As regards conscience I have more than one thing to note. First, speaking (as infidels and annihilationists do) of its being the effect of education, &c., is all confusion. This confounds the intrinsic power to judge with a rule by which it judges. No one denies that it may be misled by education making such or such feelings, or an obligation. But a rule or obligation imposed (and all such rules are so) is quite different from conscience, which is the sense that there is right and wrong. Hence when called into activity by an act that such is right or wrong, it pronounces by its own judgment that this is right and that is wrong. It pronounces for itself. I may have dimmed, blinded, influenced, misled it; but conscience is the judgment I pronounce on firm, instinctive, and uninfluenced persuasion that such an act is right, such wrong. So far from its owning a law, it ceases whenever there is one which has authority, because it has not to judge for itself. It is quite true that the instinctive judgment of conscience is according to some immutable law; but this is another thing. It is not the perception of the law, but man's judgment of right and wrong in itself. It is our own knowledge of good and evil, not a rule outside us. Hence when Adam had it not—was not “become as one of us” knowing good and evil, he had a law to which obedience was to be paid, and as to an act in which there was no right and wrong in itself. He might have eaten, had it not been forbidden. Man acquired this judgment of right and wrong: of this there was no trace before. It was a question of obedience, law, and authority—of subjection to God; but he enjoyed the blessings of goodness—had to be grateful, but had no question of there being a right and a wrong perceived by himself—no power of it, no occasion for it, no possibility of it. It would have falsified his whole position. He would have ceased to be innocent. Indeed the thing was impossible; for he was not as God, holy (i.e. essentially abhorring perfectly known evil—known because of and by being holy); and sin was not in him. He could not innocently have known evil to judge it. When a law was given, it might no doubt condemn what conscience did; but conscience had no more to do. If God gave a law, man had only to obey. Again, education may corrupt the judgment as to what is right and wrong, but supposes the judging faculty. I suspect that the true test is that, whenever the conscience is falsified by education, the will and passions will be found to be at work, and, though the person may not think of it, could not be denied by a person not having his passions engaged. It is conventional right and wrong formed by circumstances.
Hence as in mere civil circumstances, convenience is the ultimate rule. We have Pascal's diet um— “juste, c'est ce qui est etabli; done tout ce qui est etabli est juste.” Only when this violates too seriously the conscience or natural sense of right and wrong, it tends to revolution—that is, will break out against the pressure. I suspect the immutable law, of right and wrong is founded on relationships, whether with God or as God has formed them. From these duties flow. Only that man having been set lord over the earth, possession has come in also. It is regulated by convention: only if it violates too much the right in others (in many) to possess, it tends to violence in order to possess, wants ministering to this.
Grace has brought us out of law into absolute obedience to a person; but then it has its own rules which we need, and has set up the absolute authority of a person and a relationship which governs conduct (i.e. right and wrong), as all relationships do, Christ being the perfect model of that in which we are with God and man. But we must not confound the rule of right and wrong with conscience or the discernment of right and wrong. “To him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin.” That rule varies divinely, even because our relationship is changed. My duty was a man's, a child of Adam's, to God and to other children of Adam; for that was my place and relationship. It is of a child, a son of God, of which Christ is the pattern. Hence our rule or test of right and wrong is universality (practically what I hold to be right for all everywhere), but modified by this principle—when the same relation exists (i.e., one formed by God), creature, son, daughter, wife, &c., man with God and with men, general or specific, whatever He has ordered. Only we must distinguish between obedience to God (or what represents Him) and conscience viewed as judging right and wrong. It is right to obey Him, wrong to disobey; and so far conscience comes in; for man had a given—has an instinctive—recognition of God; but it is not any judgment of right and wrong as such in the act itself. It is not what man acquired by the fall, i.e., the divine prerogative of judging right and wrong for himself— “one of us.”
The question may arise, how far grounds of judgment, and so far reason, enter into conscience; and I answer, Not at all. They go to lead to the estimate of the fact of the relationship, whether it be violated; and I conclude that the thing is wrong. I then pronounce judgment, not on the thing, but on myself or another. But conscience judges the thing. Conscience is at work: I call it wrong.
There are thus three ideas connected in our mind with conscience, which we must look at if we would not have confusion in our minds. First, there is the sense of responsibility to a being above us, principally to God—not the duty of loving Him (that is law), but authority. This Adam had before the fall. Secondly, there is the sense of good and evil (which is properly conscience). Thirdly, there is self-judgment or repulsion of heart as to others produced by it when an act is contemplated it condemns.