Human nature in its fourfold state ... In several practical discourses

Lastly, Every man bears about with him a witness to this within his own breast, Rom. ii. 15. Which show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing, or else excusing one another. There is a tribunal erected within every man, where conscience is accuser, witness, and judge, binding over the sinner to the judgment of God. This fills the most profligate wretches with horror, and inwardly stings them, upon the commission of some atrocious crime; in effect summoning them to answer for it, before the the Judge of the quick and dead. And this it doth, even when the crime is secret, and hid from the eyes of the world It reacheth those whom the laws of men cannot reach, because of their power or craft. When men have fled from the judgment of their fellow-creatures; yet, go where they will, conscience, as the supreme Judge's officer, still keeps hold of them, reserving them in its chains to the judgment of the great day. And whether they escape punishment from men, or fall by the hand of public justice, when they perceive death's approach, they hear from within, of this after-reckoning; being constrained to hearken thereto, in these the most serious minutes of their life. If there be some, in whom nothing of this doth appear, we have no more ground thence to conclude against it, than we have to conclude, that because some men do not groan, therefore they have no pain; or that dying is a mere jest, because there have been, who have seemed to make little else of it. A good face may be put upon an ill conscience: and the more hopeless men's case is, they reckon it the more their interest to make no reflections on their state and case. But every one, who will consult himself seriously, shall find in himself the witness to the judgment to come. Even the heathens wanted not a notion of it, though mixed with fictions of their own. Hence, though some of the Athenians, when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, mocked, Acts xvii. 32. yet there is no account of their mocking, when they heard of the general judgment, ver 31.

Lastly, Every man bears about with him a witness to this within his own breast, Rom. ii. 15. Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing, or else excusing one another. There is a tribunal erected within every man, where conscience is accuser, witness, and judge, binding over the sinner to the judgment of God. This fills the most profligate wretches with horror, and inwardly stings them, upon the commission of some atrocious crime; in effect summoning them to answer for it, before the the Judge of the quick and dead. And this it doth, even when the crime is secret, and hid from the eyes of the world It reacheth those whom the laws of men cannot reach, because of their power or craft. When men have fled from the judgment of their fellow-creatures; yet, go where they will, conscience, as the supreme Judge's officer, still keeps hold of them, reserving them in its chains to the judgment of the great day. And whether they escape punishment from men, or fall by the hand of public justice, when they perceive death's approach, they hear from within, of this after-reckoning; being constrained to hearken thereto, in these the most serious minutes of their life. If there be some, in whom nothing of this doth appear, we have no more ground thence to conclude against it, than we have to conclude, that because some men do not groan, therefore they have no pain; or that dying is a mere jest, because there have been, who have seemed to make little else of it. A good face may be put upon an ill conscience: and the more hopeless men's case is, they reckon it the more their interest to make no reflections on their state and case. But every one, who will consult himself seriously, shall find in himself the witness to the judgment to come. Even the heathens wanted not a notion of it, though mixed with fictions of their own. Hence, though some of the Athenians, when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, mocked,