Heaven upon earth in the serene tranquillity and calm composure, in the sweet peace…

And therefore it is not only s•range, but even stupendous for any Christians, especially such as pretend to be Protestants, confidently to assert, and bol• •o publish to the world, as Mr. Hobbs doth in his Leviathan, (a book designed by him, as I have been informed, to complement Cromwell, against the writers own Conscience, such as it was) p. 168. That no private man is judge of good and evil actions in a Common wealth, under civil Laws; and that the measure of good and evil actions is the Civil Law (of actions civilv good why not? but of actions simply good and evil (as his assertion carries) wh•? what reason, or shadow of reason? God never having given, no• assigned such a rule; we may thus throw away ou• Bibles, as the rule of good and evil a•ions, and all betake our selves to the Civil Law as the only Rule) and the Legis l•tor the alone Judge, since he may as well divest a man of humane nature and un-man him, as deprive him of a private Judgement of discretion, or of a private discre•ive Judgement in reference to his own actions; the so•er exercise whereof is no assuming to himself in •he least, the capacity of a public Judge; and it at any time ⟨image 7⟩in any thing rela•ing to •is […] acts, this Judgement of private discretion fall to thwart the Law, or public Judgement, he advents on that cum peric•lo, or on his pe•l; but it cannot in reason utterly rob him of it▪ since (as is said) he can as soon cease to be a man, or a rational creature, as to have that quite denied him, or taken from him; & to what end or purpose should he be privileged with this above brutes, i• the exercise of t shall be for ever suspended in the Members of Kingdoms and Common-wealths, as almo all men in the world are? what sound and Orthodox Divine, or sound Christian Lawyer ever taught such Doctrine? The learned doctor Ames tell us in the 4. Co olary, and very last words of his first book of Cases of Conscience, that Interpretatio Scripturae, vel judicium scernere voluntatem Dei, pertinet ad quemlibet. in foro consctiae pro […]. And page 169. of the fore-cited book, the same Hobbs says, That he who is subject to no civil Law sinneth in ll that e doth against his conscience; yet t is not so with him who liveth in a common wealth, because the Law is the public conscience: