[3] Vol. III. p. 216, 217. It was probably a state of the human mind such as has been described, that our Saviour alluded to in the disciple, who was about to betray him, when he called him "a devil." Perhaps the essence of depravity, in infernal spirits, consists in their being wholly devoid of a moral faculty. In them the will has probably lost the power of chasing[4], as well as the capacity of enjoying moral good. It is true, we read of their trembling in a belief of the existence of a God, and of their anticipating future punishment, by asking, whether they were to be tormented before their time: but this is the effect of conscience, and hence arises another argument in favour of this judicial power of the mind, being distinct from the moral faculty. It would seem as if the Supreme Being had preserved the moral faculty in man from the ruins of his fall, on purpose to guide him back again to Paradise, and at the same time had constituted the conscience, both in men and fallen spirits, a kind of royalty in his moral empire, on purpose to show his property in all intelligent creatures, and their original resemblance to himself. Perhaps the essence of moral depravity in man consists in a total, but temporary suspension of the power of conscience. Persons in this situation are emphatically said in the Scriptures to be "past feeling," and to have their consciences seared with a "hot iron;" they are likewise said to be "twice dead," that is, the same torpor or moral insensibility, has seized both the moral faculty and the conscience. [4] Milton seems to have been of this opinion. Hence, after ascribing repentance to Satan, he makes him declare, "Farewell remorse: all good to me is lost, _Evil_, be thou my _good_."---- PARADISE LOST, Book IV. 5. Do we ever observe instances of the existence of only _one_ of the three intellectual powers of the mind that have been named, in the absence of the other two? We observe something of the same kind with respect to the moral faculty. I once knew a man, who discovered no one mark of reason, who possessed the moral sense or faculty in so high a degree, that he spent his whole life in acts of benevolence. He was not only inoffensive (which is not always the case with idiots), but he was kind and affectionate to every body. He had no ideas of time, but what were suggested to him by the returns of the stated periods for public worship, in which he appeared to take great delight. He spent several hours of every day in devotion, in which he was so careful to be private, that he was once found in the most improbable place in the world for that purpose, viz. in an oven.