David Kirkwood sends out a regular
e-teaching every month. This month the topic was "
The Inward Voice." Explaining that even though the written law was given to the Jews back in the days of Moses, people already were living by a law that existed since the beginning. This was the conscience. Below is a quote from his message showing that well before there was a written law people followed their consciences.... probably even more so than they do today.
As much as two hundred years before Harkhuf, a grand vizier of Egypt named Ptahhotep, who served under Pharaoh Isesi, in his old age authored a collection of thirty-seven moral maxims that were addressed to his son. At least one thousand years before God gave the Ten Commandments to Israel (the recorded law), he warned his son against both lust and greed. Here are maxims 18 and 19:
If you want friendship to endure
In the house you enter
As master, brother, or friend,
In whatever place you enter,
Beware of approaching the women!
Unhappy is the place where it is done,
Unwelcome is he who intrudes on them.
A thousand men are undone for the enjoyment of a brief moment like a dream,
Then death comes for having known them...
When one goes to do it the heart rejects it. [Note this line!]
He who fails through lust of them,
No affair of his can prosper.
If you want a perfect conduct,
To be free from every evil,
Guard against the vice of greed:
A grievous sickness without cure,
There is no treatment for it.
It embroils fathers, mothers,
And the brothers of the mother,
It parts wife from husband;
it is a compound of all evils,
A bundle of all hateful things.
That man endures whose rule is rightness,
Who walks a straight line;
He will make a will by it,
The greedy has no tomb.
From the ShepherdServe.com website.