Your Conscience

“The prophet bewails Ephraim and says, ‘Ephraim prevails against his adversary and treads down judgment’ (Hosea 10:11). The adversary here is ‘conscience.’ Here the Gospel says, ‘Come to an agreement with your adversary while you are on the way with him, lest he deliver you to the judge and the judge to the warders and they put you in chains. Truly, I say to you, you shall not leave the place until you have paid the last farthing’ (Matthew 5:25-26). Why does he call conscience the adversary? It is called the adversary because it always opposes our evil desires and tells what we ought to do and we do not, or what we ought not to do and we do; and it accuses us, and so conscience is called our adversary, and our Lord admonishes, ‘Come to an agreement with your adversary while you are on the way;’ for the ‘way’ as St. Basil says, is this world.”
~St. Dorotheos of Gaza