witness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else excusing
one another. If there be a distinction to be made between the WORKS
WRITTEN IN THEIR HEARTS, and the WITNESS OF CONSCIENCE, by the
former must be meant the natural disposition to kindness and
compassion to do what is of good report, to which this apostle often
refers: that part of the nature of man, treated of in the foregoing
discourse, which with very little reflection and of course leads him
to society, and by means of which he naturally acts a just and good
part in it, unless other passions or interest lead him astray. Yet
since other passions, and regards to private interest, which lead us
(though indirectly, yet they lead us) astray, are themselves in a
degree equally natural, and often most prevalent, and since we have
no method of seeing the particular degrees in which one or the other
is placed in us by nature, it is plain the former, considered merely
as natural, good and right as they are, can no more be a law to us
than the latter. But there is a superior principle of reflection or
conscience in every man, which distinguishes between the internal
principles of his heart, as well as his external actions; which
passes judgement upon himself and them, pronounces determinately
some actions to be in themselves just, right, good, others to be in
themselves evil, wrong, unjust: which, without being consulted,
without being advised with, magisterially exerts itself, and
approves or condemns him the doer of them accordingly: and which,
if not forcibly stopped, naturally and always of course goes on to
anticipate a higher and more effectual sentence, which shall
hereafter second and affirm its own. But this part of the office of
conscience is beyond my present design explicitly to consider. It
is by this faculty, natural to man, that he is a moral agent, that
he is a law to himself, but this faculty, I say, not to be
considered merely as a principle in his heart, which is to have some