"And therefore Conscience is called [...] The Household Guardian, The Domestick God, The Spirit or Angel of the place: and when we call God to witness, we only mean, that our conscience is right, and that God and Gods vicar, our conscience, knows it."
— Taylor, Jeremy (bap. 1613, 1667)
Place of Publication
London
Publisher
Printed by R. Norton for R. Royston
Date
1660, 1676
Metaphor
"And therefore Conscience is called [...] The Household Guardian, The Domestick God, The Spirit or Angel of the place: and when we call God to witness, we only mean, that our conscience is right, and that God and Gods vicar, our conscience, knows it."
Metaphor in Context
2. That providence which governs all the world, is nothing else but God present by his providence: and God is in our hearts by his Laws: he rules in us by his Substitute, our conscience. God sits there and gives us Laws; and as God said
to Moses, I have made thee a god to Pharaoh, that is, to
give him Laws, and to minister in the execution of those Laws,
and to inflict angry sentences upon him; so hath God done
to us. He hath given us Conscience to be in Gods stead to
us, to give us Laws, and to exact obedience to those Laws,
to punish them that prevaricate, and to reward the obedient. And therefore Conscience is called [GREEK] The Household Guardian, The Domestick God, The Spirit or Angel of the place: and when we
call God to witness, we only mean, that our conscience is
right, and that God and Gods vicar, our conscience, knows
it. So Lactantius: Meminerit Deum se habere testem,
id est, ut ego arbitror, mentem suam, qua nihil homini dedit
Deus ipse divinius. Let him remember that he hath God
for his witness, that is, as I suppose, his mind; than which
God hath given to man nothing that is more divine. In sum,
It is the image of God; and as in the mysterious Trinity, we
adore the will, memory, and understanding, and Theology contemplates three persons in the analogies, proportions, and correspondences, of them: so in this also we see plainly that Conscience is that likeness of God, in which he was pleased to make man. For although conscience be primarily
founded in the understanding, as it is the Lawgiver and
Dictator; and the rule and dominion of conscience fundatur in intellectu, is established in the understanding part;
yet it is also Memory, when it accuses or excuses, when it makes joyful and sorrowful; and there is in it some mixture
of will, as I shall discourse in the sequel; so that conscience
is a result of all, of Understanding, Will, and Memory.
(pp. 1-2)
(pp. 1-2)
Provenance
Reading
Citation
Taylor, Jeremy. Ductor Dubitantium, or, The Rule of Conscience in all her General Measures Serving as a Great Instrument for the Determination of Cases of Conscience. London: Printed by R. Norton for R. Royston, 1676. <Link to EEBO>
Date of Entry
01/11/2010
