Note 1 — ISAIAH. (continued 3)

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.