. Your conscience will not always sleep, by Samuel Davies. They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts are now accusing, now even defending them, Romans 2 15.

The principal means which God uses in conversion is that of conscience, and indeed without this, all the rest are in vain. Outward afflictions are of service, only as they tend to awaken the conscience from its lethargy to a faithful discharge of its duty. It is conscience which makes the sinner sensible of his misery and scourges him. The lashes of a guilty conscience are intolerable, and some under them have chosen strangling and suicide rather than life.

conscience is a serpent in his breast, which bites and gnaws his heart, and he can no more avoid it than he can fly from himself. Let not such of you as have never been tortured with its remorse congratulate yourselves upon your happiness, for you are not innocents. Your conscience will not always sleep. It will not always lie torpid and inactive like a snake benumbed with cold in your breast. It will awaken you either to your conversion or condemnation. Either the fire of God's wrath flaming from His law will enliven it in this world to sting you with medicinal anguish, or the unquenchable fire of His vengeance in the lake of fire and brimstone will thaw it into life. and then it will horribly rage in your breast and diffuse its tormenting poison through your whole frame, and then it will become a never-dying worm and prey upon your hearts forever.