faries of life enjoys more health and has fewer cares without them: how then do they become bleffings ? No otherwife than by being employed in feeding the hungry, cloathing the naked, rewarding worthy men, and in fhort, doing acts of charity and generofity. Thus likewife, power is no bleffing in itself, because private men bear lefs envy, and trouble, and anguish without it. But when it is employed to protect the innocent, to relieve the oppreffed, and to punish the oppreffor, then it becomes a great bleffing. And fo laftly even great wifdom is, in the opinion of Solomon, not a bleffing in itfelf: for in much wisdom is much forrow; and men of common understandings, if they serve God and mind their callings, make fewer mistakes in the conduct of life than those who have better heads. And yet wisdom is a mighty bleffing, when it is applied to good purposes, to inftruct the ignorant, to be a faithful counsellor either in publick or private, to be a director to youth, and to many other ends needless here to mention.

To

To conclude: God fent us into the world to obey his commands by doing as much good as our abilities will reach, and as little evil as our many infirmities will permit. Some he hath only trufted with one talent, fome with five, and fome with ten. No man is without his talent; and he that is faithful or negligent in a little, fhall be rewarded or punifhed, as well as he that hath been fo in a great deal.

Confider what hath been faid, &c.

VOL. XI.

N

A SER

SER

A

MON

ON THE

Teftimony of Confcience.

2 COR. i. 12. Part of it. de For our rejoicing is this, the teftimony of our confcience.

HERE is no word more frequently

TH in the mouths of men than that of confcience, and the meaning of it is in fome measure generally understood: however, because it is likewife a word extremely abused by many people, who apply other meanings to it, which God Almighty never intended; I fhall explain it to you in the cleareft manner I am able. The word confcience properly fignifies that knowledge which a man hath within himself of his own thoughts and actions. And because if a man judgeth fairly of his own actions by comparing

1

them

them with the law of God, his mind will either approve or condemn him according as he hath done good or evil; therefore this knowledge or confcience may properly be called both an accufer and a judge. So that whenever our confcience accufeth us, we are certainly guilty; but we are not always innocent, when it doth not accuse us: for very often, through the hardness of our hearts, or the fondness and favour we bear to ourselves, or through ignorance or neglect, we do not fuffer our confcience to take any cognifance of feveral fins we commit. There is another office likewife belonging to confcience, which is that of being our director and guide; and the wrong ufe of this hath been the occafion of more evils under the fun than almost all other caufes put together. For, as confcience is nothing else but the knowledge we have of what we are thinking and doing; fo it can guide us no further than that knowledge reacheth and therefore God hath placed confcience in us to be our director only in those actions which fcripture and reason plainly tell us to be good or evil.

Z 2

But in

cafes

cafes too difficult or doubtful for us to comprehend or determine, there confcience is not concerned; because it cannot advife in what it doth not underftand, nor decide where it is itself in doubt: but, by God's great mercy, those difficult points are never of abfolute neceffity to our falvation. There is likewife another evil, that men often say, a thing is againft their confcience, when really it is not. For inftance: afk any of thofe who differ from the worship eftablished, why they do not come to church, they will fay, they diflike the ceremonies, the prayers, the habits, and the like; and therefore it goes against their confcience but they are mistaken, their teacher hath put thofe words into their mouth; for a man's confcience can go no higher than his knowledge; and therefore till he has thoroughly examined by fcripture, and the practice of the ancient church, whether thofe points are blameable or no, his confcience cannot poffibly direct him to condemn them. Hence have likewife arifen those mistakes about what is usually called liberty of confcience;