1. Conscience is oftentimes distressed or comforted by its reflection on those actions, which no man on earth can know: and therefore when it fears punishment for those crimes, which come not under the cognizance of human laws, the uneasiness that it finds in itself, and its dread of punishment, plainly discovers that it is apprehensive of a divine being, who has been offended, whose wrath and resentment it fears. All the endeavours that men can use to bribe, blind, or stupify their consciences, will not prevent these fears; but the sad apprehension of deserved punishment, from one whom they conceive to know all things, even the most secret crimes committed, this makes persons uneasy, whether they will or no. Whithersoever they fly, or what amusement soever they betake themselves to, conscience will still follow them with its accusations and dread of divine wrath: _The wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest_, Isa. lvii. 20. _A dreadful sound is in his ears; in prosperity the destroyer shall come upon him_, Job xv. 21. _Terrors take hold of him as waters, a tempest stealeth him away in the night. The east-wind carrieth him away, and he departeth; and as a storm hurleth him out of his place. For God shall cast upon him, and not spare; he would fain flee out of his hand_, Job xxvii. 20, 21, 22. _The wicked flee when no man pursueth_, Prov. xxviii. 1. And this is universal, there are none but are, some time or other, liable to these fears, arising from self-reflection, and the dictates of conscience; the most advanced circumstances in the world will not fortify against, or deliver from them, Acts xxiv. 25. _As Paul reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, Felix trembled._ Even Pharaoh himself, the most hard-hearted sinner in the world, who would fain have forced a belief upon himself that there is no God, and boldly said, _Who is the Lord, that I should obey him?_ yet he could not ward off the conviction that there is a God, which his own conscience suggested. Therefore he was forced to say, Exod. ix. 27. _I have sinned this time; the Lord is righteous, and I and my people are wicked._ And indeed all the pleasures that any can take in the world, who give themselves up to the most luxurious way of living, cannot prevent their trembling, when conscience suggests some things terrible to them for their sins. Thus Belshazzar, when in the midst of his jollity and drinking wine, having made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, when he saw the finger of a man’s hand upon the wall, it is said, Dan. v. 6. _The king’s countenance was changed, and his thoughts troubled him; so that the joints of his loins were loosed, and his knees smote one against another._