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           Conscience, by office, is appointed to judge of a man’s actions and state, whether good or bad, pardoned or unpardoned.  If the state be good, then it is to acquit and comfort; if evil, then to accuse and con­demn him; therefore the ‘evil conscience’ here, is the accusing conscience.  From this ‘evil conscience’ we are said to be ‘sprinkled,’ that is, freed by the blood of Christ sprinkled on us.  It is sin the evil conscience accuseth of, and wrath, the due punishment for that, it condemns the poor creature unto; and to be sprinkled with the blood of Christ is to have the blood of Christ applied to the heart by the Spirit, for pardon and reconciliation with God.  Sprinkling in the law did denote the cleansing of the person so sprinkled from all legal impurities; yea, the believing soul from all sinful uncleanness by the blood of Christ, which was signified by the blood of those sacrifices.  Therefore David prays, ‘Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean,’ Ps. 51:7—that is, apply the blood of Christ to my troubled conscience, as they did with the bunch of hyssop did the blood of the beast into which it was dipped upon the leper, to cleanse him, ‘then,’ saith he, ‘I shall be clean,’ Lev. 14:6.  This sin, which now doth affright my conscience, shall be washed off, and I at peace, as if I had never sinned.  

To this sprinkling of blood the Holy Ghost alludes, where we are said in the gospel administration to be ‘come...to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel,’ Heb. 12:24, that is, ‘better things’ in the conscience.  Abel’s blood, sprinkled in the guilt of it upon Cain’s conscience, spake swords and daggers, hell and damnation; but the blood of Christ sprinkled in the conscience of a poor trembling sinner speaks pardon and peace.  Hence it is called ‘the answer of a good con­science toward God, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ,’ I Pet. 3:21.  An answer supposeth a ques­tion, an ‘answer toward God’ supposeth a question from God to the creature.  Now the question God here is supposed to propound to the poor creature may be conceived to be this, viz. what canst thou say —who art a sinner, and standest by the curse of my righteous law doomed to death and damnation—why thou shouldst not die the death pronounced against every sinner?

           Now the soul that hath heard of Christ, and hearing of him hath received him by faith into his heart, is the person, and the only person, that can answer this question so as to satisfy God or himself. Take the answer as it is formed and fitted for, yea, put into the mouth of every believer, by the apostle Paul, ‘Who is he that condemneth?  It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us,’ Rom. 8:34.  Such an answer this is that God himself cannot object against it, and therefore St. Paul, representing all believers, triumphs in the invincible strength thereof against all the enemies of our salvation, ‘who shall separate us from the love of Christ? ver. 35, and proceeds to challenge in death and devils, with all their attendants, to come and do their worst against believers who have got this breast-work about them, and at last he displays his victorious colours, and goes out of the field with this holy confidence, that none—be they what they will—shall ever be able to hurt them: ‘I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities,...shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord,’ Rom. 8:38, 39.  In him he lodg­eth his colours, and lays up all his confidence.  But I am afraid I have been too long; if I can be said to be too long on this subject—the richest vein in the whole mine of gospel treasure.

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   From what quarter comes this good news, that God is reconciled to a poor soul, and that his sins are pardoned?  Surely from the gospel of Christ, and no other way besides.  Here alone is the covenant of peace to be read betwixt God and sinners; here the sacrifice by which this pardon is purchased; here the means discovered by which poor sinners may have benefit of this purchase; and therefore here alone can the accusing conscience find peace.  Had the stung Israelites looked on any other object besides the bra­zen serpent, they had never been healed.  Neither will the stung conscience find ease with looking upon any besides Christ in the gospel promise.  The Levite and the priest looked on the wounded man, but would not come near him.  There he might have lain and per­ished in his blood for all them.  It was the good Sa­maritan that poured oil into his wounds.  

Not the law, but Christ by his blood, bathes and supplies, closeth and cureth, the wounded conscience.  Not a drop of oil in all the world to be got that is worth anything for this purpose besides what is provided and laid up in this gospel vial.  There was abundance of sacrifices offered up in the Jewish church; yet, put all the blood of those beasts together which was poured out from first to last in that dispensation, and they were not able to quiet one conscience or purge away one sin. The ‘conscience of sin,’ as the apostle phraseth it, Heb. 10:2—that is, guilt in their conscience—would still have remained unblotted notwithstanding all these, if severed from what was spiritually signified by them.  And the reason is given, ver. 4, ‘for it is not pos­sible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.’  There is no proportion betwixt the blood of beasts, though it should swell into a river—a sea, and the demerit of the least sin.  Man’s sin deserves man’s death, and that eternal, both of body and soul, in hell.  

This is the price God hath set upon the head of every sin.  Now, the death of beasts being so far be­neath this price which divine justice demands as satis­faction for the wrong sin doeth him, it must needs be as far beneath pacifying the sinner’s conscience —which requires as much to satisfy it, yea, the very same, as it doth to satisfy the justice of God himself. But in the gospel, behold, joyful news is brought to the sinner’s ears, of a fountain of blood there opened, which for its preciousness is as far above the price that divine justice demands for man's, as the blood of bulls and beasts was beneath it, and that is the blood of Jesus Christ, who freely poured it out upon the cross, and by it ‘obtained eternal redemption for us,’ Heb. 9.  This is the door all true peace and joy comes into the conscience by.  Hence we are directed to bot­tom our confidence and draw our comfort here, and nowhere else: ‘Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience,’ Heb. 10:22.  Mark that, ‘sprin­kled from an evil conscience.’

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First.  Let us inquire what is the argument that is able to pacify conscience when thoroughly awakened.  Now to know this, we must inquire what is the cause of all those convulsions of horror and terror with which the consciences of men are at any time so sadly rent and distorted.  Now this is sin.  Could this little word—but great plague—be quite blotted out of men’s minds and hearts, the storm would soon be hushed, and the soul become a pacific sea, quiet and smooth, without the least wave of fear to wrinkle the face thereof.  This is the Jonah which raiseth the storm—the Achan that troubles the soul.  Wherever this comes, as was observed of a great queen in France, a war is sure to follow.  When Adam sinned, he dissolved another manner of jewel than Cleopatra did, he drank away this sweet peace of conscience in one unhappy draught, which was worth more to him than the world he lived in, Heb. 10:2.  No wonder that it rose in his conscience as soon as it was down his throat—‘they saw that they were naked.’  

Their con­sciences reproached them for cursed apostates. That therefore which brings peace to conscience must pros­trate this Goliath—throw this troubler overboard —pluck this arrow out of the soul—or else the war will not end, the storm will not down, the wound will not close and heal which conscience labours under.  Now the envenomed head of sin’s arrow, that lies burning in conscience, and, by its continual boking and throbbing there, keeps the poor sinner out of quiet—yea, sometimes in unsupportable torment and horror—is guilt.  By it the creature is alarmed up to judgment, and bound over to the punishment due to his sin; which, being no less than the infinite wrath of the eternal living God, must needs lay the poor crea­ture into a dismal agony, from the fearful expectation thereof in his accusing conscience.  He, therefore, that would use an argument to pacify and comfort a distressed conscience that lies roasting upon these burning coals of God’s wrath kindled by his guilt, must quench these coals, and bring him the certain news of this joyful message—that his sins are all pardoned; and that God, whose wrath doth so affright him is undoubtedly, yea everlastingly, reconciled to him.  This and no other argument will stop the mouth of conscience, and bring the creature to true peace with his own thoughts.  ‘Son, be of good cheer,’ said Christ to the palsied man, ‘thy sins be forgiven thee,’ Matt. 9:2.  Not, be of good cheer, thy health is given thee (thou gh that he had also); but, thy ‘sins are forgiven thee.’

           If a friend should come to a malefactor on his way to the gallows, put a sweet posy into his hands, and bid him ‘be of good cheer, smell on that,’ alas! this would bring little joy with it to the poor man’s heart, who sees the place of execution before him. But if one comes from the prince with a pardon, which he puts into his hand, and bids him be of good cheer; this, and this only, will reach the poor man’s heart, and overrun it with a sudden ravishment of joy. Truly, anything short of pardoning mercy is as incon­siderable to a troubled conscience towards any reliev­ing or pacifying of it, as that posy in a dying prisoner’s hand would be.  Conscience demands as much to sat­isfy it as God himself doth to satisfy him for the wrong the creature hath done him.  Nothing can take off conscience from accusing but that which takes off God from threatening.  Conscience is God’s sergeant he employs to arrest the sinner.  Now the sergeant hath no power to release his prisoner upon any pri­vate composition between him and the prisoner, but listens whether the debt be fully paid, or the creditor be fully satisfied; then, and not till then, he is discharged of his prisoner.  Well, we have now only one step to go further, and we will bring this demonstration to a head.