“Thus conscience, this once able monitor,——placed on high as a judge within us, and intended by our maker as a just and equitable one too,—by an unhappy train of causes and impediments, takes often such imperfect cognizance of what passes,——does its office so negligently,——sometimes so corruptly,—that it is not to be trusted alone; and therefore we find there is a necessity, an absolute necessity, of joining another principle with it, to aid, if not govern, its determinations. “So that if you would form a just judgment of what is of infinite importance to you not to be misled in,—namely, in what degree of real merit you stand either as an honest man, an useful citizen, a faithful subject to your king, “or a good servant to your God,——call in religion and morality.—Look, What is written in the law of God?——How readest thou?—Consult calm reason and the unchangeable obligations of justice and truth;——what say they? “Let CONSCIENCE determine the matter upon these reports;——and then if thy heart condemns thee not, which is the case the apostle supposes,——the rule will be infallible;”—[Here Dr. _Slop_ fell asleep]—“_thou wilt have confidence towards God_;——that is, have just grounds to believe the judgment thou hast past upon thyself, is the judgment of God; and nothing else but an anticipation of that righteous sentence which will be pronounced upon thee hereafter by that Being, to whom thou art finally to give an account of thy actions. “_Blessed is the man_, indeed, then, as the author of the book of _Ecclesiasticus_ expresses it, _who is not pricked with the multitude of his sins: Blessed is the man_ “_whose heart hath not condemned him; whether he be rich, or whether he be poor, if he have a good heart_ (a heart thus guided and informed) _he shall at all times rejoice in a chearful countenance; his mind shall tell him more than seven watch-men that sit above upon a tower on high.”_—[A tower has no strength, quoth my uncle _Toby_, unless ’tis flank’d.]—“in the darkest doubts it shall conduct him safer than a thousand casuists, and give the state he lives in, a better security for his behaviour than all the causes and restrictions put together, which law-makers are forced to multiply:—_Forced_, I say, as things stand; human laws not being a matter of original choice, but of pure necessity, brought in to fence against the mischievous effects of those consciences which are no law unto themselves; well intending, by the many provisions made,—that in all such corrupt and misguided cases, where principles and the checks of conscience will not make us upright,—to supply their “force, and, by the terrors of gaols and halters, oblige us to it.”