ABSTRACT
Apart from political pressures, there were economic factors militating against anything like a full-blooded concept of conscience being the criterion of judgment in equity. Conscience as a criterion for law tends to be further circumscribed, and its relevance correspondingly diminished. That aspect of conscience which implicates justice still applies, but what it dictates may be ascertained in terms that do not really require the distinctive insights offered by conscience. For the seventeenth century Christian, the rule of conscience was the will of God, manifested in more than one way, but ultimately in Scripture. Lord Nottingham's continuing characterization of Chancery as a court of conscience is not wholly inconsistent with that insistence, since it is not conscience but arbitrary judgment that is objectionable. Besides privileging the role of the individual in applying rules to personal circumstances, the process of individualization which affected conscience had the effect of making the rules themselves increasingly unstable.
