A guide to godliness or a Treatise of a Christian life showing the dutiesA guide to godlynesse or a Treatise of a Christian life shewing the duties

Now this power of conscience in judging, witnessing, binding, and punishing, it hath only from God which is the Lord of it, and hath seated it in man as his Viceroy and Deputy, to rule him in all his ways; and, if he will not obey, to be his Notary, to keep upon record all his faults, his Witness to give testimony against him, and his Executioner to torment him, when in the Court of conscience he is condemned. Neither hath any creature power over conscience, either to bind it, or set it at liberty, but God only; nor hath the conscience it self any authority to execute these offices, till it have a Commission engrossed and sealed from God, which is either the Law of nature, written in the heart in our first creation, or the divine Oracles of God, contained in the books of the Old and New Testament. And if without these, conscience doth any thing against us, either by unjust judging, or false accusing, we may revoke it all by a Writ of error, and make our appeal from this false judgement in the Court of conscience, to our supreme Lord, to be judged by him according to his Law. For howsoever in the creation, conscience was an upright Judge and true witness, yet after the fall, the understanding being darkened with ignorance, and the judgement corrupted, do offer unto the conscience false rules and Principles, and so cause it to give wrong evidence and erroneous judgement, justifying when it should condemn, and condemning when it should justify, excusing those whom it should accuse, and accusing them whom the Law of God excuseth and absolveth. The which cometh to pass, because the light of nature is ⟨p. 69⟩