fficient ground to our
consciences for obeying. Bellarmine speaketh more reasonably:(129) _Legesae
human non obligant sub poena mortis aeternae, nisi quatenus violatione legis
humanae offenditur Deus._ Lindsey thinketh that the will of the law must be
the rule of our consciences; he saith not the _reason_ of the law, but the
_will_ of the law. And when we talk with the chief of our opposites, they
would bind us by sole authority, because they cannot do it by any reason.
But we answer out of Pareus,(130) that the particular laws of the church
bind not _per se_, or _propter ipsum speciale mandatum ecclesiae. Ratio:
quia ecclesia res adiaphoras non jubet facere vel omittere propter suum
mandatum, sed tantum propter justas mandandi causas, ut sunt conservatio
ordinis, vitatio scandali: quae quamdiu non violantur, conscientias liberas
relinquit._

_Sect._ 13. Thus we have found what power they give to their canons about
the ceremonies for binding of our consciences, and that a necessity not of
practice only upon the outward man, but of opinion also upon the
conscience is imposed by the sole will of the law-makers. Wherefore, we
pray God to open their eyes, that they may see their ceremonial laws to be
substantial tyrannies over the consciences of God's people. And for
ourselves, we stand to the judgment of sounder divines, and we hold with
Luther,(131) that _unum Dominum habemus qui animas nostras gubernat._ With
Hemmingius,(132) that we are free _ab omnibus humanis ritibus, quantum
quidem ad conscientiam attinet._ With the Professors of Leyden,(133) that
this is a part of the liberty of all the faithful, that in things
pertaining to God's worship, _ab omni traditionum humanarum jugo liberas
habeant conscientias, cum solius Dei sit, res ad religionem pertinentes
praescribere_.

CHAPTER V.

THAT THE CEREMONIES TAKE AWAY CHRISTIAN LIBERTY, PROVED BY A THIRD REASON,
VIZ., BECAUSE THEY ARE URGED UPON SUCH AS, IN THEIR CONSCIENCES, DO
CONDEMN THEM.

_Sect._ 1. If Christian liberty be taken away, by adstricting conscience
in any, much more by adstricting it in them who are fully persuaded of the
unlawfulness of the thing enjoined; yet thus are we dealt with. Bishop
Lindsay gives us to understand, that after the making and publication of
an ecclesiastical canon, about things of this nature, albeit a man in his
own private judgment think another thing more expedient than that which
the can