memory, &c. Our understandings must make conscience to enquire after the knowledge of some things. Our memories must make conscience to retain. Our wills must make conscience to desire or hate.

But if it shall be inquired, to which of the faculties conscience is to be reduced, and in which of them doth it specially reside? We hesitate not to say, that it is radically in the understanding; this being the principal faculty of the soul. Conscience is the clearest beam, and the most eminent ray of knowledge in the understanding, the most divine thing in man, the very eminence, cream, and flower of the soul.

The third thing which is of greatest importance, and difficult to be found out, and of greatest danger if we mistake in it, respects the obligatory powers of conscience, and how far it hath force to bind us, and what are the limits of its jurisdiction.

It is acknowledged by all, that conscience hath a kind of legislative power and force in it to bind us, according to the ordinary expression; but seeing conscience is neither the only, nor the supreme, nor the absolute lawgiver of our actions; but a secondary, subordinate, and limited judge, we would consider what others have power over us, and in what course and view conscience comes in, and what are the matters committed to its jurisdiction.

We have three who are cloathed with authority over our actions; viz. God, our superiors, and our own conscience. God is absolute Lord and Lawgiver, his commands are all most holy and just, he. can neither deviate nor be obtruded. When he says the word, all that is incumbent on our conscience is, humbly and conscientiously to obey, without disputing, contradicting, or murmuring; he it is that giveth the law to our conscience.

The second power or authority which hath right

to rule over us, and command our actions, are our superiors; these powers, who are God's deputies and vicegerents upon earth, and whom he hath commanded us to obey for the Lord's sake, and for the sake of conscience, upon the peril of his wrath, as is very clear from seripture'.

The power of those whom God hath invested with power and authority over us, is greater in one point of view, than that of our conscience, and the reason is very clear; 1st. In regard that God, from whom all power and right is derived, hath not given to the conscience of any private man, such an eminent measure of power and authority, as he hath given to magistrates.

That which is highly remarkable is, that God in his word hath given most clear and express revelations concerning the power of magistrates, and that we ought to submit to them, obey them, and not resist them; and yet hath given no declaration concerning the power of our conscience, nor what obedience is due to it; let it be hence considered which of the two are first and chiefly to be obeyed in secular concerns; whether superiors, whose power he hath declared, and to whom our obedience is commanded, or the dictates of our own private conscience, in reference to which neither of these is done.

2d. Moreover the laws of a nation being compiled by the joint consultations of men of knowledge, prudence, and experience, best versed in the acts and laws of government, who are chosen for this effect as men of confidence; and then those determinations receiving the force of a law from the supreme authority and lawgiver, and being fastened upon the subjects and their obedience thereunto required. Is it not to be presumed that those edicts are preferable to the dictates of a private conscience? Can private men rationally presume themselves to

Rom. xiii. 1, 2, 5. Tit. iii. 1. 1 Pet. ii. 13. Heb. xiii. 7.

be wiser and more conscientious than a collective body of many wise men? And shall a private conscience of some, be preferable to the public conscience of many? Is it safer to guide ourselves, than to be guided by those who are wiser than ourselves?

3dly. Lastly, that laws and public authority are superior to the laws and dictates of private men's conscience, is a thing that must be, otherwise all laws and authority, magistrates and magistracy, would be ineffectual. Anarchy and confusion must inevitably follow. When men will not be governed by laws, but every man doth what seemeth good in his own eye, this were to make every man a judge of the law, and not a doer of it.

Let both reason and conscience speak if this were a thing just or equitable, or consonant to the wisdom and honour of an earthly prince, to convene his grand counsel or parliament; appoint them to contrive good and wholesome laws for the government of the kingdom. This being done, he enacts them, touches them with his sceptre, causes proclaim them, commands his subjects to obey them; and yet, in the meantime, gives private power and warrant to every one of his subjects to reject or receive, obey or disobey, according to their own pleasure. Were not this to set up laws with the one hand, and pull them down with the other? This were such a ridiculous absurdity in the matter of police, as the meanest witted and imprudent prince on earth was never yet found to be guilty of, and yet those high pretenders of conscience do most foolishly and inconscientiously charge the Almighty with no less; while they pretend, that notwithstanding God hath so expressly commanded us obedience to the ordinance of men, for the Lord's sake, 1 Peter ii. 13, &c. for conscience sake, Rom. xiii. 5. And hath openly proclaimed this in the scriptures, and yet to pretend that they cannot obey, because conscience prohibits them.

All will grant that God hath supreme power, is a Lord and Lawgiver of the conscience, and that the conscience ought not to contradict his commands; yet many deny in works what they confess in words, and they set up the dictates of that which they call the conscience above the commands of God. The Lord hath commanded us to honor his sabbaths, to reverence his sanctuary, to obey the voice of his messengers, to live in peace and unity amongst ourselves, not to resist superior powers; yet many cast all those commands behind their back, and do the quite contrary, and pretend conscience for all.

But as for human powers upon earth, they think they may take the greatest latitude to themselves. It is to be confessed that all the men on earth, and all the powers on earth, are incomparably and infinitely below the Almighty God, if compared with him; but let them be considered in regard of us, and it is to be remembered that they are above us, and God calls them superior powers, yea, su preme powers, (viz. on earth)". They are God's ordinances, we are commanded to obey them; the power whereby they act and rule us is from God, and therefore in resisting them, God accounts it a resisting of his ordinance. It is not only on them, but on God himself our disobedience terminates. Therefore we would take heed how far we meddle with them, lest we be found fighting against God. Consider, likewise, that neither law, nor conscience, nor custom itself, will judge it proper that superior powers shall be brought down from their thrones, and sisted as pannels at the bar of inferior benches; how then can the consciences of private men presume to bring down their superiors to stand before the bench of their private conscience; there to be judged, their actions canvassed, their laws rejected, rescinded, obeyed or not obeyed, at their

Rom. xiii. 1.

pleasure? Is this conscience?-Is not this stubbornness, pride, willfulness, ignorance, and not conscience? Such persons forget their own stations and capacities; that they are subjects: they have forgotten what God hath prescribed to be the office and duty of their conscience to their superiors, and this is not to offend them, but to keep a conscience void of offence towards God and man,

But seeing, according to the common notion and persuasion of all men, conscience hath a rule and conduct of men's actions; we come now, in the third place, to enquire what are the matters, wherein conscience is to act, and no further; that marches may be cleared.

To this we say negatively; Ist. It is not the office or duty of any man's conscience to oppose, contradict, or disobey divine laws; but humbly and submissively to yield all conscientious obedience to them. 2d. Neither is it the office or part of any man's private conscience to disparage, disobey, or rebutt against supreme authority and the public laws of the commonwealth; for every private man is a member of the commonwealth and a subject, and so is under authority of the public political head; private persons are to receive laws and rules from their governors, but not to prescribe laws to them. Their capacities and station oblige them to be ruled, but not to rule and govern their governors; therefore all that God and a good conscience require at their hands, is, with discretion, to consider what is commanded, and what is good and lawful to make conscience to obey it, for this which God requireth of us.

3dly. But, in the third place, possibly we say, our personal actions and private affairs, which are not predetermined by a supreme authority, divine or human, are the matters which are left to the command, rule, and conduct of our own private consciences. In these we have our own freedom, and in this both God and man have left us to our own