A30587:138
Irenicum, to the lovers of truth and peace heart-divisions opened in the causes and…
Irenicum, to the lovers of truth and peace heart-divisions opened in the causes and evils of them : with cautions that we may not be hurt by them, and endeavours to heal them / by Jeremiah Burroughs.Irenicum, to the lovers of truth and peace heart-divisions opened in the causes and evils of them : with cautions that we may not be hurt by them, and endeavours to heal them / by Jeremiah Burroughes.
London: printed for Robert Dawlman, 1653
Title page typeset from the transcription.
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.
CHAP. VI.
The second Position, Conscience is a tender thing, and must not be meddled with.
The second Position, Conscience is a tender thing, and must not be medled with.
Certainly Conscience is a very tender thing; and as men must take heed how they offer violence to their own consciences, so to the consciences of others; It is such a thing as is not in subjection to any creature in Heaven or Earth, only to God himself. Gerrard reports out of the Histories of France of a King of Navarre, 1writing to his Nobles, used this expression, The rule over consciences and souls is left to God alone: And of a King of Polonia, who was wont frequently to say, That God had reserved three things to himself: 1. To make something of nothing. 22. To know things future. 3. To rule over conscience. Maximilian the second used to say, There was no tyranny more intolerable then to seek to rule over consciences. Henry the third, King of France, as the last pangs of death carried him into another world, had this speech, Learn of me that piety is a duty of man unto God, over which worldly force hath no power; this was spoken in the same Chamber where the Council was held about that fatal Bartholomew day,