"are true, justified in themselves. More to be desired than gold and precious stones, and sweeter than honey and the honeycomb."[1] This was his own experience, for he says: "I have been delighted in the way of thy testimonies, as in all riches."[2] The chief cause of this joy is the dignity and beauty of virtue, which, as Plato declares, is incomparably fair and lovely. Finally, so great are the advantages of a good conscience that, according to St. Ambrose, they constitute in this life the happiness of the just.
The ancient philosophers, as we have seen, though deprived of the light of faith, knew the torments of a guilty conscience. Nor were they ignorant of the joy of a good conscience, as we learn from Cicero, who, in his "Tusculan Questions," says: "A life spent in noble and honorable deeds brings such consolations with it that just men are either insensible to the trials of life or feel them very little." The same author adds elsewhere that virtue has no more brilliant, no more honorable theatre than that in which the applause of conscience is heard. Socrates, being asked who could live free from passion, answered: "He who lives virtuously." And Bias, another celebrated philosopher, gave almost the same reply to a similar question. "Who," he was asked, "can live without fear?" "He who has the testimony of good conscience," he replied. Seneca, in one of his epistles, wrote: "A wise man is always cheerful, and his cheerfulness comes from
