necessary to endeavour to attain distinct ideas, and to employ those words only which convey distinct ideas to other men. The first section of the present chapter will accordingly be devoted to some brief observations respecting the Conscience, its nature, and its authority; by which it is hoped the reader will see sufficient reason to distinguish its dictates from that higher guidance, respecting which it is the object of the present chapter to enquire.

For a kindred purpose, it appears requisite to offer a short review of popular and philosophical opinions respecting a Moral Sense. These opinions will be found to have been frequently expressed in great indistinctness and ambiguity of language. The purpose of the writer in referring to these opinions, is to enquire whether they do not generally involve a recognition-obscurely perhaps, but still a recognition-of the principle, that God communicates his will to the mind. If they do this, and if they do it without design or consciousness, no trifling testimony is afforded to the truth of the principle: for how should this principle thus secretly recommend itself to the minds of men, except by the influence of its own evidence?

SECTION I.

CONSCIENCE, ITS NATURE AND AUTHORITY.

In the attempt to attach distinct notions to the term "Conscience," we have to request the reader not to estimate the accuracy of our observations by the notions which he may have habitually connected with the word. Our disquisition is not about terms but truths. If the observations are in themselves just, our principal object is attained. The secondary object, that of connecting truth with appropriate terms, is only so far attainable by a writer, as shall be attained by an uniform employment of words in determinate senses in his own practice.

Men possess notions of right and wrong; they possess a belief that, under given circumstances, they ought to do one thing or to forbear another. This belief I would call a conscientious belief. And when such a belief exists in a man's mind in reference to a number of actions, I would call the sum or aggregate of his notions respecting what is right and wrong, his Conscience.

To possess notions of right and wrong in human conduct to be convinced that we ought to do or to forbear an action-implies and supposes a sense of obligation existent in the mind. A man who feels that it is wrong for him to do a thing, possesses a sonse of obligation to refrain. Into the origin of this sense of obligation, or how it is induced into the mind, we do not enquire: it is sufficient for our purpose that it exists; and there is no reason to doubt that its existence is consequent of the will of God.

In most men-perhaps in all-the sense of obligation refers, with greater or less distinctness, to the will of a superior being. The impression, however obscure, is, in general, fundamentally this: I must do so or so, because God requires it.

It is found that this sense of obligation is sometimes connected, in the minds of separate individuals, with different actions. One man thinks he ought to do a thing from which another thinks he ought to forbear. Upon the great questions of morality there is indeed, in general, a congruity of human judgment; yet subjects do arise respecting which one man's conscience dictates an act different from that which is dictated by another's. It is not therefore essential to a conscientious judgment of right

and wrong, that that judgment should be in strict accordance with the Moral Law. Some men's consciences dictate that which the Moral Law does not enjoin; and this law enjoins some points which are not enforced by every man's conscience. This is precisely the result which, from the nature of the case, it is reasonable to expect. Of these judgments respecting what is right, with which the sense of obligation becomes from time to time connected, some are induced by the instructions or example of others; some by our own reflection or enquiry; some perhaps from the written law of revelation; and some, as we have cause to conclude, from the direct intimations of the Divine Will.

So

It is manifest that if the sense of obligation is sometimes connected with subjects that are proposed to us merely by the instruction of others, or if the connexion results from the power of association and habit, or from the fallible investigations of our own minds-that sense of obligation will be connected, in different individuals, with different subjects. that it may sometimes happen that a man can say, I conscientiously think I ought to do a certain action, and yet that his neighbour can say, I conscientiously think the contrary. "With respect to particular actions, opinion determines whether they are good or ill; and Conscience approves or disapproves, in consequence of this determination, whether it be in favour of truth or falsehood.”*

Such considerations enable us to account for the diversity of the dictates of the conscience in individuals respectively. A person is brought up amongst Catholics, and is taught from his childhood that flesh ought not to be eaten in Lent. The arguments of those around him, or perhaps their authority, satisfy him that what he is taught is truth. The sense of obligation thus becomes connected with a refusal to eat flesh in Lent; and thenceforth he says that the abstinence is dictated by his conscience. A Protestant youth is taught the contrary. Argument or authority satisfies him that flesh may lawfully be eaten every day in the year. His sense of obligation therefore is not connected with the abstinence; and thenceforth he says that eating flesh in Lent does not violate his conscience. And so of a multitude of other questions.

When therefore a person says, my conscience dictates to me that I ought to perform such an action, he means—or in the use of such language he ought to mean-that the sense of obligation which subsists in his mind, is connected with that action; that, so far as his judgment is enlightened, it is a requisition of the law of God.

But not all our opinions respecting morality and religion are derived from education or reasoning. He who finds in Scripture the precept, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," derives an opinion respecting the duty of loving others from the discovery of this expression of the Will of God. His sense of obligation is connected with benevolence towards others in consequence of this discovery; or, in other words, his understanding has been informed by the Moral Law, and a new duty is added to those which are dictated by his conscience. Thus it is that Scripture, by informing the judgment, extends the jurisdiction of conscience; and it is hence, in part, that in those who seriously study the Scriptures, the conscience appears so much more vigilant and operative than in many who do not possess, or do not regard them. Many of the mistakes which education introduces, many of the fallacies to which our own speculations lead us, are corrected by this law. In the case of our Catholic, if a reference to

Adventurer; No. 91.

Scripture should convince him that the judgment he has formed respecting abstinence from flesh is not founded on the Law of God, the sense of obligation becomes detached from its subject; and thenceforth his conscience ceases to dictate that he should abstain from flesh in Lent. Yet Scripture does not decide every question respecting human duty, and in some instances individuals judge differently of the decisions which Scripture gives. This, again, occasions some diversity in the dictates of the Conscience; it occasions the sense of obligation to become connected with dissimilar, and possibly incompatible, actions.

But another portion of men's judgments respecting moral affairs is derived from immediate intimations of the Divine Will. (This we must be allowed for the present to assume.) These intimations inform sometimes the judgment; correct its mistakes; and increase and give distinctness to our knowledge -thus operating, as the Scriptures operate, to connect the sense of obligation more accurately with those actions which are conformable with the Will of God. It does not, however, follow, by any sort of necessity, that this higher instruction must correct all the mistakes of the judgment; that because it imparts some light, that light must be perfect day; that because it communicates some moral or religious truth, it must communicate all the truths of religion and morality. Nor, again, does it follow that individuals must each receive the same access of knowledge. It is evidently as possible that it should be communicated in different degrees to different individuals, as that it should be communicated at all. For which plain reasons we are still to expect, what in fact we find, that although the judgment receives light from a superhuman intelligence, the degree of that light varies in individuals; and that the sense of obligation is connected with fewer subjects, and attended with less accuracy, in the minds of some men than of others.

With respect to the authority which properly belongs to Conscience as a director of individual conduct, it appears manifest, alike from reason and from Scripture, that it is great. When a man believes, upon due deliberation, that a certain action is right, that action is right to him. And this is true, whether the action be or be not required of mankind by the Moral Law.* The fact that in his mind the sense of obligation attaches to the act, and that he has duly deliberated upon the accuracy of his judgment, makes the dictate of his Conscience upon that subject an authoritative dictate. The individual is to be held guilty if he violates his Conscience-if he does one thing, whilst his sense of obligation is directed to its contrary. Nor, if his judgment should not be accurately informed, if his sense of obligation should not be connected with a proper subject, is the guilt of violating his Conscience taken away. Were it otherwise, a person might be held virtuous for acting in opposition to his apprehensions of duty; or guilty, for doing what he believed to be right. "It is happy for us that our title to the character of virtuous beings, depends not upon the justness of our opinions or the constant objective rectitude of all we do, but upon the conformity of our actions to the sincere convictions of our minds.'t Dr Furneaux says, "To secure the favour of God and the rewards of true religion, we must follow our own consciences and judgments according to the best light we can attain." And I am especially disposed to add the testimony of Sir William Temple, because

"By Conscience all men are restrained from intentional ill-it infallibly directs us to avoid guilt, but is not intendet to secure us from error."-Advent. No. 91. + Dr Price.

Essay on Toleration, p. 8.

he recognizes the doctrine which has just been advanced, that our judgments are enlightened by superhuman agency. "The way to our future happiness must be left, at last, to the impressions made upon every man's belief and conscience either by natural or supernatural arguments and means." "*-Accordingly there appears no reason to doubt that some will stand convicted in the sight of the Omniscient Judge, for actions which his Moral Law has not ferbidden; and that some may be uncondemned for actions which that law does not allow. The distinction here is the same as that to which we have before had occasion to allude, between the desert of the agent and the quality of the act. Of this dis tinction an illustration is contained in Isaiah x. It was the divine will that a certain specific course of action should be pursued in punishing the Israelites For the performance of this, the king of Assyria was employed:-" I will give him a charge to take the spoil, and to take the prey, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets." This charge the Assyrian monarch fulfilled; he did the will of God; but then his intention was criminal; he " meant not so" and therefore, when the "whole work" is performed, "I will punish," says the Almighty, "the fruit of the stout heart of the king of Assyri, and the glory of his high looks."

One

But it was said that these principles respecting the authority of Conscience were recognized in Scripture. "One believeth that he may eat all things: another who is weak eateth herbs. man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike." Here, then, are dif ferences, nay, contrarieties of conscientious judgments. And what are the parties directed severally to do?" Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind;" that is, let the full persuasion of his own mind be every man's rule of action. The situa tion of these parties was, that one perceived the truth upon the subject, and the other did not; that in one the sense of obligation was connected with an accurate, in the other with an inaccurate, opinion. Thus, again :—“ I know, and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus, that there is nothing unclean of itself;" therefore, absolutely speaking, it is lawful to eat all things; "but to him that esteemeth any thing to be unclean, to him it is unclean." The question is not, whether his judgment was correct, but what that judgment actually was. To the doubter, the uncleanness, that is, the sin of eating, was certain, though the act was right. Again: "All things indeed are pure; but it is evil for that man who eateth with offence." And, again, as a general rule: "He that doubteth is condemned if he eat, because he eateth not of faith; for whatsoever is not of faith is sin."+

And here we possess a sufficient answer to those who affect to make light of the authority of Conscience, and exclaim, "Every man pleads his conscientious opinions, and that he is bound in conscience to do this or that; and yet his neighbour makes the same plea and urges the same obligation to do just the contrary. But what then? These persons' judgments differed: that we might expect, for they are fallible; but their sense of obligation was, in each case, really attached to its subject, and was in each case authoritative.

One observation remains; that although a man ought to make his conduct conform to his conscience, yet he may sometimes justly be held criminal for the errors of his opinion. Men often judge amiss respecting their duties in consequence of their own faults: some take little pains to ascertain the truth;

some voluntarily exclude knowledge; and most men would possess more accurate perceptions of the Moral Law if they sufficiently endeavoured to obtain them. And, therefore, although a man may not be punished for a given act which he ignorantly supposes to be lawful, he may be punished for that ignorance in which his supposition originates. Which consideration may perhaps account for the expression, that he who ignorantly failed to do his master's will "shall be beaten with few stripes." There is a degree of wickedness, to the agents of which God at length "sends strong delusion" that they may "believe a lie." In this state of strong delusion they perhaps may, without violating any sense of obligation, do many wicked actions. The principles which have been here delivered would lead us to suppose that the punishment which awaits such men will have respect rather to that intensity of wickedness of which delusion was the consequence, than to those particular acts which they might ignorantly commit under the influence of the delusion itself. This observation is offered to the reader because some writers have obscured the present subject by speculating upon the moral deserts of those desperately bad men, who occasionally have committed atrocious acts under the notion that they were doing right.

Let us then, when we direct our serious enquiry to the Immediate Communication of the Divine Will, carefully distinguish that Communication from the dictates of the conscience. They are separate and distinct considerations. It is obvious that those positions which some persons advance ;-" Conscience is our infallible guide,' -"Conscience is the voice of the Deity," &c., are wholly improper and inadmis. sible. The term may indeed have been employed synonymously for the voice of God: but this ought never to be done. It is to induce confusion of language respecting a subject which ought always to be distinctly exhibited; and the necessity for avoiding ambiguity is so much the greater, as the consequences of that ambiguity are more serious: it is obvious that, on these subjects, inaccuracy of language gives rise to serious error of opinion.

REVIEW OF OPINIONS RESPECTING A MORAL SENSE.

The purpose for which this brief review is offered to the reader, is explained in very few words. It is to enquire, by a reference to the written opinions of many persons, whether they do not agree in asserting that our Creator communicates some portions of his Moral Law immediately to the human mind. These opinions are frequently delivered, as the reader will presently discover, in great ambiguity of language; but in the midst of this ambiguity there appears to exist one pervading truth-a truth in testimony to which these opinions are not the less satisfactory because, in some instances, the testimony is undesigned. The reader is requested to observe, as he passes on, whether many of the difficulties which enquirers have found or made, are not solved by the supposition of a divine communication, and whether they can be solved by any other.

"The Author of nature has much better furnished us for a virtuous conduct than our moralists seem to imagine, by almost as quick and powerful instructions as we have for the preservation of our bodies.”✶ "It is manifest, great part of common language and of common behaviour over the world, is formed upon the supposition of a moral faculty, whether called conscience, moral reason, moral sense, or

• Dr Hutcheson: Enquiry concerning Moral Good and Evil.

divine reason; whether considered as a sentiment of the understanding, or as a perception of the heart, or, which seems the truth, as including both."* Is it not remarkable that for a 66 faculty so well known "over the world," even a name has not been found, and that a Christian bishop accumulates a multiplicity of ambiguous epithets to explain his meaning? Bishop Butler says again of Conscience, "To preside and govern, from the very economy and constitution of man, belongs to it. This faculty was placed within to be our proper governor, to direct and regulate all undue principles, passions, and motives of action.-It carries its own authority with it, that it is our natural guide, the guide assigned us by the Author of our nature." Would it have been unreasonable to conclude, that there was at least some connexion between this reprover of "all undue principles, passions, and motives," and that law of which the New Testament speaks, "All things that are reproved are made manifest by the light?"t

Blair says,

"Conscience is felt to act as the delegate of an invisible Ruler; "-" Conscience is the guide, or the enlightening or directing principle of our conduct." In this instance, as in many others, Conscience appears to be used in an indeterminate sense. Conscience is not an enlightening principle, but a principle which is enlightened. It is not a legislator, but a repository of statutes. Yet the reader will perceive the fundamental truth, that man is in fact illuminated, and illuminated by an invisible Ruler. In the thirteenth sermon there is an expression more distinct: " God has invested Conscience with authority to promulgate his laws." It is obvious that the Divine Being must have communicated his laws, before they could have been promulgated by Conscience. In accordance with which the author says in another place," Under the tuition of God let us put ourselves."- "A Heavenly Conductor vouchsafes his aid."-" Divine light descends to guide our steps."§ It were to be wished that such sentiments were not obscured by propositions like these: "A sense of right and wrong in conduct, or of moral good and evil, belongs to human nature.”

"Such sentiments are coeval with human nature; for they are the remains of a law which was originally written in our heart."||

I do not know whether the reader will be able to perceive with distinctness the ideas of Lord Bacon and of Dr Rush in the following quotations, but I think he will perceive that they involve a recognition-obscure and indeterminate, but still a recognition--of the doctrine, that the Deity communicates his laws to the minds of men. Dr Rush says, "It would seem as if the Supreme Being had preserved the Moral Faculty in man from the ruins of his fall, on purpose to guide him back again to paradise; and at the same time had constituted the Conscience, both in man and fallen spirits, a kind of royalty in his moral empire, on purpose to show his property in all intelligent creatures, and their original resemblance to himself." And Lord Bacon says, light of nature not only shines upon the human mind through the medium of a rational faculty, but by an internal instinct according to the law of conscience, which is a sparkle of the purity of man's first estate."

"The

"The faculties of our minds are so formed by nature, that as soon as we begin to reason, we may also begin, in some measure, to distinguish good from evil."-" We prefer virtue to vice on account of the seeds planted in us."P

The following is not the less worthy notice be

cause it is from the pen of Lord Shaftesbury: "Sense of right and wrong, being as natural to us as natural affection itself, and being a first principle in our constitution and make, there is no speculation, opinion, persuasion, or belief, which is capable, immediately or directly, to exclude or destroy it." Sentiments such as these are very commonly expressed; and what do they imply? If sense of right and wrong is natural to us, it is because He who created us has placed it in our minds. The conclusion too is inevitable, that this sense must indicate the Divine Law by which right and wrong are diseriminated. Now we do not say that these sentiments are absolutely just, or that a sense of right and wrong is strictly "natural" to man, but we say that the sentiments involve the supposition of some mode of Divine Guidance-some mode in which the Moral Law of God, or a part of it, is communicated by him to mankind. And if this be indeed true, it may surely, with all reason, be asked, why we should not assent to the reality of that mode of communication, of which, as we shall hereafter see, Christianity asserts the existence?

"The first principles of morals are the immediate dictates of the moral faculty."-" By the moral faculty, or conscience, solely, we have the original conception of right and wrong.""It is evident that this principle has, from its nature, authority to direct and determine with regard to our conduct; to judge, to acquit or condemn, and even to punish; an authority which belongs to no other principle of the human mind."-" The Supreme Being has given us this light within to direct our moral conduct."—" It is the candle of the Lord, set up within us to guide our steps." This is almost the language of Christianity, "That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world." I do not mean to affirm that the author of the essays speaks exclusively of the same Divine Guidance as the apostle; but surely, if Conscience operates as such a "light within," as "the candle of the Lord," it can require no reasoning to convince us that it is illuminated from heaven. The indistinctness of notions which such language exhibits, appears to arise from inaccurate views of the nature of Conscience. The writer does not distinguish between the recipient and the source; between the enlightened principle and the enlightening beam. The apostle speaks only of the last; the uninspired enquirer speaks, without discrimination, of both;-and hence the ambiguity.

Dr Beattie appears to maintain the same general principle, the same essential truth, under other phraseology. Common sense, he says, is "that power of the mind which perceives truth or commands belief by an instantaneous, instinctive, and irresistible impulse, neither derived from education nor from habit, but from nature."-"Every man may find the evidence of moral science in his own breast." An "instinctive" perception of truth derived from nature, must necessarily be tantamount to a power of perception imparted by the Deity. "Whatsoever nature does, God does," says Seneca: and Dr Beattie himself explains his own meaning-" The dictates of nature, that is, the voice of God."§ We have no concern with the justness of Beattie's philosophy, intellectual or moral, but the reader will perceive the recognition of the truth, or of something like the truth, to which we have so often referred. "What is the power within us that perceives the

distinctions of right and wrong? My answer The Understanding.' "Of every thought, set: ment, and subject, the Understanding is the natur and ultimate judge." This is the language of I Price, but he does not seem wholly satisfied with own definition. He says, "The truth seems to that in contemplating the actions of moral agen we have both a perception of the understanding, a a feeling of the heart." And again, " It is to in tion that we owe our moral ideas." He speaks t of" the virtuous principle,"" the inward spring virtue;" and says, "Goodness is the power of t flection, raised to its due seat of direction and sor reignty in the mind." These various expression

do not appear to represent very distinct notions, b after the "Understanding" has been stated to be the ultimate judge, we are presented with the id of Conscience, and then we perceive in Dr Pric language, that which we find in the language of many others," Whatever our Consciences dictate ta us, that He, (the Deity,) commands more evide and undeniably, than if by a voice from heaven we bri been called upon to do it."*

Dr Watts says that the mind "contains in it the plain and general principles of morality, not exp citly as propositions, but only as native principie by which it judges, and cannot but judge, virtue be fit and vice unfit." †

And Dr Cudworth: "The anticipations of mora lity do not spring merely from notional ideas, e from certain rules or propositions arbitrarily printed upon the soul as upon a book, but from some other more inward and vital principle in intellectual being as such, whereby they have a natural determinatic: in them to do some things and to avoid others.":

Voltaire in his Commentary on Beccaria § says, "I call natural laws those which nature dictates, all ages, to all men, for the maintenance of that Justice which she, (say what they will of her,) hath implanted in our hearts."

"And this law is that innate sense of right and wrong, of virtue and vice, which every man carries in his own bosom."--" These impressions, operating on the mind of man, bespeak a law written on ha heart."-" This secret sense of right and wrong, for wise purposes so deeply implanted by our Creator on the human mind, has the nature, force, and effect of a law."||

Locke: "The Divine law, that law which Go has set to the actions of men, whether promulgated to them by the light of nature or the voice of revelstion, is the measure of sin and duty. That God has given a rule whereby men should govern themselves, I think there is nobody so brutish as te deny."P The reader should remark, that revelation and "the light of nature" are here represented as being jointly and equally the law of God.

"Actions, then, instead of being tried by the eter nal standard of right and wrong, on which the unphisticated heart unerringly pronounces, were judged by the rules of a pernicious casuistry." ** This may not be absolutely true; but there must be some truth which it is like, or such a proposition would not be advanced. Who ever thought of attributing to the unsophisticated heart the power of unerringly pronouncing on questions of prudence? Yet ques tions of right and wrong are not, in their own nature more easily solved than those of prudence.