Yet here are very great difficulties in this case, which causeth difference among the learnedest, pious casuists. 1. If a governor have beforehand made a law for that which I vow against, it is supposed by many that my vow is not to be kept, (the thing being not against the law of God,) because the first obligation holdeth. 2. Yet some think that magistrates' penal laws binding but _aut ad obedientiam aut ad pœnam_, to obedience or punishment, I am therefore obliged in indifferent things to bear his penalty, and to keep my vow.[76] 3. But if I first make an absolute vow in a thing indifferent, (as to drink no wine, or to wear no silks, &c.) and the magistrate afterwards command it me, some think I am bound to keep my vow; because though I must obey the magistrate in all things lawful, yet my vow hath made this particular thing to be to me unlawful, before the magistrate made it a duty. 4. Though others think that even in this case the general obligation to obey my superiors preventeth my obliging myself to any particular which they may forbid in case I had not vowed it, or against any particular which they may command. 5. Others distinguish of things lawful or indifferent, and say that some of them are such as become accidentally so useful or needful to the common good, the end of government, that it is fit the magistrate make a law for it, and the breaking of that law will be so hurtful, that my vow cannot bind me to it, as being now no indifferent thing; but other indifferent things they say belong not to the magistrate to determine of (as what I shall eat or drink, whether I shall marry or not, what trade I shall be of, how each artificer, tradesman, or professor of arts and sciences shall do the business of his profession, &c.) And here the magistrate they think cannot bind them against their vows, because their power of themselves in such private cases is greater than his power over them in those cases. All these I leave as so many questions unfit for me to resolve in the midst of the contentions of the learned. The great reasons that move on both sides you may easily discern. 1. Those that think an oath in lawful things, obligeth not contrary to the magistrate's antecedent or subsequent command, are moved by this reason, That else subjects and children might by their vows exempt themselves from obedience, and null God's command of obeying our superiors. 2. Those that think a vow is obligatory against a magistrate's command, are moved by this reason, Because else, say they, a magistrate may at his pleasure dispense with all vows, except in things commanded before by God: for he may come after and cross our vows by his commands, which, against the pope's pretensions, protestants have denied to be in the power of any mortal man. And God, say they, hath the first right, which none can take away. I must not be forward in determining where rulers are concerned; only to those that may and must determine it, I add these further materials to be considered of.
1. It is most necessary to the decision of this case, to understand how far the inferior that voweth was _sui juris_, and had the power of himself when he made the vow, as to the making of it, and how far he is _sui juris_ as to the act which he hath vowed; and to that end to know, in a case where there is some power over his act, both in his superior and in himself, whether his own power, or his superior's, as to that act, be the greater.
2. It is therefore needful to distinguish much between those acts that are of private use and signification only, and those that (antecedently to the ruler's command) are of public use and nature, or such as the ruler is as much concerned in as the inferior.
3. It is needful to understand the true intent and sense of the command of our superior; whether it be really his intent to bind inferiors to break their vows, or whether they intend only to bind those that are not so entangled and pre-engaged by a vow, with a tacit exception of those that are.[77] And what is most just must be presumed, unless the contrary be plain.
4. It must be discerned whether the commands of superiors intend any further penalty than that which is affixed in their laws: as in our penal laws about using bows and arrows, and about fishing, hunting, &c.; whether it be intended that the offender be guilty of damnation, or only that the threatened temporal penalty do satisfy the law; and whether God bind us to any further penalty than the superior intendeth.
5. The end of the laws of men must be distinguished from the words; and a great difference must be put between those forbidden acts that do no further harm than barely to cross the letter of the law, or will of a superior, and those that cross the just end of the command or law; and that either more or less, as it is more or less hurtful to others, or against the common good: for then the matter will become sinful in itself.