nothing," my heart smites me not, "Yet I am not hereby justified; for God is greater than my conscience:" I may, for aught I know, have done something amiss, or my duty not well; but as I cannot accuse myself, so neither can I acquit myself, but refer myself to God's equal and merciful sentence. What goes beyond this, may abuse the conscience, not only by a single scruple, but by an evil principle and false conclusions: and this, although it looks like modesty, and seems contrary to confidence, and therefore cannot be so well reduced to this kind of conscience, but to the doubting, or the scrupulous; yet I have chosen to place it here for the reason above mentioned. It looks in at the door with a trembling eye, but being thrust in, it becomes bold. It is like a fire-stick, which, in the hand of a child being gently moved, gives a volatile and unfixed light, but being more strongly turned about by a swift circular motion, it becomes a constant wheel of fire of like a bashful sinner sneaking to his lust, till he be discovered, and then he is impudent and hardened. And there are many wise men, who tremble in their determinations,-and not being able clearly to resolve, fall upon one part by chance, or interest, or passion, and then they are forced for their peace' sake to put on an accidental hardness, and a voluntary, not a natural confidence. But this confidence is commonly peevish, impatient, and proud, hating all contradiction and contradictors; because it was only an art to sleep, and to avoid the first trouble, and therefore hates every thing that brings them forth from their fantastic securities.

Other causes of an erroneous conscience here usually are assigned, but inartificially I suppose, and not of present concernment or relation. Such as are the subtraction of the Divine aids, God's leaving a man, and giving him over eis voũv ådóximov, and to believe a lie; perplexity, or irresolution, self-love, pride, prejudice, and passion: "perit enim omne judicium, cum res transierit in affectum; quia affectus obscurat intellectum, ne recte judicet," said Seneca. When affection sits judge, there reason and truth are seldom admitted to plead; or if they are, yet they cannot prevail.

Impedit ira animum, ne possit cernere verum.

But these are no otherwise causes of an erroneous conscience,

but as they are causes of ignorance, or deception; for in this case I reckon them to be but one; an error being nothing else but an ignorance of truth, which whether it be culpable or inculpable, and at what gate it enters, is of another disquisition, and shall be reserved to its proper place.

RULE II.

An erroneous Conscience binds us to Obedience, but not so as a right Conscience does.

THE object can move the will no otherwise, than as it is propounded by the understanding. If it be propounded as evil, the will that chooses it under that formality, is criminal and malicious. If it be propounded as good, the will that rejects it so propounded, despises good; for it is so to the will, if it be so to the understanding, which is the judge and the immediate rule of all human actions. And he that does a good thing while he believes it to be evil, does choose the evil, and refuse the good; for he does therefore, because he believes it evil, or though he thinks it so, and therefore, is equally disposed to choose a real evil; for that this is not so is but extrinsical and accidental to his choice.

If this were not thus, but that it were possible to be otherwise, then we might suppose that a man might do a thing reasonably, for which he hath no reason; and a humane action without the natural process of humanity, that is, to choose by chance, and unnaturally, to choose for a reason that he hath not, and a good that appears not, which is like beholding of a thing that he sees not. The Jew thinks it is his duty to be circumcised, and to keep the Sabbath. While in this error he is confident, by what argument can he be moved to omit it? If you give him reasons, you seek to cure his error, and to alter his persuasion; but while this persuasion is not altered, how can he be moved to omit it? If you give him no reasons, you desire him to omit it because he thinks he ought not, and to do an action because it seems unreasonable, and follow your opinion because he believes it false; that is, to obey you because he ought not;

which is a way not possible to prevail with a wise man, or with a fool; how it may work with any sort of madness, I know not.

But against this rule, some contend earnestly, in particular Gulielmus Parisiensis, and some that follow him, saying it is impossible that an erring or a lying conscience should oblige a man to follow it.' The thing hath great influence upon our whole life, and therefore is worth a strict

survey.

Quest. Whether a false and abused conscience can oblige us to pursue the error?

That it cannot, these reasons are or may be pretended.

1. Because it seems to be absurd to say, that when the error itself is not a sin at all, or but a little one, that it can be a great sin to follow a man's own humour against that error; if a man should do according to his error, it could at most be but a small sin, and therefore, to go against it cannot be greater. For the error can oblige no higher than its own nature, as rivers cannot rise above their fountains.

2. But it is a more material consideration; if an erring conscience obliges us to follow it, then some men are bound to persecute the Church, and the high priests sinned not in crucifying Christ; and the zealots of the Jews did well in afflicting the apostles and disciples of Jesus, because they did it ignorantly, and by the dictate of an erring conscience; and St. Paul says of himself before his conversion, “I myself thought I ought to do many things against the name of the Lord Jesus;" and yet he sinned in following his erring conscience; and, therefore, certainly could not be bound to it. In pursuance of which,

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3. St. Bernard argues thus: To follow truth is always good; but if by the conscience we can be bound to follow error, and that in that case it is not good to follow truth; that is, if a good may become evil by the sentence of an erring conscience, and so great an evil as it supposes it to be, then by the same reason that which is evil may, by the like sentence, become good, and so great a good as it is supposed; and then may a man be chaste for committing adultery, and charitable for committing murder, and religious

Lib. de Præcept. et Dispens.

for worshipping idols, and pious to his parents in denying to relieve them from the corban;' all which consequents being intolerable, the antecedent which infers them, must needs be false.

4. It is true indeed, the conscience is our guide and our lawgiver, our judge and our rule; but it is not our Lord, nor in the present case is it an authentic record, but a ↓ɛudeπíygαpov, a heap of lies and errors; and therefore cannot be a true guide, and we are not tied to follow any leader to hell. Better it is in this case to follow the conscience of a wiser and a better man than myself, it being more reasonable that we be tied to follow his right, than our own wrong conscience.

5. For if still we were bound to follow our abused conscience, then we were bound to impossibilities: for then either we were not at all bound to follow God, or if we were, and yet bound to follow our conscience against God, we were bound at the same time to do and not to do the same thing; to "serve two masters;" which, our blessed Saviour said, "No man can do."

6. But, therefore, in this case God must be obeyed, and not man; it being impious to say that the law of our conscience should derogate from, or wholly evacuate, the law of God, by which alone we ought to be governed. For if this law of conscience takes away the obligation of the Divine law, or if the Divine law takes away the obligation of conscience when it errs, then they must cease respectively and the event will be this, that as long as God's law binds us (which is for ever), the law of an erring conscience cannot bind us.

7. And there are in this, great proportions of reason. For if the will be bound to lay down all its rods and axes, all the ensigns of empire at the foot of the throne of God, doing or refusing by the command of God against its own inclination, it will not be imagined that the conscience, that is, the practical understanding, hath any such privilege indulged to it, that it can be exempt from the jurisdiction of God, or that it can oblige in defiance of his laws.

8. For it is certain, conscience is God's creature, bound to its Lord and Maker by all the rights of duty and perfect subordination, and therefore cannot prejudice the right and

power of its Lord; and no wise man obeys the orders of a magistrate against the express law of his king; or the orders of a captain against the command of his general; and, therefore, neither of conscience, which is God's messenger, against the purpose of the message with which God intrusted it. However, it is better to obey God than man; to follow the law of God than to go against it; to do that which we should, rather than that which we should not.

9. And there can be no more necessity upon us to follow our conscience teaching us, than our conscience binding us; and yet if a contract that is vicious be made, or an oath that is unlawful be uttered, the obligations of conscience cease, because they are against the law of God; and how then can conscience against this law of God in any sense pass an obligation? But this rather, that as we are bound not to commit a crime, so not to follow an error and a lie.

10. For it is impossible that our opinion, or falsely persuaded conscience, should make any alteration in the thing; if it was evil in itself, it is so still; and my thinking that mercury is not poison, nor hellebore purgative, cannot make an antidote and deletory against them, if I have upon that confidence taken them into my stomach; and the sun is bigger than the earth, though I foolishly think it no wider than a bushel. And, therefore, in such cases, the conscience can have no power, and can bind us to nothing but to lay our error down. Because as to him that is in error, it were madness to bid him err more; so to him that hath an erring conscience, it were equally evil to bid him pursue, and actuate, and consummate his error; which yet he were bound to do, if an erring conscience could bind him.

11. Lastly, if an erring conscience binds us to obedience, it either binds us by its own independent, ingenite power, or by a power derived from God. If by a power derived from God, then God commands us to believe a lie, to commit a sin, to run after false fires and illusions,-which to affirm, seems to be blasphemy; but if it binds us by its own power, then our conscience can make God's law to become unlawful to us, and we shall be stronger than God, and a man's self becomes his own rule; and he that is deceived by a false opinion, is a lawgiver to himself, and error shall be the measure of good and evil.