ver be quenched. Anger, grief, hatred, despair,
always dwell with an ill conscience. This is both the resemblance of hell,
and the sparks which come from that devouring fire. But, II. When the
troubled conscience, tossed up and down, and looking upon all hands for
help, and all refuge failing them, and no person caring for their soul,
when it gets once a look of Jesus, and roweth unto his shore, O what a
change! He commands the winds to calm, and the waves to cease, and says
unto him, Son, be of good comfort, thy sins are forgiven. Faith finds in
Jesus ample grounds of answering all challenges, of silencing all
temptations, of overcoming all enemies, and commands the soul to go into
its place of refuge. "Return unto thy rest, O my soul, for the Lord hath
dealt bountifully with thee," &c. Psal. cxvi. 7-9.

We shall now shut up all with the application in some uses. Use I. We may
learn hence how few have a good conscience. Faith is a rare thing, but a
good conscience is much rarer. And here we may notice, 1. That the
conscience which is dead and sleeping, is not a good conscience: every
quiet and calm conscience is not a good one. Ye may dream over your days
with the foolish virgins, and take rest in a pleasing delusion, and cry
peace, peace, and yet the end of it will be worse than the beginning. A
conscience that acts not at all, nor judges itself, is, as it were, no
conscience; either ignorance hath blinded it, and keeps it in the dark, or
wickedness hath stopped its mouth. You think your conscience good because
it tells you few of your faults, it troubles you not; but that conscience
must once speak, and do its office, it may be in a worse time for you. 2.
It is not a good conscience that always speaks good, and absolves the man.
God may condemn when it absolves. When ye walk according to false
principles and grounds, and either take a wrong rule, or know not how to
apply the rule to yourselves, shall God approve of false judgment? Your
conscience is erring and deludes you. But, 1. The good conscience is not
only a quiet conscience, but a quieted conscience. It not only hath peace,
but peace after trouble. Ye then that have no peace, but what ye had all
your days, it is but a mere fancy. The answer of a good conscience quiets
the distempered mind, it comes by the sprinkling and washing of Christ's
blood. He that hath peace on solid grounds with God, hath once taken up
his enmity against him. 2. The good conscience hath