Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov: The Conscience

 

Conscience is a feeling of the human spirit, subtle, radiant, distinguishing between good and evil.

This feeling discerns good and evil more clearly than the mind.

It is harder to deceive the conscience than the mind.

And with a deceived mind, supported by a sin-loving will, the conscience struggles for a long time.

Conscience is a natural law. [406]

Conscience guided man before the written Law. Fallen humanity gradually assimilated an incorrect way of thinking about God, about good and evil: falsely-named reason imparted its error to the conscience. The written Law became a necessity for guidance toward true knowledge of God and God-pleasing activity.

The teaching of Christ, sealed by holy baptism, heals the conscience from the cunning by which sin infected it (Hebrews 10:22). The restored proper operation of conscience is supported and elevated by adherence to the teachings of Christ.

A sound condition and proper operation of the conscience are possible only within the bosom of the Orthodox Church, because every accepted erroneous thought has an influence on the conscience: it deflects it from its proper operation.

Voluntary sins darken, dull, stifle, and lull the conscience.

Every sin not cleansed by repentance leaves a harmful impression on the conscience.

A constant and willful sinful life, as it were, puts it to death.

To kill the conscience – is impossible. It will accompany man until the dreadful judgment of Christ: there it will accuse its disobedient one.

According to the explanation of the holy Fathers, the “adversary” of man mentioned in the Gospel is the conscience (Matthew 5:25). [407]

Truly: it is an adversary! Because it resists every unlawful undertaking of ours.

Keep peace with this adversary on your way to heaven, during your earthly life, lest he become your accuser at the time when your eternal lot will be decided.

Scripture says: “A faithful witness shall deliver souls from evil” (Proverbs 14:25). A faithful witness is a blameless conscience: it will deliver the soul that heeds its counsel from sins before the coming of death, and from eternal torments after death.

As the blade of a knife is sharpened by a stone, so is the conscience sharpened by Christ: it is enlightened through study and refined by the fulfillment of the Gospel commandments.

A conscience enlightened and sharpened by the Gospel reveals to man his transgressions in detail and with clarity—even the slightest ones.

Do not commit violence against the adversary—conscience! Otherwise, you will lose spiritual freedom: sin will take you captive and bind you. The Prophet laments on behalf of God concerning those who trample upon conscience, accusing themselves: “Ephraim is oppressed, he crushed his adversary, because he began to walk after vanities” (Hosea 5:11).

The edge of the conscience is very delicate; it must be guarded and preserved. It is preserved when a man fulfills all the demands of conscience, and any violation of a demand, whether through weakness or impulse, is washed away with tears of repentance.

Do not think of any sin as insignificant: every sin is a transgression of the Law of God, a resistance to the will of God, a trampling upon the conscience. From trifles, from seemingly insignificant transgressions, we gradually pass to great falls into sin.

What does this mean? – is this sin great? – what kind of sin is this? – this is not a sin! – thus reasons the one who is negligent of his salvation, when he decides to taste the sinful food forbidden by the Law of God. Relying on such utterly unfounded reasoning, he continually tramples upon the conscience.

Its edge is dulled, its light fades; in the soul spread the darkness and cold of negligence and insensibility.

Insensibility becomes, in the end, the habitual state of the soul. Often it is satisfied with it; often it acknowledges it as a state pleasing to God, as peace of conscience, whereas it is the loss of the sense of one's sinfulness, the loss of the sense of the grace-filled, spiritual life, the lulling and blindness of the conscience. [408]

In such a condition, in terrible darkness and insensibility, various sins freely enter the soul, establish within it a den for themselves. Sins, growing hardened in the soul, turn into habits, as strong as nature itself, and sometimes even stronger than nature. Sinful habits are called passions. A man does not notice it—but in an imperceptible manner, he is bound on all sides by sin, in its captivity, in its slavery.

He who, constantly neglecting the reminders of conscience, has allowed himself to fall into the slavery of sin—such a one, only with the greatest difficulty and with the aid of special help from God, can break the chains of this slavery, overcome the passions that have turned, as it were, into natural properties.

Most beloved brother! With all possible attention and diligence, keep your conscience clean.

Keep your conscience clean in relation to God: fulfill all the commandments of God, both those visible to all and those seen by no one, visible and known only to God and to thy conscience.

Keep your conscience clean in relation to thy neighbor: do not be satisfied with the mere outward decency of your behavior toward others! Seek from yourself that even your very conscience may be satisfied with this behavior. It will be satisfied when not only your deeds, but also your heart, are placed in that relation to your neighbor which is commanded by the Gospel.

Keep your conscience clear regarding material possessions, avoiding excess, luxury, and negligence, remembering that all things which you use are creations of God, gifts of God to man.

Keep your conscience clear regarding yourself. Do not forget that you are the image and likeness of God, that you are obliged to present this image, in purity and holiness, unto God Himself.

Woe, woe! if the Lord recognize not His image, find no likeness of Himself in it. He will pronounce the dreadful sentence: “I know you not” (Matthew 25:12). The unworthy image shall be cast into the unquenchable flame of Gehenna.

Infinite joy shall embrace that soul upon which the Lord shall look and recognize in it a likeness of Himself, shall behold in it that beauty which He, in His infinite goodness, imparted to it at creation, restored and increased at redemption, and commanded to be preserved in undefiled integrity through the avoidance of every sin and the keeping of all the Gospel commandments.

The ceaseless, impartial guardian and reminder of such avoidance and preservation is the conscience. Amen.

 

NOTES

406. Venerable Abba Dorotheos, Teaching 3, on Conscience.
407. Venerable Abba Dorotheos, Teaching 3, on Conscience.
408. The Ladder, Discourse 18.

 

Russian source: Полное собрание творений и писем: в 8 т. [Complete Collection of Works and Letters: in 8 volumes], Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov, Palomnik, Moscow, 2011, Vol. 1.