read in the light of Rousseau's
sensuality and Voltaire's malignity, wear a dead and livid hue, like
objects seen in the illumination from phosphorus or rotten wood; yet,
nevertheless, they are visible and readable, and testify as distinctly as
if they issued from elevated and noble natures, that the teachings of
man's conscience are not obeyed by man's heart,--that a man may praise
and admire virtue, while he loves and practises vice.

II. A second proof that the approbation of goodness is not the love of it
is found in the fact, that _it is impossible not to approve of goodness_,
while it is possible not to love it. The structure of man's conscience is
such, that he can commend only the right; but the nature of his will is
such, that he may be conformed to the right or the wrong. The conscience
can give only one judgment; but the heart and will are capable of two
kinds of affection, and two courses of action. Every rational creature is
shut up, by his moral sense, to but one moral conviction. He must approve
the right and condemn the wrong. He cannot approve the wrong and condemn
the right; any more than he can perceive that two and two make five. The
human conscience is a rigid and stationary faculty. Its voice may be
stifled or drowned, for a time; but it can never be made to titter two
discordant voices. It is for this reason, that the approbation of
goodness is necessary and universal. Wicked men and wicked angels must
testify that benevolence is right, and malevolence is wrong; though they
hate the former, and love the latter.

But it is not so with the human _will_. This is not a rigid and
stationary faculty. It is capable of turning this way, and that way. It
was created holy, and it turned from holiness to sin, in Adam's
apostasy. And now, under the operation of the Divine Spirit, it turns
back again, it _converts_ from sin to holiness. The will of man is thus
capable of two courses of action, while his conscience is capable of only
one judgment; and hence he can see and approve the right, yet love and
practise the wrong. If a man's conscience changed along with his heart
and his will, so that when he began to love and practise sin, he at the
same time began to approve of sin, the case would be different. If, when
Adam apostatised from God, his conscience at that moment began to take
sides with his sin, instead of condemning it, then, indeed, neither Ovid,
nor Horace, nor Rousseau, nor any other one of Adam's