A supplement to the several discourses upon various divine subjects

To their Justification or condemnation. Those very thoughts will accuse thee before God's Tribunal, which accuse thee here before conscience, His Deputy, Rom. 2.15, 16. Their thoughts the mean while (i. e. in this life, while conscience bears witness) accusing, or excusing one another; in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men, i. e. and also at the day of judgment, when conscience shall give in its final Testimony, upon God's examination of the secret counsels. This place is properly meant of those reasonings concerning good and evil in men's Consciences, agreeable to the Law of nature imprinted on them, which shall excuse them, if they practise accordingly, or accuse them, if they behave themselves contrary thereunto. But it will hold in this Case; for if those inward approbations of the notions of good and evil will accuse us for our contrary practices,¹ they will also accuse us for our contrary thoughts. Our good thoughts will be our accusers for not observing them, and our bad thoughts will be indictments against us for complying with them. 'Tis probable the Soul may be bound over to answer chiefly for these at the last day; for the Apostle chargeth Simon's guilt upon his thought, not his word, and tells him, pardon must be principally granted for that. The tongue was only an Instrument to express what his heart did think, and would have been wholly innocent, had not his thoughts been first criminal. What therefore is the principal subject of pardon, would be so of punishment: as the first incendiaries in a rebellion are most severely dealt with. And if (as some think) the fallen Angels were stripped of their primitive Glory, only for, a conceived thought, how heinous must that be, which hath enrolled them in a remediless misery?

To their Justification or condemnation. Those very thoughts will accuse thee before God's Tribunal, which accuse thee here before conscience, His Deputy, Rom. 2.15, 16. Their thoughts the mean while (i. e. in this life, while conscience bears witness) accusing, or excusing one another; in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men, i. e. and also at the day of judgment, when conscience shall give in its final Testimony, upon God's examination of the secret counsels. This place is properly meant of those reasonings concerning good and evil in men's Consciences, agreeable to the Law of nature imprinted on them, which shall excuse them, if they practise accordingly, or accuse them, if they behave themselves contrary thereunto. But it will hold in this Case; for if those inward approbations of the notions of good and evil will accuse us for our contrary practices,