they employed all the powers of reason and eloquence to unfold, to adorn, to enforce; and thereby formed a luminous commentary on the law written on the heart. The virtue which they inculcated grew out of the stock of human nature; it was a warm and living virtue. It was the moral man, possessing, in every limb and feature, in all its figure and movements, the harmony, dignity, and variety, which belong to the human form; an effort of unassisted nature to restore that image of God, which sin had mutilated and defaced. Imperfect, as might be expected, their morality was often erroneous; but in its great outlines, it had all the stability of the human constitution, and its fundamental principles were coeval and coexistent with human nature. There could be nothing fluctuating and arbitrary in its more weighty decisions, since it appealed every moment to the man within the breast; it pretended to nothing more than to give voice and articulation to the inward sentiments of the heart, and conscience echoed to its oracles. This, wrought into different systems and under various modes of illustration, was the general form which morality exhibited from the creation of the world till our time."*

Aristotle has discriminated, classified, and arranged the elements of social morals, which alone he could treat, in the absence of revelation, with the acuteness, precision, and skill, with which he was so eminently endowed; and whoever peruses his “Nicomachian Morals," will find a perpetual reference to the inward sentiments of the breast. He builds every thing on human nature, and always takes it for granted, that there is a moral faculty in the mind, to which, without looking elsewhere, we may safely appeal. He has been styled the interpreter of nature, and has certainly shown himself a most able commentator on the law written in the heart. In like manner, Cicero drew his moral sentiments from the undefiled fountain of an unsophisticated conscience, and vindicated the claims of this faculty with equal decision and clearness.

In this state, revelation found the moral system of the ancients, and by correcting what was erroneous, supplying what was defective, and above all, confirming what was right by its

* Robert Hall's Works, Vol. I. p. 97.

peculiar sanctions of a future life of rewards and punishments, it conferred on it that perfection, of which it is itself the consummation. We have, then, with some comparatively late exceptions, the concurring authority of ancient and modern times, for making conscience the umpire in all moral inquiries. But to give more definiteness as well as expansion to our views on this fundamental point, it may still be useful to review very briefly the chief considerations and arguments, on which the doctrine of a conscience in the human breast may be made to rest.*

1. We may do much towards convincing ourselves of the existence and office of conscience, by consulting our own personal experience. Our recollections must inform us, with what effect, when children, an appeal was made to the admonitions of our own breasts, if at any time we had been guilty of injustice, falsehood, cruelty, or any other species of wrong-doing. Remorse is a peculiar and well-defined feeling, the most painful of all human sufferings. Its stings do not seem to spring from reason, from judgment, from memory, from imagination ; — they seem, on the contrary, to spring from a distinct faculty of the mind, a conscience. When we find that the great principles of rectitude have been violated by human tribunals, we familiarly speak of the difference between the decisions of the forum humanum, and the forum conscientiæ; and, in doing this, we refer to the unperverted decisions of the conscience, called, in the Roman Law, by a most noble and significant metaphor, the interior forum.

2. We shall see still further proof of the existence of conscience, by the observations we must have made on the feelings, sentiments, and actions of those with whom we have been accustomed to hold intercourse. We have the same evidence of the existence of conscience in those with whom we converse, and otherwise maintain intercourse, which we have of memory, imagination, or any other faculty of the mind. In addressing all other men, we assume that they are governed by a moral sense, or conscience, to which we may successfully appeal. "It is

*See Robert Hall's Works, Vol. I. pp. 89, 97, 99, 101.

North American Review, Vol. XXII. p. 260. - Story's Commentaries on Equity, Vol. I. chap. 1, passim.

manifest," says Bishop Butler, " great part of common language and of common behaviour over the world, is founded upon the supposition of a moral faculty, whether called conscience, moral reason, moral sense, or 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." Again, he says 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.” *

3. The substantial uniformity and consistency, which, as has been stated and illustrated above,† mankind have manifested in all ages in regard to practical morals, are most naturally and fully accounted for by ascribing them to a peculiar faculty, a conscience. From uniformity in the effect, we infer sameness in the cause. In government, literature, science, philosophy, taste, the fine arts, theoretical morals, finally, on all subjects, except the exact sciences and practical morals, men differ widely from each other (Quot homines, tot sententiæ, says Terence,) in opinion and in sentiment.

4. We may find evidence of the existence of a conscience in the human breast, in the structure of languages, and in the literature of various ages and nations. The language of a nation is the most permanent and authentic record which can exist, of the feelings, thoughts, sentiments, opinions, and convictions of the men who have formed, cultivated, and used it. And all languages contain words, constructions, and forms of expression, which spring from assuming the existence and functions of a conscience. Literature, also, most intimately connected as it is with language, offers its evidence to the same effect.

5. It may be well to collect and embody some small part of the testimony to the same effect, furnished by the most respectable and valuable writers. This testimony is of every kind, premeditated and casual, designed and incidental. It is given

*

Quoted by Dymond, Essays, p. 61.

See above, pp. 6–9.

by divines, moralists, poets, orators, civilians, historians, philosophers, and men of business. So much notice has before been taken of the general tone and character of the ancient moralists, that I may pass them by with a few citations. Plutarch says, "The light of truth is a law, not written in tables or books, but dwelling in the mind, always a living rule, which never permits the soul to be destitute of an interior guide." Hiero says, that the universal light, shining in the conscience, is "a domestic God, a God within the hearts and souls of men." Epictetus says, "God has assigned to each man a director, his own good genius; a guardian whose vigilance no slumbers interrupt, and whom no false reasonings can deceive. So that, when you have shut your door, say not that you are alone, for your God is within. What need have you of outward light to discover what is done, or to light to good actions, who have God, or that genius or divine principle, for your light?

My quotations from modern writers will be much more numerous. Dr. Hutcheson says, "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." Dr. 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." Again he says, "God has invested conscience with authority to promulgate his laws." 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." Again he says, "Happily for the human race, the intimations of Deity and the road to happiness are not left to the slow operations or doubtful inductions of reason. It is worthy of notice, that, while second thoughts are best in matters of judgment, first thoughts are always to be preferred in matters that relate to morality." Lord Bacon says, "The 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." Lord Shaftesbury says, "The 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." Dr. Reid says, "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." Dr. Price says, "Whatever our consciences dictate to us, that He (the Deity) commands more evidently and undeniably, than if by a voice from Heaven we had been called upon to do it." Dr. Watts says, the mind " contains in it the plain and general principles of morality, not explicitly as propositions, but only as native principles, by which it judges, and cannot but judge, virtue to be fit and vice unfit." Dr. Cudworth says, "The anticipations of morality do not spring merely from notional ideas, or 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 beings as such, whereby they have a natural determination in them to do some things and to avoid others.' Dr. Shepherd says, "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 his heart. This secret sense of right and wrong, for wise purposes so deeply implanted by our Creator in the human mind, has the nature, force, and effect of a law." Dr. Southey speaks of "actions being tried by the eternal standard of right and wrong, on which the unsophisticated heart unerringly pronounces." Dr. Adam Smith says, "It is altogether absurd and unintelligible, to suppose that the first per