It is probable this unhappiness of their condition, oftener than any other cause, brings God into their thoughts, and that as a being against whom they have a complaint approaching to a quarrel on account of it. And this strongly assists the reaction against whatever would enforce the sense of guilt on the conscience. When he has done so little for us, (something like this is the sentiment,) he cannot think it any such great matter if we _do_ sometimes come a little short of his commands. There is no doubt that their recollections of him as a being to murmur against for their allotment, are more frequent, more dwelt upon, and with more of an excited feeling, than their recollections of him as a being whom they ought to have loved and served, but have offended against. The very idea of such offence, as the chief and essential constituent of wickedness, is so slightly conceived, (because he is invisible, and has his own felicity, and is secure against all injury,) that if the thoughts of one of these persons _should_, by some rare occasion, be forced into the direction of unwillingly seeing his own faults, it is probable his impiety would appear the most inconsiderable thing in the account; that he would easily forgive himself the negation of all acts and feelings of devotion towards the Supreme Being, and the countless multiplications of insults to him by profane language.
To conclude this part of the melancholy statement; it may be observed of the class in question, that they have but very little notion of guilt, or possible guilt, in anything but external practice. That busy interior existence, which is the moral person, genuine and complete; the thoughts, imaginations, volitions; the motives, projects, deliberations, devices, the indulgence of the ideas of what they cannot or dare not practically realize,--all this, we have reason to believe, passes nearly exempted from jurisdiction, even of that feeble and undecisive kind which _may_ occasionally attempt an interference with their actions. They do indeed take such notice of the quality of these things within, as to be aware that some of them are not to be disclosed in their communications; which prudential caution has of course little to do with conscience, when the things so withheld are internally cherished in perfect disregard of the Omniscient Observer, and with hardly the faintest monition that the essence of the guilt is the same, with only a difference in degree, in intending or deliberately desiring an evil, and in acting it.