The English nonconformity as under King Charles II and King James II truly stated…

L. XV. They say that you stretch the Words of the Oaths, Declarations, Subscriptions, Liturgy and Canons, to an ill sense, by a rigorous Interpretation, which was never the Meaning of the Authors; and on that you ground your Dissent.

L. XV. They say that you stretch the Words of the Oaths, Declarations, Subscriptions, Liturgy and Canons, to an ill sence, by a rigorous Interpretation, which was never the Meaning of the Authors; and on that you ground your Dissent.

M. 1. I hope you will grant, that when the things that men fear (whether justly or mistakingly) no less than deliberate Lying, Perjury, and Contracting by Justification the Guilt of ⟨p. 223⟩many hundred thousand Perjuries, and Swearing or Covenanting never to repent or endeavour that the Nation should repent of heinous Church-Corruptions, or amend them, and the nullifying of the Ordination and Ministry of thousands, and Unchurching almost all the Protestant Churches, and more such like, a man should not play with Matters of this moment, nor take God's dreadful Name in vain, nor sport with the Consuming Fire. And I hope you grant, that Words in Caths and Impositions, are to be taken in the properest usual sense, unless the Authors otherwise expound them. And you know that they have been so far from expounding them otherwise, as that these twenty years they have refused it, and in Scotland sentenced the Earl of Argyle to die for expounding them as some would have us do. And what do Oaths or Covenants signify, if the Takers may put what sense they will on them, and if the most express Universals, yea, the express Exclusions of all Exceptions, may be taken in a particular sense with Exceptions, such Swearers and Subscribers give their Rules no security. Is it not enough to tell you we will willingly stand to Bishop Sanderson's own Rules in his Excellent Prelections de Juramento, for expounding Oaths and Promises? Such as these Expositions of stretchers, make Oaths to be none, viz. [It's unlawful] that is, against the King's Law but not against God's [to take Arms against the King] viz. As King, but say the Papists, when the Pope excommunicates and deposeth him, he is no King, [on any pretence whatsoever,] that is, any unjust pretence, [by his Authority against his Person] viz. It is to be done by Gods Authority and not by his, [or against any Commissioned by him,] viz. Lawfully Commissioned, of which we are discerning Judges. The same I may say of all the rest: As Assenting and Consenting to all things, except many things: Swearing Canonical Obedience in Licitis & Honestis, when we judge ten or twenty Canons, if not the very frame to be Illicita & Inhonesta, &c.