Adams on conscience

Deeds prove more than words; never tell me your science, show to me the fruits of your good conscience ...
Knowledge directs conscience; conscience perfects knowledge ...
Conscience is to the soul as the stomach is to the body ...
(5) The fifth is the manual, the pocket-book, the bosom-book of our conscience. The other books will manifest what we should have done; this, what we have done. We cannot except against it, because it hath always been in our own keeping, and nothing shall be written in it, but what is subscribed by our proper hand.

It hath three offices: first, to give in testimony of something acted or omitted. Secondly, to examine whether the action or omission were lawful or unwarrantable. Thirdly, to give judgment according to that evidence.

It can both bind and loose; it binds a man faster than the Philistines bound Samson, and looseth him sooner than the angel loosed Peter. It is a private law within man : when law and chancery too have done with him, (and that not seldom is long before it hath done with him,) then conscience taxes him in hand. It is a true looking-glass, that represents all blemishes, without favour or flattery. It is below God, but above man, a vice-god ; and deals with us here, as God will do hereafter. There is a bill framed out of the law, it is high treason against our high Sovereign's crown and dignity: our works are the evidence, and conscience is the witness, which will not be bribed to give a false testimony.

If the main course of our life be gracious, and our conscience will speak for our works, that they proceed from a sound faith and honest heart; we are then quit by proclamation, for nobody comes in against us: the world may not, our sins shall not, our conscience must not, the angels dare not, God will not, the devil cannot, for he is the father of lies, and his word will not be taken.

But if otherwise, all these will be against us: there need no subpoenas to fetch in witnesses; they come unsent for, and cannot be kept back; they will speak the truth, and all the truth. As intelligencers for statesmen mingle themselves with all companies, but use their best art to keep themselves concealed; so the conscience is God's informer, a spy in the soul, mixing herself with all our thoughts and actions: it is indeed the reflection of the soul upon itself. Though we know not what this conscience is, yet this conscience knows what we are. As Pilate asked Christ, What is truth? John xviii. 38, when the Truth stood before him; so many ask what is conscience? when indeed conscience is within them.

Exposition of 2 Peter, 34, 588, 670

Adams Quotes 01

The ambitious climbs up high and perilous stairs, and never cares how to come down; the desire of rising hath swallowed up his fear of a fall.
- [Ambition]

Ahab cast a covetous eye at Naboth's vineyard, David a lustful eye at Bathsheba. The eye is the pulse of the soul; as physicians judge of the heart by the pulse, so we by the eye; a rolling eye, a roving heart. The good eye keeps minute time, and strikes when it should; the lustful, crochet-time, and so puts all out of tune.
- [Eyes]

Conscience is God's deputy in the soul.
- [Conscience]

The covetous man is like a camel with a great hunch on his back; heaven's gate must be made Higher and broader, or he will hardly get in.
- [Covetousness]

The covetous man pines in plenty, like Tantalus up to the chin in water, and yet thirsty.
- [Covetousness]

Death is as near to the young as to the old; here is all the difference: death stands behind the young man's back, before the old man's face.
- [Death]

His father was no man's friend but his owne, and he (saith the prouerbe) is no man's for else.
- Diseases of the Soul (p 53) [Enemies]

He who sends the storm steers the vessel.
- [Providence]

Source: GIGA