A guide to godliness or a Treatise of a Christian life showing the dutiesA guide to godlynesse or a Treatise of a Christian life shewing the duties

But that we may yet more clearly discern the nature of conscience, what it is, we will thus define it. Conscience is a faculty, or power placed by God in the soul of man, which reflecteth the understanding upon it self, causing it to apply its general and contemplative knowledge of truth and falsehood, good and evil, to practical use, for the aiming and determining of all our particular actions, according to the general rules of reason, either with us or against us. It is a faculty, and not a natural habit which may be got and lost: for howsoever the operations of it may be hindered and deadened for a time, by carnal security, hardness of heart, and the violence of our lusts and passion: even as reason it self cannot exercise its functions in the time of sleep or drunkenness; that it never utterly faileth; but when it is awakened by affliction, it showeth it self in the actions of accusing, condemning, and terrifying, as in former times. Neither is it a bare art of understanding, as some would have it, but a distinct faculty & working power, which in it own virtue produceth divers ¹actions. For when the understanding, in the Thesy and Theory, by way of general contemplation, approveth of any action, as good, or condemneth it as evil, the conscience applieth it in the Hypothesy unto a mans own particular actions, and by virtue of those general notions in the understanding, determineth of them, either with or against us, that they are good or evil. And this it doth (as the schools speak) in a practical Syllogism, in which the reason or contemplative understanding (so called, because it is exercised in contemplation, and in seeking out the principles ⟨p. 67⟩