Confession
Confession is verbal humiliation. (Richard Sibbes)
Many blush to confess their faults, who never blush to commit them. (William Secker)
God puts away many in anger for their supposed goodness, but not any at all for their confessed badness. (John Trapp)
Conscience
Conscience is God's spy and man's overseer. (John Trapp)
Conscience, the domestic chaplain. (John Trapp)
A quiet conscience never produced an unquiet conversation. (John Flavel)
A good conscience and a good confidence go together. (Thomas Brooks)
No flattery can heal a bad conscience, so no slander can hurt a good one. (Thomas Watson)
Peace of conscience is nothing but the echo of pardoning mercy. (William Gurnall)
Even as he who is troubled with a burning fever is hotter than he who is parched with the sun; so is that man more troubled who hath a guilty conscience than a good man by all outward afflictions. (Daniel Cawdray)
As a lamp near expiring, shines more clearly, so conscience, that burned dimly for a time, gives a dying blaze, and discovers Him who is alone able to save or to destroy. (William Bates)
Conscience is God's sergeant He employs to arrest the sinner. Now the sergeant hath no power to release his prisoner upon any private composition between him and the prisoner; but listens, whether the debt be fully paid, or the creditor be fully satisfied; then, and not till then, he is discharged of his prisoner. (William Gurnall)
Oh, it is to be feared that there are many that give themselves to lusts, and carnal pleasures, that so they may put a foggy mist between their conscience and themselves. Others dig into the world, laboring to become senseless, that so there may be an eclipse of this light by the interposition of the earth. Others run to damnable heresies, denying Scriptures, God, heaven, hell. What are these but refuges of guilty consciences? We must distinguish between our carnal concupiscence, and conscience; between deluded imaginations, and conscience; between an erroneous and scrupulous conscience, and a well-grounded and truly informed conscience; and when we have done so, we must follow conscience as far as that follows the Word. (Anthony Burgess)
Conscience is a check to beginners in sin, reclaiming them from it and rating them for it; but this in longstanders becometh useless; either failing to discharge its office, or assaying it to no purpose: having often been slighted, it will be weary of chiding; or, if it be not wholly dumb, we shall be deaf to its reproof: as those who live by downfalls of water, are, by continual noise, so deafened as not to hear or mind it. (Isaac Barrow)
The conscience is not to be healed if it be not wounded. (William Perkins)
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