Pray for us; for we trust we have a good conscience, in all things willing to live honestly. -Heb. xiii. 18. EVILthoughts and evil affections, sprightly and aërial as they seem to be, yet leave a stain upon the conscience. As the breathing upon a glass sullies it, and dims the representation of the face that looks into it; so the breathing of evil thoughts upon conscience, the glass of the soul, leaves a mist and a cloud upon it, that it can but dimly and darkly represent unto us our true state. HOPKINS. And their conscience being weak, is defiled. 1 Cor. viii. 7. AN ignorant conscience is like a benighted or bewildered traveller; which, because it cannot see its own way before it, what is to be chosen and what to be refused, lays the reins upon the neck of men's passions, and suffers them, without control, to take their own course. Conscience is that glass whereby we may view both ourselves and our actions. Now, as a glass, when falsely framed, represents a beautiful face monstrous and frightful, so conscience, when falsely informed, makes even lovely actions appear misshapen and terrifying, by distorted representations of those things which are lawful, and perhaps our duty also. Therefore, get an enlightened conscience, if you would have a good conscience. HOPKINS. Our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience.-2 Cor. i. 12. MANY afflictions will not cloud and obstruct spiritual joy so much as one sin; therefore, if ye would walk cheerfully, be most careful to walk holily. All the winds about the earth make not an earthquake, but only that within. LEIGHTON. Chapter XIV. Godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come.-1 Tim. iv. 8. THE farthest that any of the philosophers went in the discovery of blessedness, was but to pronounce that no man could be called blessed before his death; not that they had found what kind of better blessedness they went to after their death, but that still till death they were sure every man was subject to new miseries, and interruptions of any thing which they could have called blessedness. The Christian philosophy goes further; it shews us a more perfect blessedness than they conceived for the next life, and it imparts that blessedness to this life also: the pure in heart are blessed already, not only |