A treatise on comforting afflicted consciences - The Digital Puritan

:xiiINTRODUCTION.are mere impressions : that our minds are adapted to beaffected by them in the same involuntary manner as ourbodily senses ai'e by the qualities of the different objectspresented to them : that in consequence, we are no moreculpable or praiseworthyfor our good or evil conduct,than we are for our ideas of sweet and bitter, pleasureand pain : that, in a word, the existence of naturalconscience militates against the perfect responsibilityof man.To this it is replied, that the suggestions of conscienceare neither so powerful as to constrain the voluntarypowers of man, nor so weak or transient as to allowof any excuse derived from want of sufficient direction.2. There are several considerations derived from thenature of circumstances, which would seem to renderit probable that such an original faculty as consciencewould have been imparted to mankind.It is conceded, that owing to the limitation of ourpowers we should be exceedingly cautious how far wespeculate concerning what might or might not be expectedin the intricate, multiform, immense governmentof God, That which might seem likely at one stage ofour attainments, may seem to be much less so atanother. Still it is submitted, that the circumstancesof man as a moral agent admit of one presumption,which seems as much as any other to be well foundedit is, that man would be endowed by the Creator withthe faculty of natural conscience. The mind of manis the source of all his actions, and consequently of alltheir immediate and remote effects upon himself andothers, not only throughout the limits of time, butthroughout eternity itself,it would hence seem likelyin the highest degree, that it should be furnished with