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

Secondly, we must labour to know the will of God revealed in the Scriptures, and to apply what we know, unto our selves, for our own use. For the conscience judgeth and witnesseth with God, for us, or against us, and therefore we must know what he approveth and condemneth, if we would have our judgement and evidence to agree with his; otherwise our consciences being unjust and erroneous, will judge unjustly of our actions, and give in false evidence, when we put our selves upon them for trial. More especially, we must labour after the knowledge, both of the ⟨p. 88⟩Law and the Gospel; for the Law, as it is the rule of our actions, according to which they ought to be wholly conformed, so also it is the rule of our consciences, whereby they discern whether they be right or crooked, good or evil. It is the municipal law for the peculiar government of Gods subjects, and the book of Statutes, set out by our Sovereign, according to which, conscience is bound to judge and give evidence, which it cannot do, unless it know, and be able to examine our actions according unto this law. In which regard, the consciences of ignorant men do in most things mislead them into manifold errors, because they are not able to judge of their actions according to Gods Law, which they know not, but give sentence of them according to their own wills, humane traditions, and their own inventions, superstitious conceits and good meanings. And the like may be said of those, who having some knowledge of Gods Law, do through negligence or profaneness never examine their actions by it, yea, rather being carried through the violence of their carnal lusts and passions, into all disobedience and sin, and resolving in themselves to go on in their course, do cast the Law out of their sight and remembrance, lest conscience having it to judge by should accuse and condemn their evil actions, and so abate their pleasure which they take in them. But especially if we would have good consciences, we must apply unto our selves the sentence of the Law, which condemneth