“When old age comes on, and repentance calls him to look back upon this black account, and state it over again with his conscience --CONSCIENCE looks into the STATUTES AT LARGE; --finds no express law broken by what he has done; --perceives no penalty or forfeiture of goods and chattels incurred; --sees no scourge waving over his head, or prison opening his gates upon him: --What is there to affright his conscience? --Conscience has got safely entrenched behind the Letter of the Law; sits there invulnerable, fortified with #Cases# and #Reports# so strongly on all sides; --that it is not preaching can dispossess it of its hold.” [Here Corporal _Trim_ and my uncle _Toby_ exchanged looks with each other. --Aye, aye, _Trim!_ quoth my uncle _Toby_, shaking his head, ------these are but sorry fortifications, _Trim_. ------O! very poor work, answered _Trim_, to what your Honour and I make of it. ----The character of this last man, said Dr. _Slop_, interrupting _Trim_, is more detestable than all the rest; and seems to have been taken from some pettifogging Lawyer amongst you: --Amongst us, a man’s conscience could not possibly continue so long _blinded_, ----three times in a year, at least, he must go to confession. Will that restore it to sight? quoth my uncle _Toby_. ----Go on, _Trim_, quoth my father, or _Obadiah_ will have got back before thou hast got to the end of thy sermon. ----’Tis a very short one, replied _Trim_. ----I wish it was longer, quoth my uncle _Toby_, for I like it hugely. --_Trim_ went on.] “A fourth man shall want even this refuge; --shall break through all their ceremony of slow chicane; ----scorns the doubtful workings of secret plots and cautious trains to bring about his purpose: ----See the bare-faced villain, how he cheats, lies, perjures, robs, murders! --Horrid! --But indeed much better was not to be expected, in the present case--the poor man was in the dark! ------his priest had got the keeping of his conscience; ----and all he would let him know of it, was, That he must believe in the Pope; --go to Mass; --cross himself; --tell his beads; --be a good Catholic, and that this, in all conscience, was enough to carry him to heaven. What; --if he perjures! --Why; --he had a mental reservation in it. --But if he is so wicked and abandoned a wretch as you represent him; --if he robs, --if he stabs, will not conscience, on every such act, receive a wound itself? --Aye, --but the man has carried it to confession; ----the wound digests there, and will do well enough, and in a short time be quite healed up by absolution. O Popery! what hast thou to answer for? ----when, not content with the too many natural and fatal ways, thro’ which the heart of man is every day thus treacherous to itself above all things; --thou hast wilfully set open the wide gate of deceit before the face of this unwary traveller, too apt, God knows, to go astray of himself; and confidently speak peace to himself, when there is no peace.