A good conscience;— This may be called the breast-plate of righteousness. Ephesians 6:14.
—Hic murus aheneus esto, Nil conseire sibi.———
Be this thy brazen bulwark of defence, Still to preserve thy conscious innocence. FRANCIS'S HORACE.
See Proverbs 28:1. He that would apologize for the Christian religion, ought first to lead a holy life, or be a good Christian himself: this will enable him to defend Christianity with courage, and to speak with invincible force: but a wicked man hurts Christianity more by his own life, than he can help it by the finest apology. Conscience is the human understanding employed about moral or religious truths: the having a good conscience is, leading through grace a holy life, and uprightly speaking and acting according to what a man's conscience dictates. The order of the construction of the next words seems to be this: That they who calumniate your good conversation in Christ, may be ashamed, upon that very account, that they speak against you, as against wicked persons. All sober Jews and Heathens must needs have looked upon them as calumniators, who accused the Christians of sedition or gross immorality; when, by their innocent lives and patient sufferings, it appeared how excellent their religion was, and how groundless were such accusations. "I think this passage, (says Doddridge) remarkably illustrated by the strain of that Epistle of Pliny, in which he gives an account of his own conduct in persecuting the Christians; by which it plainly appears, that he was ashamed of what the laws required, when he considered how inoffensive their behaviour was."