the awe which rests upon conscience if it does not refer to a Superior Power? If man were the mere child of accident, the product of chance, amenable to no law, under obligation to no governor, at liberty to act entirely as he pleased, would he ever feel the stings of conscience? If he were his own master, then it would be right that he should please himself; and if he were bound by social ties to other men, then it would be right that he should seek the common good. Reason might instruct him so far; but he is evidently under the influence of another kind of power. Were he able to perpetrate crimes which none should see and know, he still could not escape the inward monitor which refers him to a higher tribunal, and says, "Verily there is a God that judgeth in the earth!”

6

Every particular person,' says Bishop Pearson, 'hath a particular remembrancer in himself, as a sufficient testimony of his Creator, Lord, and Judge. We know there is a great force of conscience in all men-they feel a comfort in those virtuous actions which they find themselves to have wrought according to their rule,-a strong and secret remorse for all vicious acts and impious machinations. Nay, those who strive most to deny a God, and to obliterate all sense of divinity out of their own souls, have not been least sensible of this remembrancer in their breasts. If it be a truth,

-as the testimonies of the wisest writers of most different persuasions, and experience of all sorts

of persons of most different inclinations, do agree,that the remorse of conscience can never be obliterated, then it rather proveth than supposeth an opinion of a divinity; and that man which most peremptorily denieth God's existence, is the greatest argument himself that there is a God. Let Caligula profess himself an atheist, and with that profession hide his head, or run under his bed when the thunder strikes his ears, and lightning flashes in his eyes; those terrible works of nature put him in mind of the power, and his own guilt of the justice of God; whom while in his wilful opinion he weakly denieth, in his involuntary action he strongly asserteth. So that a Deity will either be granted or extorted; and where it is not acknowledged, it will be manifested. Only, unhappy is that man who denies him to himself and proves him to others; who will not acknowledge his existence of whose power he cannot be ignorant.1

The force of the following reasoning is also obvious-'I find something within me that directs me to such actions, contrary to my sensitive appetite, there must be something above me therefore, that put this principle into man's nature. If there were no Superior, I should be the supreme judge of good and evil; were I the Lord of that law which doth oblige me, I should find no contradiction within myself between reason and appetite.' 2

Pearson on the Creed. Art. I.

2 Charnocke on the Attributes, p. 34. London, 1682.

Again, 'If there were no God, conscience were useless; the operations of it would have no foundation, if there were not an eye to take notice, a hand to punish or reward the action.' 'There is no surer evidence in nature, that there is a God, than that every man hath a natural principle in him, which continually cites him before God, and puts him in mind of him, and makes him one way or other fear him, and reflect upon him whether he will or no. A man has less power over his conscience than over any other faculty. He may choose whether he will exercise his understanding about, or move his will to such an object, but he hath no such authority over his conscience; he cannot limit it, or cause it to cease from acting or reflecting; and therefore both that and the law about which it acts, are settled by some supreme authority in the mind of man, and this is God.'1

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The testimony which conscience bears to the divine perfections may be stated in the words of the same powerful writer from whom these extracts are taken. The accusations of conscience evidence the omniscience and the holiness of God; the terrors of conscience, the justice of God; the approbations of conscience, the goodness of God.' But the argument may be further unfolded. Being convinced of the existence of God, and knowing that we are the workmanship of his hands, it cannot escape observation, that most decisive infer

Charnocke on the Attributes, p. 36.

ences respecting the character of the Creator are to be drawn from the nature and constitution of the creatures he has formed. Can it be imagined that, when he endowed man with a faculty which should pronounce on the questions of right and wrong, the standard of judgment should be diverse from that by which his own holy' mind was directed? Can we suppose that justice and truth, goodness and love, should be names for qualities in man different from, or perhaps opposed to, those qualities in himself which bear the same venerated names? Is it possible that he should create a moral nature so utterly incongruous with his own? 1

But even on the supposition that the mind were unable to pronounce decisively on the question in this form, we may ask, Could God, in his revelation of his will to man, have called himself, as he does, a God of truth, of holiness, of love, if these qualities in us were not the counterpart of the same qualities in himself? This would have been to deceive his creatures without affording them the possibility of detecting the illusion, a supposition never to be entertained for a moment respecting him "who cannot lie."

The forcible and original observations of Professor Whewell, in his first sermon on the 'Foundations of Morals,' bear too closely upon the question before us, to be passed over. His text is Rom.

'See Turton's Natural Theology, p. 84.

i. 20. "For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse." After remarking that these expressions taken alone, might seem to refer to the omnipotence, immensity, and wisdom of God, as seen in the visible creation, he adds,' But yet a little reflection will show us, that something more than this was in the apostle's mind. It was not alone the power and skill of a divine artificer, which he held to be discernible in the constitution of the created world, but the holiness of a divine lawgiver, the justice of a divine judge. For his purpose in the argument which the text conveys, was to show that the pretended teachers and sages of the world, up to the time of Christianity, were" without excuse," in the degrading representations of the deity which they devised, or at least countenanced. And the monstrous and abominable character of these perversions, consisted in a denial of the goodness, and purity, and righteousness of the divine nature, far more than in a mere limitation of his power and wisdom.'1 That this is a just, though new interpretation of the apostle's language, and a correct representation of his real argument, will scarcely be doubted, after a careful perusal of that portion of the chapter which immediately follows. The charges which

1 Foundations of Morals, p. 17.