_The Depth of the Conscience._
How deeply seated the conscience is in the human soul is seen in the
effect which sudden calamities produce on guilty men, even when
unaided by any determinate notion or fears of punishment after death.
The wretched Criminal, as one rudely awakened from a long sleep,
bewildered with the new light, and half recollecting, half striving to
recollect, a fearful something, he knows not what, but which he will
recognize as soon as he hears the name, already interprets the
calamities into _judgments_, executions of a sentence passed by an
_invisible_ Judge; as if the vast pyre of the Last Judgment were
already kindled in an unknown distance, and some flashes of it,
darting forth at intervals beyond the rest, were flying and lighting
upon the face of his soul. The calamity may consist in loss of
fortune, or character, or reputation; but you hear no _regrets_ from
him. Remorse extinguishes all Regret; and Remorse is the _implicit_
Creed of the Guilty.