A26924:327
The English nonconformity as under King Charles II and King James II truly stated…
The English nonconformity as under King Charles II and King James II truly stated and argued by Richard Baxter ; who earnestly beseecheth rulers and clergy not to divide and destroy the land and cast their own souls on the dreadful guilt and punishment of national perjury ...
London: printed for Tho. Parkhurst, 1689
Chapter 15: Point XII. Of Consenting to the false Rule to find out Easter-day in the Liturgy.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
L. This is but a mere mistake, and can you scruple Conformity for such a trifle.
M. Is it lawful deliberately to lie in a trifle? In them it was but an untruth, for they wrote what they thought had been true. But it would be a wilful lying in me who know it to be false.
L. But you may in your Subscribing, or Declaring except that which you know the Authors would have excepted, had they known them to be false.
M. Say you so? Then I may except all the rest which I here except against; For Truth is so naturally the object of the Intellect, that I may suppose that the Convocation would have put none of them on us, had they known them to be false. Do you mean that I may except them in words or writing, or only mentally? If the first, I have offered them to declare my Assent and Consent to all things in the Book in which the Authors were not mistaken: But that is refused with derision and is contrary to the Act of Uniformity, which saith, [They shall declare in these words and no other.] If you mean mentally then a man may Covenant, or swear any falsehood with a mental exception; and so any […] may subscribe, or covenant what you will.