
interests below, could rise up and perplex the faculties of our upper regions,
and encompass them about with clouds and thick darkness: -- Could no such thing
as favour and affection enter this sacred COURT: - Did WIT disdain to take a
bribe in it; - or was asham'd to shew its face as an advocate for an
unwarrantable enjoyment. - Or, lastly, were we assured, that INTEREST stood
always unconcern'd whilst the cause was hearing, - and that passion never got
into the judgment-seat, and pronounc'd sentence in the stead of reason, which is
supposed always to preside and determine upon the case. -- Was this truly so, as
the objection must suppose; - no doubt then, the religious and moral state of a
man would be exactly what he himself esteem'd it; - and the guilt or innocence
of every man's life could be known, in general, by no better measure, than the
degrees of his own approbation and censure.
    I own, in one case, whenever a man's conscience does accuse him, (as it
seldom errs on that side) that he is guilty; and, unless in melancholy and
hypocondriack cases, we may safely pronounce upon it, that there is always
sufficient grounds for the accusation.
    But the converse of the proposition will not hold true; - namely, that
whenever there is guilt, the conscience must accuse; and if it does not, that a
man is therefore innocent. - This is not fact: -- So that the common consolation
which some good christian or other is hourly administering to himself, -- that
he thanks God his mind does not misgive him; and that, consequently, he has a
good conscience, because he has a quiet one, - is fallacious; - and as current
as the inference is, and as infallible as the rule appears at first sight, yet,
when you look nearer to it, and try the truth of this rule upon plain facts, -
you see it liable to so much error from a false application; - the principle
upon which it goes so often perverted; -- the whole force of it lost, and
sometimes so vilely cast away, that it is painful to produce the common examples
from human life which confirm the account.
    A man shall be vicious and utterly debauched in his principles; -
exceptionable in his conduct to the world; shall live shameless, in the open
commission of a sin which no reason or pretence can justify; -- a sin, by which,
contrary to
