Irenicum, to the lovers of truth and peace heart-divisions opened in the causes and…

7ly. What ever pretence of conscience a man hath, yet this §7cannot excuse him in any matter of apparent injustice done to his brother in his estate or goods: As suppose a man pleads conscience in the point of community of goods, yet if he take away his neighbours goods by violence, his conscience cannot deliver him from the stroke of justice. The Papists pretend conscience for their murders, for the Catholic cause, but this delivers them not out of the hands of justice; if a man pleads conscience that he is bound to marry more wives then one, and the like.

7ly. What ever pretence of conscience a man hath, yet this §7cannot excuse him in any matter of apparant injustice done to his brother in his estate or goods: As suppose a man pleads conscience in the point of community of goods, yet if he take away his neighbours goods by violence, his conscience cannot deliver him from the stroak of justice. The Papists pretend conscience for their murthers, for the Catholique cause, but this delivers them not out of the hands of justice; if a man pleads conscience that he is bound to marry more wives then one, and the like.

Eighthly, a man may bring himself under both Civill and §8Ecclesiastical sword, not only for sins destructive and injurious to our brother, but for sins against God, if they be also against the light of nature, as blasphemy and gross idolatry: Though the Sun be down, if you allow your servant a candle to work ordinary work by, and he put it out, he cannot plead he could not work, because it was dark: Man at first had Sun-light to work by, but our Sun is down, yet we have the candle of the light of nature; if we sin against that, our darkness can be no plea for us: and if he be a professed Christian, and sins against the common light of Christianity, which he cannot but see, except he will shut his eyes, he is to be dealt with as a man that sins against the light of Nature.