work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
3617,"",Reading,2010-01-12 18:29:20 UTC,"10. Now there are two ways by which God reigns in the mind of a man, 1. Faith, and, 2. Conscience. Faith contains all the treasures of Divine knowledge and speculation. Conscience is the treasury of Divine commandments and rules in practical things. Faith tells us why; Conscience tells us what we are to do. Faith is the measure of our perswasions; Conscience is the measure of our Actions. And as faith is a gift of God, so is Conscience; that is, as the understanding of a man is taught by the Spirit of God in Scripture, what to believe, how to distinguish truth from errors; so is the Conscience instructed to distinguish good and evil, how to please God, how to do justice and charity to our neighbour, and how to treat our selves; so that when the revelations of Christ and the Commandments of God are fully recorded in our minds, then we are perfectly instructed to every good work.
(p. 4)",,17661,"","""Now there are two ways by which God reigns in the mind of a man, 1. Faith, and, 2. Conscience.""","",2010-01-12 18:29:20 UTC,"Book I, Chapter I"
3617,"",Reading,2010-01-12 18:31:17 UTC,"10. Now there are two ways by which God reigns in the mind of a man, 1. Faith, and, 2. Conscience. Faith contains all the treasures of Divine knowledge and speculation. Conscience is the treasury of Divine commandments and rules in practical things. Faith tells us why; Conscience tells us what we are to do. Faith is the measure of our perswasions; Conscience is the measure of our Actions. And as faith is a gift of God, so is Conscience; that is, as the understanding of a man is taught by the Spirit of God in Scripture, what to believe, how to distinguish truth from errors; so is the Conscience instructed to distinguish good and evil, how to please God, how to do justice and charity to our neighbour, and how to treat our selves; so that when the revelations of Christ and the Commandments of God are fully recorded in our minds, then we are perfectly instructed to every good work.
(I.i, p. 4)",2011-06-14,17662,"","""Conscience is the treasury of Divine commandments and rules in practical things.""","",2011-06-14 04:11:10 UTC,"Book I, Chapter I"
3617,"",Reading,2010-01-12 18:35:51 UTC,"11. S. Bernard comparing the Conscience to a house, says it stands upon seven pillars. 1. Good will. 2. Memory of Gods benefits. 3. A clean heart. 4. A free spirit. 5. A right Soul. 6. A devout mind. 7. An enlightned
reason. These indeed are, some of them, the fruits and effects, some of them are the annexes and appendages of a good conscience, but not the foundations or pillars upon which conscience is built.
(p. 4)",,17663,"","""S. Bernard comparing the Conscience to a house, says it stands upon seven pillars.""","",2010-01-12 18:35:51 UTC,"Book I, Chapter I"
3617,"",Reading,2010-01-12 18:48:44 UTC,"12. Conscience relies not at all upon the will directly. For though a Conscience is good or bad, pure or impure; and so the Doctors of Mystic Theologie divide and handle it, yet a conscience is not made so by the will, formally, but by the understanding. For that is a good conscience, which is rightly taught in the word of life ; that is impure and defiled, which hath entertained evil and ungodly principles; such is theirs, who follow false lights, evil teachers, men of corrupt minds. For the conscience is a Judge and a Guide, a Monitor and a Witness, which are the offices of the knowing, not of the chusing faculty. Spiritum, correctorem, & paedagogum anima, so Origen calls it. The instructor of the Soul, the spirit, the corrector. Naturale judicatorium,
or naturalis vis judicandi, so S. Basil. The natural
power of judging, or natures judgment-seat. Lucem
intellectus nostri, so Damascen calls it, The light of our
understanding. The conscience does accuse or excuse a man before God, which the will cannot. If it could, we should all stand upright at doomesday, or at least those would be acquitted, who fain would do well, but miss, who
do the things they love not, and love those they do not; that is, they who strive to enter in, but shall not be able. But to accuse or excuse is the office of a faculty which can neither will nor chuse, that is, of the conscience, which is properly a record, a book, and a judgment-seat.
(p. 4)",,17664,"","""For the conscience is a Judge and a Guide, a Monitor and a Witness, which are the offices of the knowing, not of the chusing faculty.""","",2010-01-12 18:49:16 UTC,"Book I, Chapter I"
3617,"",Reading,2010-01-12 18:51:14 UTC,"12. Conscience relies not at all upon the will directly. For though a Conscience is good or bad, pure or impure; and so the Doctors of Mystic Theologie divide and handle it, yet a conscience is not made so by the will, formally, but by the understanding. For that is a good conscience, which is rightly taught in the word of life ; that is impure and defiled, which hath entertained evil and ungodly principles; such is theirs, who follow false lights, evil teachers, men of corrupt minds. For the conscience is a Judge and a Guide, a Monitor and a Witness, which are the offices of the knowing, not of the chusing faculty. Spiritum, correctorem, & paedagogum anima, so Origen calls it. The instructor of the Soul, the spirit, the corrector. Naturale judicatorium,
or naturalis vis judicandi, so S. Basil. The natural
power of judging, or natures judgment-seat. Lucem
intellectus nostri, so Damascen calls it, The light of our
understanding. The conscience does accuse or excuse a man before God, which the will cannot. If it could, we should all stand upright at doomesday, or at least those would be acquitted, who fain would do well, but miss, who
do the things they love not, and love those they do not; that is, they who strive to enter in, but shall not be able. But to accuse or excuse is the office of a faculty which can neither will nor chuse, that is, of the conscience, which is properly a record, a book, and a judgment-seat.
(p. 4)",,17665,"","""But to accuse or excuse is the office of a faculty which can neither will nor chuse, that is, of the conscience, which is properly a record, a book, and a judgment-seat.""","",2010-01-12 18:51:14 UTC,"Book I, Chapter I"
3617,"",Reading,2010-01-12 19:05:22 UTC,"15. And therefore our wills also must be humble, and apt, and desirous to learn, and willing to obey. Obedite & intelligetis; by humility and obedience we shall be best instructed. Not that by this means the conscience shall receive direct aids, but because by this means it will be left in its own aptnesses and dispositions, and when it is not hindred, the word of God will enter and dwell upon the conscience. And in this sense it is that some say that [Conscience is the inclination and propension of the will corresponding to practical knowledge] Will and Conscience are like the cognati
sensus, the Touch and the Taste; or the Teeth and the Ears, affected and assisted by some common objects, whose effect is united in matter and some real events, and distinguished by their formalities, or metaphysical beings.
(p. 5)",,17666,"","""Will and Conscience are like the cognati sensus, the Touch and the Taste; or the Teeth and the Ears, affected and assisted by some common objects, whose effect is united in matter and some real events, and distinguished by their formalities, or metaphysical beings.""","",2010-01-12 19:06:02 UTC,"Book I, Chapter I"
3617,"",Reading,2010-01-12 19:17:34 UTC,"17. May be an effect and emanation from a holy Conscience; but conscience in itself may be either good or bad, or it may be good when the heart is not clean, as it is in all the worst men who actually sin against conscience, doing that which conscience forbids them. In these men the principles are holy, the instruction perfect, the law remaining, the perswasions uncancelled; but against all this torrent there is a whirlwind of passions, and filthy resolutions, and wilfulness, which corrupt the heart, while as yet the head is uncorrupted in the direct rules of conscience. But yet sometimes a clean conscience and a clean heart are the same; and a good conscience is taken for holiness, so S. Paul uses the word, holding faith and a good conscience, which some having put away have made shipwreck [GREEK], so Clemens Alexandrinus explicates the place, they have by infidelity polluted their divine and holy conscience: but S. Paul seems to argue
otherwise, and that they, laying aside a good conscience, fell into infidelity ; their hearts and conscience were first corrupted, and then they turned heretics. But this sense of a good conscience is that which in Mystic Divinity is more properly handled, in which sense also it is sometimes used in
law. Idem est conscientiaquod vir bonus intrinsece, said
Ungarellus out of Baldus; and from thence Aretine*
gathered this conclusion, that if any thing be committed to
the conscience of any one, they must stand to his determination, & ab ea appellari non potest ; there lies no appeal, quia vir bonus, pro quo sumitur conscientia, non potest mentiri et falsum dicere vel judicare. A good man, for whom the word conscience is used, cannot lye, or give a false judgment or testimony: of this sort of conscience it is said by Ben Sirach, bonam substantiam habet, cui non est peccatum in conscientia. It is a mans wealth to have no sin in our conscience. But in our present and future discourses, the word conscience is understood in the Philosophical sence, not in the Mystical, that is, not for the conscience as it is invested with the accidents of good or bad, but as it abstracts
from both, but is capable of either.
(p. 5)",,17667,"","""In these men the principles are holy, the instruction perfect, the law remaining, the perswasions uncancelled; but against all this torrent there is a whirlwind of passions, and filthy resolutions, and wilfulness, which corrupt the heart, while as yet the head is uncorrupted in the direct rules of conscience.""","",2010-01-12 19:17:34 UTC,"Book I, Chapter I"
3617,"","Reading Peter Goodrich's ""The New Casuistry."" Critical Inquiry 33, no. 4 (Summer 2007): 683. <Link to Critical Inquiry>",2010-01-12 19:29:05 UTC,"21. That is, of that which God hath declared to be good or evil respectively, the conscience is to be informed. God hath taken care that his laws shall be published to all his subjects, he hath written them where they must needs read them, not in Tables of stone or Phylacteries on the forehead, but in a secret Table: The conscience or mind of a man is the [GREEK], the preserver of the Court Rolls of Heaven. But I added this clause to the former of [a rule] because the express line of Gods rule is not the adequate measure of
conscience: but there are analogies and proportions, and commensurations of things with things, which make the measure full and equal. For he does not always keep a good conscience who keeps only the words of a Divine law,
but the proportions also and the reasons of it, the similitudes
and correspondences in like instances, are the measures of
conscience.
(p. 6)",,17668,"I LEFT OFF HERE. The text is exhausting!! — Skipping ahead to p. 43 or so? Following Goodrich and taking his last metaphor. Note, Goodrich emphasizes the light metaphors. This may be an error in emphasis.","""That is, of that which God hath declared to be good or evil respectively, the conscience is to be informed. God hath taken care that his laws shall be published to all his subjects, he hath written them where they must needs read them, not in Tables of stone or Phylacteries on the forehead, but in a secret Table: The conscience or mind of a man is the [...], the preserver of the Court Rolls of Heaven.""","",2010-01-12 19:44:12 UTC,"Book I, Chapter I"
3617,"","Reading Peter Goodrich's ""The New Casuistry."" Critical Inquiry 33, no. 4 (Summer 2007): 684. <Link to Critical Inquiry>",2010-01-12 19:59:30 UTC,"9. (1.) There is to every state and to every part of Man given a proportionable light to guide him in that way where he ought, and is appointed to walk. In the darknesses of this World, and in the actions of common life, the Sun and
Moon in their proper seasons are to give us light: In the actions of human entercourse, and the notions tending to it, reason is our eye, and to it are notices proportion'd, drawn from nature and experience, even from all the principles with which our rational faculties usually do converse. But because a man is design'd to the knowledge of God, and of things spiritual, there must spring a new light from Heaven, and he must have new capacities, and new illuminations; that is, new eyes, and a new light: For here the eye of reason is too weak, and the natural man is not capable of the things of the Spirit, because they are spiritually discerned. Faith is the eye, and the Holy Spirit gives the light, and the word of God is the lanthorn, and the spiritual not the rational man can perceive the things of God. Secreta Dei, Deo meo,
& filiis domus ejus. God and Gods secret ones only know Gods secrets.
(p. 32-3)",,17669,"","""In the actions of human entercourse, and the notions tending to it, reason is our eye, and to it are notices proportion'd, drawn from nature and experience, even from all the principles with which our rational faculties usually do converse.""","",2010-01-12 20:01:00 UTC,"Book I, Chapter 2"
3617,"","Whitman, James Q. The origins of reasonable doubt: theological roots of the criminal trial. Yale UP, 2008. p. 179. <Link to Google Books>
",2010-01-13 20:37:45 UTC,"2. Against a doubting conscience a man may not work but against a scrupulous he may. For a scrupulous conscience does not take away the proper determination of the understanding; but it is like a Woman handling of a Frog or a Chicken, which, all their friends tell them, can do them no hurt, and they are convinced in reason that they cannot, they believe it and know it ; and yet when they take the little creature into their hands, they shreek, and sometimes hold fast, and find their fears confuted, and sometimes they let go, and find their reason useless.
(p. 160)",,17674,"","""For a scrupulous conscience does not take away the proper determination of the understanding; but it is like a Woman handling of a Frog or a Chicken, which, all their friends tell them, can do them no hurt, and they are convinced in reason that they cannot, they believe it and know it ; and yet when they take the little creature into their hands, they shreek, and sometimes hold fast, and find their fears confuted, and sometimes they let go, and find their reason useless.""","",2010-01-13 20:38:13 UTC,"Book I, Chapter 6, Rule II"