scrupulous, but it can never be presumptuous; it may hinder us from using the liberty we have, but it is too modest to lead us into any excess; it is liable to fear, but never to rashness and impudent undertakings: "For this is thank-worthy, if a man for conscience towards God, endure grief, suffering wrongfully," says St Peter, (1 Peter ii, 19.) But conscience never carried a man into actions for which he is justly to suffer that is true tenderness of conscience, which is tender of other men's reputation, shy and wary what they think of others, and not that which, out of tenderness to itself, cares not how it wrongs and violates its neighbours. Conscience is the meekest, humblest thing that can be conceived of; and when we find any proud thoughts to arise within us, such as exalt and magnify ourselves, and depress the reputation of our neighbour; when we have any unpeaceable inclination to disturb the quiet of the state, or the repose of those who live about us; we may be as sure that those suggestions do not proceed from conscience, as that the lusts of the flesh do not proceed from the warmth of the spirit.

"The tree is known by the fruit, a good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit;" and conscience is best known by the effects; if the product be wrath, malice, pride, and contention, we may swear that conscience is not the mother of those children,

which can produce nothing but love, humility and peace; and men have taken too much pains to entitle her to the other unnatural issue. I know not how it comes to pass, except it be from a wanton affectation of the impropriety of speech, that men find out epithets for conscience, which may entitle it to as many reproaches as men think fit to charge it with: They will have an erroneous conscience, which no doubt will contribute to as many evil actions as the heart or hand of man can be guilty of; and they might as well have called it an impious conscience; when in truth, if it be either impious or erroneous, it ceaseth to be conscience; it is not consistent with any of those destructive epithets, nor receives any ornament from the best which can be annexed to it. Conscience implies goodness and piety, as much as if you call it good and pious. The luxuriant wit of the school-men and the confident fancy of ignorant preachers has so disguised it, that all the extravagancies of a light or a sick brain, and the results of the most corrupt heart, are called the effects of conscience and to make it the better understood, the conscience shall be called erroneous, or corrupt, or tender, as they have a mind to support or condemn those effects. So that, in truth, they have made conscience a disease fit to be entrusted to the care of the physician every spring and fall, and

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he is most like to reform and regulate the operation of it. And if the madness and folly of men be not in a short time reformed, it will be fitter to be confined as a term in physic and in law, than to be used or applied to religion or salvation. Let apothecaries be guided by it in their bills, and merchants in their bargains, and lawyers in managing their causes; in all which cases it may be waited upon by the epithets they think fit to annex to it; it is in great danger to be robbed of the integrity in which it was created, and will not have purity enough to carry men to heaven, or to chuse the way thither. It were to be wished, that some pains were taken to purge away that dross, which want of understanding, or want of honesty, have annexed to it, that so it may prove a good guide; or that that varnish may be taken from it, which the artifices of ill men have disfigured it with, that it be no longer the most desperate and dangerous seducer: lest conscience of gratitude, for civilities and obligations received, dispose women to be unchaste; and conscience of discourtesies and injuries done, or intended to be done, provoke men to revenge; and no villainy that ever entered into the heart of man, but will pretend to be ushered thither by conscience. If it cannot be vindicated from these impure and impious claims, it is pity but it should be expunged out of all dis

courses of religion and honesty, and never mentioned as relating to Christianity: let it be assigned and appropriated to the politicians, to cover their reason of state with, and to disguise" all treaties between princes with such expressions, that they be no longer bound by these obligations than they find the observation of them to be for their benefit or convenience; let it be applied only to the cheats and cozenings of this world; to the deceiving of women in marriages; to the over-reaching heirs in mortgages and purchases; but let it never be mentioned in order to our salvation in the next world, or as if it could advance our claim to the kingdom of heaven.

Solomon was the more inexcusable for departing from it, by his knowing what the calm and ease and tranquillity of it was; and he could not express it better than when he says, that "a good conscience is a continual feast." Now there can be no feast where there is not amity, and peace and quiet; a froward, wayward, proud, and quarrelling conscience, can never be a feast, nor a good guest at a feast; therefore it cannot be a good conscience: anger and ill words break up any feast; for mirth, that is of the essence of a feast, and a great part of the good cheer, is banished by any ill humour that appears. It is not the quantity of the meat, but the cheerfulness of the guests, which

makes the feast; it was only at the feast of the Centaurs, where they ate with one hand, and had their drawn swords in the other; where there is no peace, there can be no feast. Charity and tenderness is a principal ingredient into this feast: the conscience cannot be too tender, too apprehensive of angrying any man, of grieving any man; the feast is the more decently carried on never interrupted by this tenderness. But if it be tender at some times, scrupulous to some purposes, is startled to do somewhat against which it hath no objection, but that it is not absolutely necessary to be done, and at other times is so rough and boisterous, that it leaps over all bounds, and rushes into actions dishonest and unwarrantable, neither the tenderness or the presumption hath the least derivation from conscience: and a man in a deep consumption of the lungs can as well run a race, as a tender conscience can lead any man into an action contrary to virtue and piety. It is possible that the frequent appeals that are made upon several occasions to the consciences of ill men, do in truth increase their love of wickedness; that when they are told that their own consciences cannot but accuse them of the ill they do, and they feel no such check or controul in themselves, they believe from thence that they do nothing amiss, and so take new courage to prosecute the career