Secondly, the crimes and wrongs often attributed to obeying the conscience are, probably, not fairly credited to the action of conscience at all. We must distinguish what men, even conscientious men, have done or do in the name of conscience, and what the moral judgment itself has pointed out and urged as duty. It is safe to affirm that nearly all these crimes have come not by the light and dictates of the conscience, but by its suppression. There are, as all history, observation and experience testify, many other strong and bad motive-forces in human nature. The appetites and passions, the lusts of ambition, the desire of wealth and power, the striving for place and fame, the willfulness of selfishness and prejudice, are forever suggesting their objects, filling the soul with their varied and plausible pleadings, until life is driven hither and thither under the restless forces. In some men these forces hardly allow any place for the conscience to act. Not from the intuition of the moral sense or the force of conscience, but from the suggestion and direction of other motives, come the crimes that are credited to zeal inspired by conscience. Conscience is not at the helm in this business. The wrongs are a result of failure to consult its dictates--of the force and direction of other elements and tendencies of action in human nature. It was not conscience that burnt Latimer and Ridley, but intolerant fanatical hate, hot passion ruling the hour. It was not conscience that made St. Bartholomew's day full of cruelty, blood and horror, but prejudice, hatred, the unreasoning rush of excited passions. It may, indeed, seem plausible to say "that day was made by the Church's conscience asserting the duty of repressing or overthrowing heresy." And it is conceivable that that conscience should testify against the evil of heresy, and the duty of endeavoring to overcome it. But the suggestion of torture, blood and slaughter as the means of such repression, was not the work of conscience. Its guidance was thrust aside in that conduct. For this use of violence, cruelty and murder, with all their repulsive horrors, conscience did not give the command, even as God did not.