"Men do oftentimes set down to conscience," saith he, "that which is either God or Satan. The enlightened conscience of the righteous man worketh as God's Holy Spirit move him. The defiled conscience of the evil man listeneth to the promptings of Satan. And the seared conscience is as dead, and moveth not at all." "Father, can a man then kill his conscience?" "He may lay it asleep for this life, daughter: may so crush it with weights thereon laid that it is as though it had the sickness of palsy, and cannot move limb. But I count, when this life is over, it shall shake off the weight, and wake up, to a life and a torment that shall never end." "I marvel if she did," said I, rather to myself than him. "Daughter," he made answer, "whoso _she_ be, let her be. God saith not to thee, _He_, and _she_, but _I_, and _thou_. When Christ knocketh at thy door, if thou open not, shall He take it as tideful answer that thou wert full busy watching other folks' doors to see if they would open?" "Yet may we not learn, Father, from other folks' blunders?" "Hast thou so learned, daughter?" "Well, not much," said I. "A little, now and then, maybe." "I never learned much," saith he, "from the blunders of any man save Philip de Edyngdon. What I learned from other folks' evil deeds was mostly to despise and be angered with them--not to beware for myself. And that lore cometh not of God. Thou mayest learn from such things set down in Holy Writ: but verily it takes God to pen them, so that we may indeed profit and not scorn,--that we may win and not lose. Be sure that whenever God puts in thine hand a golden coin of His realm, with the King's image stamped fair thereon, Satan is near at hand, with a gold-washed copper counterfeit stamped with his image, and made so like that thou hast need to look close, to make sure which is the true. `Hold not all gold that shineth'--a wise saw, my daughter, whether it be a thing heavenly or earthly." "I will endeavour myself to profit by your good counsel, Father," said I. "But mine husband bade me write this chronicle, though, sooth to say, I had no list thereto. And if I shall leave to deal with he and she, how then may my chronicle be writ?" "Write thy chronicle, my daughter," he answered. "But write it as God hath writ His Chronicles. Set down that which men did, that which thou sawest and heardest. Beware only of digging into men's purposes where thou knewest them not, and sawest but the half thereof. And it is rarely possible for men to see the whole of that which passeth in their own day. Beware of setting down a man as all evil for one evil thing thou mayest see him to do. We see them we live amongst something too close to judge them truly. And beware, most of all, of imagining that thou canst get behind God's purposes, and lay bare all His reasons. Verily, the wisest saint on earth cannot reach to the thousandth part thereof. God can be fully understood, only of God."