Conscience

1. The necessity that lies upon us, being all guilty before God, to seek after our justification, and the pardon of our sins by Christ. That it may sink the deeper into your minds, I shall do it in this scheme or method:—First, A reasonable nature implies a conscience; a conscience implies a law; a law implies a sanction; a sanction implies a judge, and a judgment-day (when all shall be called to account for breaking the law); and this judgment-day infers a condemnation upon all man kind unavoidably, unless the Lord will compromise the matter, and find out some way in the chancery of the gospel wherein we may be relieved. This way God hath found out in Christ, and being brought about by such a mysterious contrivance, we ought to be deeply and thankfully apprehensive of it, and humbly and broken-heartedly to
quit the one covenant, and accept of the grace provided for us in the other.

[1.] A reasonable nature implies a conscience; for man can reflect upon his own actions, and hath that in him to acquit or condemn him accordingly as he doth good or evil, 1 John iii. 20, 21. Conscience is nothing but the judgment a man makes upon his actions morally considered, the good or the evil, the rectitude or obliquity, that is in them with respect to rewards or punishment. As a man acts, so he is a party; but as he reviews and censures his actions, so he is a judge. Let us take notice only of the condemning part, for that is proper to our case. After the fact, the force of conscience is usually felt more than before or in the fact; because before, through the treachery of the senses, and the revolt of the passions, the judgment of reason is not so clear. I say, our passions and affections raise clouds and mists which darken the mind, and do incline the will by a pleasing violence; but after the evil action is done, when the affection ceaseth, then guilt flasheth in the face of conscience. As Judas, whose heart lay asleep all the while he was going on in his villainy, but afterwards it fell upon him. Thou hast ‘sinned in betraying innocent blood.’ When the affections are satisfied, and give place to reason, that was before condemned, and reason takes the throne again, it hath the more force to affect us with grief and fear, whilst it strikes through the heart of a man with a sharp sentence of reproof for obeying appetite before reason. Now this conscience of sin may be choked and smothered for a while, but the flame will break forth, and our hidden fears are easily revived and awakened, except we get our pardon and discharge. A reasonable nature implies a conscience.

[2.] A conscience implies a law, by which good and evil are distinguished; for if we make conscience of anything, it must be by virtue of some law or obligation from God, who is our maker and governor, and unto whom we are accountable, and whose authority giveth a force and warrant to the warnings and checks of conscience, without which they would be weak and ineffectual, and all the hopes and fears they stir up in us would be vain fancies and fond surmises. I need not insist upon this, a conscience implies a law. The heathens had a law, because they had a conscience: Rom. ii. 15, ‘Which show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing, or else excusing one another.’ They have a conscience doth accuse or excuse, doth require according to the tenor of the law. So when the apostle speaks of those stings of conscience that are revived in us by the approach of death, he saith, 1 Cor. xv. 56, ‘The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law.’ Those stings which men feel in a death-threatening sickness, are not the fruits of their disease, but, justified by the highest reason; they come from a sense of sin y and this sense is strengthened and increased in us by the law of God, from whence conscience receives all its force.

[3.] A law implies a sanction, or a confirmation by penalties and rewards; for otherwise it is but an arbitrary rule or direction, which we might slight or disregard without any great loss or danger. No; the law is armed with a dreadful curse against all those that disobey
it. There is no dallying with God, he hath set life and death before us; life and good, death and evil, Deut. xxx. 15. Now the precept, that is the rule of our duty, and the sanction is the rule of God’s process, what God will do, or might do, and what we have deserved should be done to us. The one shows what is due from us to God, and the other what may justly be expected at God’s hands; therefore, before the penalty be executed, it concerns us to get a pardon. The scripture represents God as ‘angry with the wicked every day,’ standing continually with his bow ready, with his arrow upon the string, as ready to let fly, with his sword not only drawn but whetted, as if he were just about to strike, if we turn not, Ps. vii. 11-13.

[4.] A sanction implies a judge, who will take cognisance of the keeping or breaking of this law; for otherwise the sanction or penalty were but a vain scarecrow, if there were no person to look after it. God, that is our maker and governor, is our judge. Would he appoint penalties for the breach of his law, and never reckon with us for our offences, is a thought so unreasonable, so much against the sense of conscience, against God’s daily providence, against scripture, which everywhere (in order to this, to quicken us to seek forgiveness of sins) represents God as a judge. Conscience is afraid of an invisible judge, who will call us to account for what we have done. The apostle tells us, Rom. i. 32, the heathen ‘knew the judgment of God, and that they that have done such things as they have done are worthy of death.’ And providence shows us there is such a judge that looks after the keeping and breaking of his law, hath owned every part of it from heaven by the judgments he executes: Rom. i. 18, ‘The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men;’ hath owned either table, by punishing sometimes the ungodliness, and some times the unrighteousness of the world; nay, every notable breach by way of omission or commission. The apostle saith, ‘every transgression,’ and ‘every disobedience.’ These two words signify sins of omission or commission: it hath been punished, and God hath owned his law, that it is a firm authentic rule. And the scripture also usually makes use of this notion or argument of a judge to quicken us to look after the pardon of our sins: Acts x. 42, 43, ‘And he hath commanded us to preach and testify to the people, that it is he that was ordained of God to be the judge of the quick and dead. To him give all the prophets witness, that through his name whosoever believeth in him shall receive remission of sins.’ So Acts iii. 19-21. Surely we that are to appear before the bar of an impartial judge, being so obnoxious to him for the breach of his holy law, what have we to do but to make supplication to our judge, and prevent execution by a submissive asking of a pardon, and accepting the grace God hath provided?

[5.] A judge implies a judgment-day, or some time when his justice must have a solemn trial, when he will reckon with the lapsed world. He reckons sometimes with nations now, for ungodliness and unrighteousness, by wars, and pestilence, and famine. He reckons with particular persons at their death, and when their work is done he pays them their wages: Heb. ix. 27, ‘It is appointed for all men once to die, and after that the judgment.’ But there is a more general and final judgment, when his justice must have a solemn trial, which is in
part evident in nature; for the apostles did slide in the Christian doctrine mostly by this means into the hearts of those to whom they preached: Acts xxiv. 25, ‘He reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come.’ The particularity of it belongs to the gospel revelation, but nature hath some kind of sense of it in itself, and they are urged to repent, ‘because God hath appointed a day wherein he will judge the world in righteousness, by the man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead,’ Acts xvii. 31. God judgeth the world in patience now, but then in righteousness, when all things shall be reviewed, and everything restored; virtue to its public honour, and vice to its due shame.