Sacris Arcanis Deiparæ et Josephi. Paris, 1615. page 921.]

But just as it would belong to another and a separate province to
examine, at such length as its importance demands, the claims of the
Church of Rome to be acknowledged as that universal interpreter of the
word and will of God, from whose decisions there is no appeal; so would
it evidently be incompatible with the nature of the present address, to
dwell in any way corresponding with the magnitude and delicacy of the
subject, on the duty, the responsibility, and the privilege of private
judgment; on the dangers to which an unchastened exercise of it may
expose both an individual, and the cause of Christian truth; or on the
rules which sound wisdom and the analogy of faith may prescribe to us in
the government of ourselves with respect to it. My remarks, therefore,
on this subject will be as few and brief as I believe to be consistent
with an acknowledgment of the principles upon which this work has been
conducted.

The foundation, then, on which, to be safe and beneficial, the duty of
private judgment, as we maintain, must be built, is very far indeed
removed from that common and mischievous notion of it which would
encourage us to draw immediate and crude deductions from Holy Scripture,
subject only to the control and the colouring of our own minds,
responsible for nothing further than our own consciousness of an honest
intention. Whilst we claim a release from that degrading yoke which
neither are we nor were our fathers able to bear, we deprecate for
ourselves and for our fellow-believers that licentiousness which in
doctrine and practice tempts a man to follow merely what is right in his
own eyes, uninfluenced by the example, the precepts, {4} and the
authority of others, and owning no submissive allegiance to those laws
which the wise and good have established for the benefit of the whole