+ The Sermon on the Abuses of Conscience closed the fourth volume- the last that Sterne himself published.

-Trust we have a good

Surely you will say,

if there is anything in this life which a man may depend upon, and to the knowledge of which he is capable of arriving upon the most indisputable evidence, it must be this very thing, Whether he has a good

Conscience, or no.

If a man thinks at all, he cannot well be a stranger to the true state of this account: He must be privy to his own thoughts and desires- He must remember his past pursuits, and know certainly the true springs and motives, which, in general, have governed the actions of his life.

In other matters we may be deceived by false appearances; and, as the wise man complains, Hardly do we guess right at the things that are upon the earth, and with labour do

we find the things that are before us:

but here the mind has all the evidence and

facts within herself:

web she has wove:

is conscious of the

knows its texture

and fineness, and the exact share which every passion has had in working upon the several designs, which virtue or vice has plann'd before her.

Now,

as Conscience is nothing else but the knowledge which the mind has within itself of this; and the judgment, either of approbation or censure, which it unavoidably makes upon the successive actions of our lives,

'tis plain, you will say, from the very terms of the proposition, whenever this inward testimony goes against a man, and he stands self-accused, that he must necessarily be a guilty man. And, on the contrary, when the report is favourable on his side, and his heart condemns him not, that is not a matter of trust, as the Apostle intimates, but a matter of certainty and fact, that the Conscience is good, and that the man must be good also.

At first sight, this may seem to be a true state of the case; and I make no doubt but the knowledge of right and wrong is so truly impress'd upon the mind of man; that, did no