pregnant with the most shocking villanies, pretended miracles, difpenfing with, or commuting the moft folemn engagements,-indulgence of equivocation and mental refervation in oaths, and inculcating breach of faith with heretics, if for the advantage of the Romish Church, and which, by holding mul titudes of fins to be venial,by the fale of pardons and indulgences, by prohibiting clergymen and devotees to marry,-and by licenfing of ftews, pro motes the most horrible debauchery, Dan. xi 36-393 2 Theff. ii. 3, 7, 9-12. 1 Tim. iv. 1-3. 2 Tim iii. -6, 8, 13. Rev. ix. 21. xi. 8. xiii. 13, 14. xvi. 13, 14. xvii. 2, 3, 5. xviii. 2a bloody religion, in the propagation and maintenance of, which, about fixty millions of mankind, many of them faints, have been murdered, in the most cruel, and inhuman forms, Dan. vii. 25. Rev. viii. 134. ix. 11, 21, xi. 2, 7. xiii. 2, 7. xvii. 6. xviii. 24. xvi. 2.-a religion, the cordial and perfevering profeffion and practice of which, God hath declared. inevitably damning, 1 Theff. ii. 3, 9-12. Rev. ix. 11. xvii. 11. xiv. 9—11. xix. 20 XX. 10:

OBJECT. I. "God alone is the Lawgiver and

Lord of men's confcience."

ANSW. 1. God is the only abfolute, fupreme and infallible Lawgiver; He alone hath power to conftitute any thing a part of religion. But that no more hinders his magiftratical vicegerents to make political laws in favours of what he hath declared and inftituted in religion, than Chrift being Head of the Church can hinder her fubordinate rulers to make ecclefiaftical conftitutions in favours of the truth, in his name, Pfalm lxxxii. 1, 6. Rom. xiii. 16. Pet. ii. 13, 14.

2. Neither magiftrates nor minifters can make. any law which of themselves, and as their deeds, bind men's confcience. Their authority is not in

fallibly exercifed; it doth not reach to the inward actings of confcience. They cannot oblige conscience to these actings, or take any cognizance of them. They cannot free it from any guilt contra&ed by them, or reward it if it doth well, or punish or cenfure it if it doth amifs. Nor are their conftitutions, but God's law, the ftandard by which it fhall be judged at the last day.But they make laws or conftitutions, which, as originating from, fubordinated to, and adopted and ratified by the law of God, bind men to obey for confcience fake, Rom. xiii. 14. Mat. xviii. 19.

3. God's being the only Lawgiver of men under the Old Testament as much as now, did not hinder Mofes, David, Afa, Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah, Jofiah, Nehemiah, Nebuchadnezzar the Chaldean, Darius the Mede, Cyrus, Darius, and Aartaxerxes, Perfians, or the king of Nineveh to make civil laws in favours of the true religion.

4. If God alone be the Lawgiver and Lord of the confcience, it neceffarily follows, that magiftrates and confcience, 'who are his deputies, can have no power to warrant, licenfe or protect, any thing for bidden by his law, 2 Cor. xiii. 8, 10.

OBJECT. II." Every man hath a natural right to judge for himself, what he ought to do or for bear, efpecially in religion. He is to be fully perfuaded in his own mind, and to follow the dictates of his own confcience. Even the law of God is a rule to him, as he understands it in his own confcience. To force any man to do any thing contrary to his confcience, is to force him to fin, for whatsoever is not of faith is fin; and to punish him for following the dictates of his confcience is to punish him for doing his duty."

ANSW. 1. Already you have made men's con

fcience the fupreme governor of their actions, exalting it above The Most High GOD.

2. Every man hath a natural right derived from God, to judge all things by the law of God, and hold faft that which is good, 1 Theff. v. 21. He hath a right to judge by the law of God what is neceffary to be profeffed and practifed, in order to the peace of his confcience, and his fellowship with, and receiving of favours from God. But that no more hinders magiftrates politically to judge what profes fion and practice are proper for men, as members of fuch a particular Commonwealth, or what relative to religion is to be connected with civil encouragements or difcouragements, than it hinders Church-rulers, ecclefiaftically to judge and define what profeffion or practice is neceffary, in order to comfortable fellowship with fuch a particular Church.

3. Men's confcienee is no Lawgiver at all, but s witness of their conduct, and a judge, which enquires into the meaning of God's law, and directs accordingly, and which compares their qualities, profeffion, and practice with the law of God, and if faithful, approves or difapproves accordingly.

4. The law of God, not men's confcience, is their fupreme and only infallible rule, which binds even confcience itself, Mark xii. 30. 1.John. v. 3. and whatever men do contrary to it, is finful, let their confcience approve it as much as they will, 1 John iii. 4. Lev. v. 17, 18. Acts xxvi. 9, 10. Tim. i. 13-16. Whatever proceeds net from the perfuafion of a good confcience, founded on the word of God, is fin. It is a fin for men's confcience to err in dictating any thing not perfectly agreeable to the law of God.How abfurd to pretend that this fin can render another fin duty, or a duty finful in itself!

5. If men's confcience, in itself, or in its directing, perfifading or inftigating influence be sustained, as the immediate rule of their conduct, without refpect to the word of God, then either their confcience must be infallible in its dictates, which it certainly is not, in either faints or finners, in this world, Rom. vii. 14, 23. Prov. xxviii. 26. Jer. xvii. Rom. viii. 9. 7, 8. Tit. i. 15. or, if it be fallible, God must have established for men a fallible and deceitful rule of truth and holiness, and fo be the author of confufion in religion, fince different consciences dictate different things in it. To make men's confcience their rule in religion, would make God the author and commander of wickedness,-by` confcience, requiring the tranfgreffion of his own law

It would make him not only acquit from criminality, but approve as duty, the most damnable errors, horrid blafphemies, deteftable abominations, and cruel barbarities, if but dictated by the confciences of Heathens, Mahometans, Papifts, c. in their religion. It would make him the author of men's ruin, if it were procured By a way which feemed right in their own eyes, Prov. xvi. 25. It would render it abfolutely impoffible to convince men of the finfulnefs of any thing they had done according to the dictates of their confcience, be it ever fo contrary to the law of God. It would render it improper for men to repent of or mourn over any blafphemy, murder of faints, or the like, which their deluded confcience had dictated to them, or to afk, receive, or praife God for the pardoning of it, contrary to 1 Tim. i 13--16. with Acts xxvi. 9---11. Gal. i. 13, 14. Phil. iii. 6. It would open a wide gap for men's doing whatever they pleafed, without being chargeable by, at leaft any man, for it. If men fhould be executed for the most horrid blafphe! my, or abominable idolatry, high treason, or any

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other deed dictated by their confcience, they would die martyrs for righteoufnefs fake.And men ought to believe whatever their confcience dictated to them concerning their ftaté, experience or duty, however contrary to the teftimony of God, contained in his word,---contrary to Pfalm xxxi. 22. & cxvi. 11. xlii. 5, 11. Rev. iii. 17.

6. To pretend that the law of God, not in itself, but as understood by men's confcience, is their rule, is abfurd. It, in the Popish manner, represents the law of God as deftitute of fenfe and authority in itfelf, and as deriving it from a creature. It, in the Quakerifh manner, makes the light within the rule: of men's conduct. It exalts every man to an equa➡ lity with, or rather fuperiority above God, having power to give regulating fenfe and authority to his word, according as an erroneous and defiled confcience pleaseth. It abolisheth every real standard of religion, every man's particular apprehenfions of the meaning of God's word being his binding rule. The fame word of God becomes the ftandard of Calvinism, Popery, Socinianifm, &c. as different men understand it. It faps the foundation of all mutual trust and confidence among men; and opens a wide inlet for all manner of villany and diflimulation. According to it, men's promifes, oaths, vows, and covenants, their fworn and fubfcribed Creeds, Articles, Confeffions, Formulas, &c. bind them, not according to the common meaning of the words, but according to the meaning which their confcience, however feared, biafled, or deluded, puts up-> on them. In fine, it plunges men into the depths of Atheism, according to which every man believes and acts what is right in his own eyes.

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717 If men's private judgment of their own acts hindered the magiftrate's fupreme political judgment, no laws could be made in matters of religion or any