible to lose the habit entirely; and that faculty that shall to eternal ages do the offices which are the last, and such as suppose some preceding actions, I mean, to tor ment and afflict them for not having obeyed the former act of dictate and command, cannot be supposed to die in the principle, when it shall be eternal in the emanation; for the worm shall never die.

For, that men do things against their conscience, is no otherwise than as they do things against their reason; but a man may as well cease to be a man, as to be wholly without conscience. For the drunkard will be sober, and his conscience will be awake next morning: this is a perpetual pulse, and though it may be interrupted, yet if the man be alive, it will beat before he dies; and so long as we believe

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