A treatise on comforting afflicted consciences - The Digital Puritan

INTRODUCTION.ixdently balance between the agonies of remorse, thedread of punishment, the pains of death, and the possibilityof future anguish ; and as the least of evils,desperately lift their hands against theniselves, andviolate the tabernacle of their own life. If one susceptibilityso powerful as that of self-love may thusbecome obviated, why may not another ?The just idea of conscience admits this possibility.It has regard to the acknowledged law of the humanmind, that the suggestions of one set of feelings maybe affected and even overcome by the greater force ofthose of another. Thus the murderer, who has longcherished his revenge, and ultimately sees his victimwithin his grasp, may probably destroy him withoutrepugnance. He may draw the poignard from hisquivering breast with no other feelings than the satisfactionarising from the achievement of a long-intendedproject. It is afterwards, when this revenge has beengratified, and the natural action of his feelings isrestored, that he awakens to the witherings of remorse.He was at the time of the deed insusceptibleof them, for the same reason that he was also incapableof telling at that moment the cube of nine or thesquare of sixteen. The return of the degree of quiescencenecessary for the performance of an arithmeticalprocess, would witness the returning action of themoral sense.It has been beautifully said, that " the heart of manmay be allegorically represented by an island level withthe water which bathes it. On the pure white marbleof the island are engraved the precepts of the law ofnature. Near them is one who bends his eyes uponthe inscription, and reads it aloud. This is the geniusb