[1] Blind and ignorant consciences speak peace, or hold their
peace, because they have not skill enough to find fault;
they swallow many a fly, and digest all well enough. While
the scales were upon Paul's eyes, he was alive and quiet;
he thought concupiscence, the sin and breeder of all sin,
to be no sin. Such consciences discern sin as we do stars
in a dark night,--see only the great ones of the first
magnitude, whereas a bright even discovers millions; or as
we see a few motes in the dark houses, which sunlight shows
to be infinite. Such think good meaning will serve the
turn, that all religions will save, or a "Lord, have mercy
on us," at the last gasp. The law which nature has
engraven, they tread out with sins, as men do the
engravings of tombs they walk on with foul shoes: they dare
not look in the glass of God's law, which makes sin abound,
lest the foolishness of their souls should affright them. A
number of such sottish souls there be, whose consciences,
if God opens, as He did the eyes of the prophet's servant,
they shall see armies and legions of sins and devils in
them.--_Ward,_ 1577-1639.