ce and fear of outward punishment to
be inflicted by men, the non-performance of such things, or the
non-performance of them with such affections as were fit, be not a sin
against God, of which the conscience will accuse us,"(120) &c. Unto this
question thus proposed and understood of human laws, and where no more is
considered as giving them power to bind, but only the authority of those
who make them; some formalists do give (as I will show), and all of them
(being well advised) must give an affirmative answer. And, I pray, what
did Bellarmine say more,(121) when, expressing how conscience is subject
to human authority, he taught that conscience belongeth _ad humanum forum,
quatenus homo ex praecepto ita obligator ad opus externum faciendum, ut si
non faciat, judicat ipse in conscientia sua se male facere, et hoc
sufficit ad conscientiam obligandam?_ But to proceed particularly.

_Sect._ 9. I begin with Field himself, whose resolution of the question
proposed is,(122) that we are bound only to give obedience to such human
laws as prescribe things profitable, not for that human laws have power to
bind the conscience, but because the things they command are of that
nature, that not to perform them is contrary to justice or charity.
Whereupon he concludeth out of Stapleton, that we are bound to the
performance of things prescribed by human laws, in such sort, that the
non-performance of them is sin, not _ex sola legislatoris voluntate, sed
ex ipsa legum utilitate_. Let all such as be of this man's mind not blame
us for denying of obedience to the constitutions about the ceremonies,
since we find (for certain) no utility, but, by the contrary, much
inconveniency in them. If they say that we must think those laws to be
profitable or convenient, which they, who are set over us, think to be so,
then they know not what they say. For, exempting conscience from being
bound by human laws in one thing, they would have it bound by them in
another thing. If conscience must needs judge that to be profitable, which
seemeth so to those that are set over us, then, sure, is power given to
them for binding the conscience so straitly, that it may not judge
otherwise than they judge, and force is placed in their bare authority for
necessitating and constraining the assenting judgment of conscience.

_Sect._ 10. Some man perhaps will say that we are bound to obey the laws
made about the ceremonies, though not for the sole will of the law-mak