Article I: On Right and Tender Conscience

— I. What a right conscience is. We call that conscience right which habitually pronounces truly concerning the honesty or dishonesty of an action, according to those dictates persuades or dissuades the action, and praises or censures actions done according to their merit.

This is conscience fully right, for producing which the intellect concurs with the will. For practical-practical judgments are commanded by the will.

Conscience must be called right in a diminished way when only its speculative-practical judgments are accustomed to agree with truth, so that practical persuasions and consequent affections disagree with speculative views.

II. What tender conscience is. The perfection of a right conscience is its tenderness. For that conscience is called tender or timorous which perceives even slight reasons of honesty or dishonesty, antecedently persuades or dissuades, and consequently approves or reprehends.

— Estimation. A right conscience must be held in the greatest esteem. For formally, as much as truth must be esteemed, so much praise must be attributed to it; and besides, by its judgments already and then by its goads, it is a source of moral goodness.

But as tender, it has an increased price from the quality of subtle wit, and from many good acts which would not affect a less sensitive moral balance. And it adorns man with a certain grace and flowering beauty. Finally that good conscience, whose companion is charity (1 Tim. 1, 5), at the same time strengthens the soul by an ineffable force, pacifies it by an ineffable quiet, and gladdens it by an ineffable sweetness. For, as if the forerunner of the eternal Judge, it foretells those unshaken sentences, avengers of injuries, which compensate present iniquities so that the just man may continue to walk firmly in his ways; and it seems to begin the eternal largess of undisturbed peace and happiness.

— Conditions and acquisition of a right and tender conscience. A right and tender conscience supposes a good quality both of intellect and of will: of intellect, which is suited for perceiving and weighing true reasons; of will, which dares and wills to command according to things perceived. The gifts of each faculty are partly innate, but partly can be acquired by free exercise. To this end the study of truth and sincerity greatly contributes, both exterior and also interior; a use of words alien from every excess; cleanness of heart immune from less ordered affections; preparation of a firm will; flight from every sin from a filial spirit. For delicate services are unknown by servants and hirelings, as such, but are proper to sons.

These pursuits must be fostered not only in ourselves but especially also in those whose care we have: for the most joyful fruit of prudent discipline and instruction is a good conscience. And in this supernatural order, we shall be helped very much by prayer: "Create a clean heart in me, O God, and renew a right spirit within my bowels" Ps. 50, 12.

— The precarious conscience right in a diminished way. Scarcely ever will the imperfect or diminished rectitude of conscience be preserved. For every less good action, just as it has its root in some error of the intellect, so also tends to vitiate or obscure the intellect itself.

Nor does the appetite long tolerate opposition between our actions and moral judgments. Wherefore it will try to apply the intellect to considering and estimating those reasons which lessen or excuse sins for the sinner: i.e., little by little it will pervert the intellect.