2. It is either the beginning of heaven or hell ; a good conscience is the beginning of heaven, and peace and joy in believing is a foretaste of that fulness of joy and pleasure which you shall have when you come into God's immediate presence. The glorified spirits carry a good conscience with them to heaven : ' Their works follow them,' Eev. xiv. 13 ; and an awakened conscience is a hell upon earth. The damned carry these stings and convictions into hell along with them : Mark ix. 44, * Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.' Oh, think of this, the joys of the Spirit are the antepast of glory, called often an ' earnest : ' 2 Cor. i. 22, ' Who hath sealed us, and given us the earnest of the Spirit.' Horrors of conscience are the suburbs of hell.
VeR. 20.] SERMONS UPON 1 JOHN IN. 173
Therefore be sure to keep all quiet within, and do not give conscience occasion to condemn you.
3. It is easily offended, hut not easily appeased. As the eye is offended with the least dust and mote, which soon gets in, but is hardly to be gotten out again, so you may violate conscience, but to appease it costs a great deal of trouble ; therefore there needs much tenderness and watchfulness, that you make it your daily work, Acts xxiv. 16, 'To have always aconscience void of offence both towards God and towards men.' By the commission of deliberate and wilful sins you may raise a tempest that will not be soon laid again. David felt broken bones after his foul fall, Ps. li. Joseph's brethren could not put it out of their minds but that he would avenge the old quarrel, Gen. 1. When the mists of passion are over, guilt maketh your heart sit uneasy within you. Therefore do not go like an ox to the slaughter.
4. If conscience speaketh not, it writeth ; for it is not only a witness, but a register, and a book of record : Jer. xvii. 1, ' The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron, and the point of a diamond.' We know not what conscience writeth, being occupied and taken up with carnal vanities, but we shall know hereafter when the books are open, Eev. XX. 12. Conscience keepeth a diary, and sets down everything. This book, though it be in the sinner's keeping, cannot be razed and blotted out. Well, then, a sleepy conscience will not always sleep ; if we suffer it not to awaken here, it will awaken in hell ; for the present it sleepeth in many, in regard of motion, check, or smiting, but not in regard of notice and observation.
5. If conscience speak not to you, we must speak to it. Call your- selves to an account for the expense of your time and employment. The course of your life is a sure evidence of your everlasting estate : Ps. Ixxvii. 6, ' I communed with ray heart, and made a diligent search.' How do matters stand between God and you ? take some time to parley with yourselves. Quotidie apud me causam dico, could a lieathen say — I still implead myself before myself ; and if a heathen did so, should not christians much more ?
6. If the stings of an evil conscience are not always felt, 5^et they are soon revived and forced upon us by serious thoughts of death and judg- ment to come. This fire that smothereth in our bosoms is soon blown up into a flame. By the word sometimes: Acts xxiv. 25, 'Felix trembled.' Belshazzar's edge was taken off in the midst of his carous- ings, Dan. v. 5, 6. By some great troubles ; in a tempest, that which is at bottom cometh at top: Isa. lix. 12, 'For our transgressions are multiplied before thee, and our sins testify against us ; for our trans- gressions are with us ; and as for our iniquities, we know them.' Or by death : 1 Cor. xv. .56, ' The sting of death is sin.' In the confines of eternity men are wiser, and near things do most affect us, and the baits of the flesh have lost their allurement. Things overlooked before are then seriously considered, and the deluded sinner forced to see what he would not take notice of before.
7. Soiuid peace will never be had by smothering checks of conscience, but making a holy use of them. To smother them breedeth hardness of heait, but to improve them is the way to a holy peace. What is the way to improve them ? I shall instance in two ways —
174: SERMONS UPON 1 JOHN III. [SeU. XX VL
[1.] When the particular conscience condemneth, we must look to it that the general conscience may acquit us. The particular conscience referreth to acts, the general to conversation. As to particular acts, he whose heart doth not condemn him of sin. But how is it as to the drift and course of our lives ? 2 Cor. i. 12, ' But our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience, that, in simplicity and godly sincerity, Bot with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, we have had our con- versations in the world.'