also; "Parentes pueros nos pædagogo tradiderunt, qui ubique observaret ne læderemur; Deus autem clam viros insitæ conscientiæ custodiendos tradidit; quæ quidem custodia nequaquam contemnenda est;" "As our parents have delivered us to a guardian, who did watch lest we did or suffered mischief; so hath God committed us to the custody of our conscience that is planted within us: and this custody is at no hand to be neglected." 9. The binding to duty is so an effect of conscience, that it cannot be separated from it; but the binding to punishment is an act of conscience also as it is a judge, and is intended to affright a sinner, and to punish him: but it is such a punishment as is the beginning of hell-torments, and unless the wound be cured, will never end till eternity itself shall go into a grave. Illo nocens se damnat quo peccat dies. “The same day that a man sins, on the same day he is condemned; and when Menelaus in the tragedy did ask, Τί χρῆμα πάσχει; ; τίς σ' ἀπόλλυσιν νόσος ; What disease killed poor Orestes? he was answered, His disease was nothing but an evil conscience; he had done vile things, and had an amazed spirit that distracted him, and so he died. 'Curas ultrices' Virgil' calls the wounds of an evil conscience, revenging cares.'-" Nihil est miserius quam animus hominis conscius," said he in the comedy; "Nothing is more miserable than an evil conscience" and the being pained with it is called τῷ συνειδότι ἀπάγχεσθαι, 'to be choked or strangled' with an evil conscience, by St. Chrysostom, who, in his twenty-second homily upon the First Epistle to the Corinthians, speaks much and excellently to the same purpose: and there are some that fancy this was the cause of Judas's death; the horrors of his conscience were such, that his spirits were confounded, and restless, and uneasy; and striving to go from their prison, stopped at the gates of emanation, and stifled him. It did that, or as bad; it either choked him, or brought him to a halter, as it hath Apud Publium. h Euripid. Orest. 389.- Priestley's edition, vol. 1. p. 265. i Eu. 6. 224 k Plautus. done many besides him. And although I may truly say, as he did, Non mihi si linguæ centum Omnia pœnarum percurrere nomina possem', No tongue is able to express the evils which are felt by a troubled conscience, or a wounded spirit; yet the heads of them are visible and notorious to all men. 10. (1.) The first is that which Nazianzen calls Tàs èv auToïs τοῖς δεινοῖς ἐξαγορεύσεις, ' accusations and vexings of a man when he is in misery;' then when he needs most comfort, he shall by his evil conscience be most disquieted. A sickness awakes a dull sleeping conscience, and when it is awakened it will make that the man shall not sleep. So AntiochusTM when his lieutenant Lysias was beaten by the Jews, he fell sick with grief, and then his conscience upbraided him; "but now" (said he) "I remember the evils that I did at Jerusalem; quia invenerunt me mala ista' (so the Latin Bible reads it); 'because those evils now have found me out.' For when a man is prosperous, it is easy for him to stop the mouth of conscience, to bribe it or abuse it, to fill it with noise, and to divert it with business, to outvie it with temporal gaieties, or to be flattered into weak opinions and sentences: but when a man is smitten of God, and divested of all the outsides and hypocrisies of sin, and that conscience is disentangled from its fetters and foolish pretensions, then it speaks its own sense, it ever speaks loudest when the man is poor, or sick, or miserable. This was well explicated by St. Ambrose; "Dum sumus in quadam delinquendi libidine, nebulis quibusdam conscientiæ mens obducitur, ne videat eorum, quæ concupiscit, deformitatem: sed cum omnis nebula transierit, gravia tormenta exercentur in quodam male conscii secretario." "A man is sometimes so surprised with the false fires and glarings of temptation, that he cannot see the secret turpitude and deformity. But when the cloud and vail are off, then comes the tormentor from within :" acuuntque metum mortalibus ægris, Si quando letum horrificum morbosque Deum Rex Then the calamity swells, and conscience increases the trou 1 Æn. 6. m Macc. vi. 12. n Eneid. 12. 852 ble, when God sends war, or sickness, or death. It was Saul's case: when he lost that fatal battle in which the ark was taken, he called to the Amalekite, " Sta super me et interfice me,' ""Fall upon me and slay me;" "Quoniam tenent me angustiæ," "I am in a great strait."-He was indeed; for his son was slain, and his army routed, and his enemies were round about: but then conscience stepped in, and told him of the evil that he had done in causing fourscore of the Lord's priests to be slain; and therefore Abulensis reads the words thus, "Fall upon me and slay me," "Quoniam tenent me oræ vestimenti sacerdotalis," "I am entangled in the fringes of the priests' garments."—" Videbatur sibi Saul, quod propinquus morti videret sacerdotes Dei accusantes eum in judicio coram Deo:" "He thought he saw the priests of the Lord accusing him before God."-And this hath been an old opinion of the world, that, in the days of their calamity, wicked persons are accused by those whom they have injured Not much unlike to which is that of Plato, describing the torments of wicked souls: Βοῶσί τε καὶ καλοῦσιν, οἱ μὲν οὓς ἀπέκτειναν, οἱ δὲ, οὓς ὕβρισαν καλέσαντες δ ̓ ἱκετεύουσι τοὺς ἠδικημένους δοῦναι σφισι συγγνώμην, “ They roar and cry out; some calling on them whom they killed, some on those they have calumniated; and calling they pray them whom they have injured, to give them pardono." Then every bush is a wild beast, and every shadow is a ghost, and every glow-worm is a dead man's candle, and every lantern is a spirit. pallidumque visa Matris lampade respicis Neronem P. When Nero was distressed, he saw his mother's taper, and grew pale with it. 11. (2.) The second effect is shame, which conscience never fails to inflict secretly, there being a secret turpitude and baseness in sin, which cannot be better expressed than by its opposition and contradiction to conscience. Conscience when it is right, makes a man bold; "Qui ambulat simpliciter, ambulat confidenter;"" He that walks honestly, walks confidently," because he hath innocence and he hath reason on • Bp. Taylor seems to have quoted from memory: the original passage runs thus ; Ενταῦθα βοῶσί τε, καὶ καλοῦσιν, οἱ μὲν οὓς ἀπέκτειναν, οἱ δὲ, οὓς ὕβρισαν· καλέσαντες δ ̓ ἱκετεύουσι, καὶ δέονται, ἐᾶσαι σφᾶς ἐκβῆναι εἰς τὴν λίμνην, καὶ δέξασθαι. Fischer, p. 481, (J. R. P.) P Statius, Sylv. 2. 7. 118. Bipont. p. 61. his side. But he that sins, sins against reason, in which the honour and the nobleness of a man consist; and therefore shame must needs come in the destitution of them. For as by reason men naturally rule, so when they are fallen from it, unless by some accidental courages they be supported, they fall into the state of slaves and sneaking people. And upon this account it was that Plato said, "Si scirem Deos mihi condonaturos, et homines ignoraturos, adhuc peccare erubescerem propter solam peccati turpitudinem :" "If I were sure God would pardon me, and men would not know my sin, yet I should be ashamed to sin, because of its essential baseness."-The mistresses of our vile affections are so ugly we cannot endure to kiss them but through a veil, either the veil of excuse, or pretence, or darkness; something to hide their ugliness; and yet even these also are so thin that the filthiness and shame are not hid. "Bona conscientia turbam advocat, mala autem in solitudine anxia atque solicita est," said Seneca. An evil conscience is ashamed of light, and afraid of darkness; and therefore nothing can secure it. But being ashamed before judges, and assemblies, it flies from them into solitudes; and when it is there, the shame is changed into fear, and therefore from thence it runs abroad into societies of merry criminals, and drinking sanctuaries; which is nothing but a shutting the eyes, and hiding the head, while the body is exposed to a more certain danger. It cannot be avoided: it was and is and will eternally be true, "Perjurii pœna divina exitium; humana dedecus P." Which St. Paul perfectly renders, "the things whereof ye are now ashamed; the end of those things is death." Death is the punishment which God inflicts, and shame is that which comes from man. 12. (3). There is another effect which cannot be well told by him that feels it, or by him that sees it, what it is: because it is a thing without limit and without order. It is a distraction of mind, indeterminate, divided thoughts, flying every thing, and pursuing nothing. It was the case of Nebuchadnezzar, οἱ διαλογισμοὶ αὑτοῦ διετάρασσον αὐτὸν, “ his thoughts troubled him' "Varios vultus, disparilesque sensus'," like the sophisters who in their pursuit of vain-glory P Cicero de Legib. lib. 2. c. ix. Wagner, p. 55. r A. Gell. lib. 5. c. 1. 4 Rom. vi. 21. displeased the people, and were hissed from their pulpits; nothing could amaze them more; they were troubled like men of a disturbed conscience. The reason is, they are fallen into an evil condition, which they did not expect; they are abused in their hopes, they are fallen into a sad state of things, but they know not what it is, nor where they are, nor whither it will bear them, nor how to get out of it. This indeed is commonly the first part of the great evil; shame goes along with the sin, in the very acting it, but as soon as it is acted, then begins this confusion; nefas tandem incipiunt sentire, peractis Criminibus they thought of nothing but pleasure before; but as soon as they have finished, then they begin to taste the wormwood and the coloquintida: "perfecto demum scelere, magnitudo ejus intellecta est," said Tacitus. While they were doing it, they thought it little, or they thought it none, because their fancy and their passion ruled; but when that is satisfied and burst with a filthy plethory, then they understand how great their sin is, but are distracted in their thoughts, for they understand not how great their calamity shall be. Occultum quatiente animo tortore flagellumt, the secret tormentor shakes the mind, and dissolves it into indiscrimination and confusion. The man is like one taken in a lie, or surprised in a shameful act of lust, or theft; at first he knows not what to say, or think, or do, and his spirits huddle together, and fain would go somewhere, but they know not whither, and do something, but they know not what. 13. This confusion and first amazement of the conscience in some vile natures, and baser persons, proceeds to impudence, and hardness of face. frontemque à crimine sumunt. When they are discovered, they rub their foreheads hard, and consider it cannot be worse, and therefore in their way they make the best of it; that is, they will not submit to the judg ment of conscience, nor suffer her infliction, but take the for• Annal. 14. 10. Ruperti, p. 369. r Juv. 13. 239. Ruperti. t Juv. 13. 195. |