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This is an Encroaching Conscience, which makes that an enclosure, that God hath left common; and rigorously exacts from us, what God hath permitted as indifferent. It is a very sad judgment, to be given up to the domineering impositions of a Scrupulous Conscience. Such a conscience as this is will certainly make much more sin, than ever the Law made: for, whatever we do against the commands of conscience is sin, though it be not immediately and directly against the commands of God: Rom. xiv. 23. Now some there are, who do so needlessly pin and coop up themselves, that they cannot stir, nor moderately use that lawful liberty which God hath indulged them, but presently they are entangled in sin, because of the imperious prohibitions of their own consciences.

2. Sometimes, Ignorance makes conscience licentious; indulging itself in those actions, that the Law of God condemns; making it daringly presumptuous.

And this is a quite contrary extreme; and yet, as opposite as these are, we oftentimes find them joined together in the same persons; the same persons, that have a needlessly Scrupulous Conscience, have also a daringly Presumptuous Conscience: and this proceeds from an ignorance of their due bounds and limits. Who, ordinarily, so profane, as the superstitious? Their ignorance makes them scrupulous observers of little circumstances, and yet bold adventurers upon notorious sins. What a strange wry conscience have such men; who tie up themselves strictly where God gives them scope, and yet run riotously where God's commands and threatenings restrain! dreading more the transgressing of one law of man, than they do the transgressing of the whole moral law of God! This is from ignorance; whereby men do not know the due bounds, either of that liberty which God indulgeth them, or that restraint which God lays upon them.

And this is the First thing, that corrupts conscience; namely, Ignorance.

ii. WILFUL SINNING corrupts and vitiates the Conscience. And that, Two ways.

1. Sometimes, such sins stupify and deaden the Conscience, especially if they become frequent and customary; and, therefore, we usually call them Conscience-wasting Sins.

Believe it, through a continued course of known and presumptuous sins, you will bring your consciences into very sad

Consumptions, that they will pine away under iniquities. And how many are there, who have their consciences already lying speechless, senseless, and gasping; ready to give up the ghost! The Apostle, in Eph. iv. 19. speaks of them, that being past feeling, have given themselves over unto lasciviousness.

2. Sometimes, such sins do affright, terrify, and enrage the Conscience; filling it with dreadful thoughts of eternal, future vengeance.

Wilful and known sins sometimes terrify and enrage the conscience. And this is a corruption of the conscience, when the terrors of it are so overwhelming, as to sink men into despair: for, mark it, it is its office to accuse and to threaten for sin; and, the greater the sin is, the more sharp and stinging ought to be its reproofs: but, be the sin never so great for which conscience reproves, if yet it denounceth wrath without making mention of repentance and hopes of mercy, it exceeds its commission that God hath given it, and becomes an evil and corrupt conscience. And, therefore, we have that expression, Heb. x. 22. Let us draw near.....having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience. Ey an evil conscience, here, is meant a Despairing Conscience; from which we are freed, only by the blood of sprinkling to be convinced of sin, and not at all to be convinced of righteousness, is such a conviction, as constitutes one part of the torments of the damned in hell, whose worm never dies; and, certainly, that conscience must needs be very evil and very corrupt, which breeds in it this hellish worm, while we are here upon earth.

And, so much, for the First thing: What it is, that corrupts the Conscience.

II. The next thing propounded, is, to shew you, WHAT IT IS TO HAVE A CLEAR CONSCIENCE.

There are two things, that denominate a conscience to be clear; when it is Pure, and when it is Peaceable: when it is free from all known and wilful defilements, and when it is not justly burdened with the guilt of sin, then is it a Clear Conscience.

1. Then a man hath a Clear Conscience, WHEN IT IS FREE FROM ALL KNOWN AND WILFUL SINS.

I say, from all known and wilful sins: for it is impossible, while we are encompassed about with infirmities and oppressed with a heavy body of sin and death, to keep ourselves free and

pure from all sin: For in many things we offend all, says St. James: ch. iii. 2. But these sins of daily weakness and sudden surreption, as they are usually small sins and scarce discernible, so are they no obstructions to a Clear Conscience; no more than the moats of the sun-beams are obstructions to a clear day. As for those quotidian weaknesses and sins of daily infirmity, they neither leave guilt nor defilement upon the conscience of God's children but, as their more foul sins are done away, by particular acts of repentance; so these are done away, by a general state of repentance, which state the children of God are always in: and there is also a constant out-flowing of the blood of Christ and of the mercy of God upon the soul, to remove the guilt and filth of those sins as we fall into them. Then is the conscience clear, when, all former sins being pardoned to us, we daily labour to please God: though it be with manifold imperfections and weaknesses, this doth not hinder but that our consciences may be both pure and peaceable; while we thus sincerely strive to keep ourselves from all wilful and from all presumptuous sins, our consciences are clear, notwithstanding the sins of daily infirmity. So says the Psalmist, Psal. xix. 13. Keep back thy servant from presumptuous sins.....then shall I be upright, and I shall be innocent from the great transgression.

That is the first thing: Conscience is clear, when it is free from all known and wilful sins.

ii. Then a man hath a Clear Conscience, WHEN IT IS NOT JUSTLY BURDENED WITH THE GUILT OF SIN.

I say, not justly burdened; because, sometimes, we may burden ourselves without cause, when God hath already forgiven us. Many times, through temptations and desertions, God's children reflect back upon their old sins with new troubles, and rip up their old wounds and make them bleed afresh. They remember against themselves, what God hath forgotten; and, with great terrors, accuse and condemn themselves, for what God hath already remitted to them.

Here I shall lay down Two things.

That every Quiet Conscience is not a Clear Conscience. That every Troubled Conscience is not an Evil Conscience.

1. Every Quiet Conscience is not a Clear Conscience.

Some are lulled asleep in security; and their consciences are

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quiet, merely because they are insensible: it may be, they have so harrassed and wasted their consciences by dreadful sins, so often mortally wounded them, that now they have not strength enough to become quarrelsome and troublesome; and this they call Peace: indeed, it is such a peace as Galgathus reproaches the Romans with in Tacitus; when they had laid all waste, then they called it Peace: so these sinners think they have good and peaceable consciences, because they do not menace, torment, and worry them; and, alas! how can they? their consciences are murdered: there is no sense nor life left in them. This is no Peace, but a mere Solitude and Desolation of Conscience : and, yet, believe it too, these quiet and peaceable consciences will not be long so: at the hour of death, or if not then the next moment after death, these peaceable consciences will be startled out of their sleep, and will roar so loud, that heaven and hell shall hear them. As, in still weather, many times, matter is gathering for a storm; so, while conscience seems so still and quiet, it is only gathering matter for a tempest, that will one day pour upon your heads. And, oh, how grievous will it be, when those consciences, that never gave them an ill word before, shall on a sudden drag them before the tribunal of God, and there bitterly accuse them of those horrid sins that once they seemed to take no notice of, and call for the severest execution of divine wrath and vengeance upon them! And, possibly, many, that speak of the peace of their consciences, do not find it so neither: they are as far from a peaceable conscience, as they are from a raving and a raging conscience. A raving conscience soon discovers itself in hellish despair: but there are many, whose consciences do not rave, and yet are never quiet they give them many a secret twitch and gird at the very heart, not outwardly discernible by others: as thunder rumbles long in the entrails of a cloud, that never breaks forth into dreadful and terrible cracks; so a man may have a rumbling and a grumbling conscience, a conscience that may murmur and scowl upon him, and yet he may carry it as if all were calm and serene within him: however, though all within may be quiet, yet a quiet conscience may be a polluted conscience; as a standing puddle may be as foul as the raging sea, when it casts out its mire and filth.

2. As every quiet conscience is not a clear conscience, so every Troubled Conscience is not an Evil Conscience.

Hypocrites and wicked men may indeed, and do often, so judge: "Would God ever suffer such strange terrors to seize upon men, were they not notorious sinners ?" As those barbarians at Malta, spoken of in the Acts, when they saw the viper fasten upon the Apostle's hand, presently concluded that he was some wicked person, whom divine vengeance would not suffer to live: so these men, when they see the worm of conscience fasten upon others, presently judge them guilty of notorious crimes; crimes, for which the vengeance and wrath of God pursue them. But this is a wrong censure, and most unjust. For the most part it is seen, that those, that have the best consciences, are most troubled, at least for a time; until the Holy Ghost persuade them of the love of God, and of the pardon of their sins. It is the greatest fault of a tender conscience, that it misinterprets every thing against itself: and, oftentimes, when God rejoices over it, it apprehends he frowns upon it; mistaking the firing of a bonfire for the firing of a beacon, and giving an alarm when they should proclaim peace and joy: many times it is so with them, that have tender consciences. A man may be long troubled for those sins, that are already pardoned to him: Nathan comes to David, and, upon his confession that he had sinned, 2 Sam. xii. 13. I have sinned, says he: God by Nathan tells him, that he had put away his sin from him; and yet his conscience, though it were clear in respect of any guilt that God charged upon him, yet was not clear in respect of what he himself charged upon himself: he thought himself guilty in his own apprehension, as you may perceive by his penning of the 51st Psalm; yet he was not guilty in God's account, for he assures him, by his prophet, that he had doned him.

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QUEST. "Now it being so, that both a quiet conscience may be impure, and that a troubled conscience may be a clear conscience, how shall we know whether when our consciences are troubled, it be from the guilt of sin remaining upon them; or whether, when they be clear and quiet, it be from the removal of that guilt?"

For ANSWER unto this;

First: It may be known when a man's conscience is troubled from the guilt of sin remaining upon it, by considering the

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