violent accident, imprisonment, loss of livelihood, or intolerable inconveniences be made accidentally consequent to the observing of a law merely human, the law binds not in the particular instance. No man is bound to be a martyr for a ceremony, or to die rather than break a canon, or to suffer confiscation of goods for the pertinacious keeping of a civil constitution. And it is not to be supposed, that a lawgiver would have decreed a rite, and bound the lives of the subjects to it, which are of a far greater value than a rite; not only because it were tyrannical and unreasonable, but because the evil of the law were greater than the good of it; it were against the reason of all laws, and destroys the privileges of nature, and it puts a man into a condition as bad as the want of all laws; for nothing is civilly or naturally worse than death, to which the other evils arrive in their proportion. This is to be understood in particular and positive precepts, introduced for reasons particular, that is, less than those are, which combine all societies, and which are the cement of all bodies political; I mean, laws ritual in the church, and accidental and emergent in the state. And that, which is the best sign to distinguish these laws from others, is also the reason of the assertion. Laws, decreed with a penalty to the transgressors, cannot bind to an evil greater than that penalty. If it be appointed, that we use a certain form of liturgy, under the forfeiture of five pounds for every omission, I am bound in conscience to obey it, where I can: but I am supposed legally to be disabled, if any tyrant power shall threaten to kill me if I do, or make me pay an hundred pounds, or any thing greater than the forfeiture of the law. For all the civil and natural power of the law is by its coercion, and the appendant punishment. The law operates by rewards and punishments, by hope and fear; and it is unimaginable that the law, under a less penalty, can oblige us, in any case or accident, to suffer a greater. For the compulsion of the tyrant is greater than the coercion of the lawgiver; and the prince, thinking the penalty annexed to be band sufficient, intended no greater evil to the transgressor, than the expressed penalty; and therefore much less would he have them, that obey the law by any necessity, be forced to a greater evil: for then, disobedience should escape better than obedience. True it is, every disobeying person, that

pays the penalty, is not quite discharged from all his obligation; but it is then, when his disobeying is criminal upon some other stock besides the mere breach of the law, as contempt, scandal, or the like: for the law binds the conscience indirectly, and by consequence; that is, in plain language, God commands us to obey human laws, and the penalty will not pay for the contempt, because that is a sin against God; it pays for the violation of the law, because that was all the direct transgression against man3. And then who shall make him recompense, for suffering more than the law requires of him? Not the prince; for it is certain, the greatest value he set upon the law, was no bigger than the penalty; and the commonwealth is supposed to be sufficiently secured in her interest by the penalty, or else the law was weak, impotent, and unreasonable. Not God; for it is not an act of obedience to him; for he binds us no farther to obey human laws, than the lawgiver himself intends or declares; who cannot reasonably be supposed so over careful, as to bind hay with cords of silk and gold, or sumptuary laws with the threads of life; nor a father commanding his child to wait on him every meal, be thought to intend his obligation, even though the house be ready to fall on his head, or when he is to pass a sudden or unfordable flood, before he can get to him. And that it may appear man ought not, it is certain God himself doth not oblige us, in all cases and in all circumstances, to observe every of his positive precepts. For," assembling togethert" is a duty of God's commanding, which we are "not to neglect:" but if death waits at the door of these assemblies, we have the practice of the primitive and best Christians, to warrant us to serve God in retirements, and cells, and wildernesses, and leave" the assembling together" till better opportunities. If I receive more benefit, or the commonwealth, or the church and religion, any greater advantage, by my particular obedience in these circumstances, (which cannot easily be supposed, will be,) it is a great act of charity to do it, and then to suffer for it but if

• Lucius Veratius pro delectamento habuit os hominis liberi palmâ verberare. Eum servus sequebatur crumenam plenam assium gestans, et quemcunque percusserat, jussit statim numerari 25 asses, qui pro mulctâ huic offensæ ex lege XII. Tab. imponebantur. — A. Gel. lib. xx. c. 1.

t Heb. x. 25.

it be no more", that is, if it be not expressly commanded to be done, (though with loss of life or confiscation,) it is a good charity to save my own life, or my own estate and though the other may be better, yet I am not in all cases obliged to do that, which is simply the best. It is a tolerable infirmity, and allowed amongst the very first permissions of nature, that I may preserve my life, unless it be in a very few cases, which are therefore clearly to be expressed, or else the contrary is to be presumed, as being a case most favourable. And it is considerable, that nothing is worse than death, but damnation, or something that partakes of that in some of its worst ingredients; such as is a lasting torment, or a daily great misery in some other kind. And therefore, since no human law can bind a man to a worsething than death, if obedience brings me to death, I cannot be worse, when I disobey it; and I am not so bad, if the penalty of death be not expressed. And so for other penalties, in their own proportions.

This discourse is also to be understood concerning the laws of peace, not of war; not only because every disobedience in war may be punished with death, (according as the reason may chance,) but also, because little things may be of great and dangerous consequence. But in peace it is observable, that there is no human, positive, superinduced law, but by the practice of all the world, (which, because the permission of the prince is certainly included in it, is the surest interpretation,) it is dispensed withal, by ordinary necessities, by reason of lesser inconveniences and common accidents: thus the not saying of our office daily, is excused by the study of divinity; the publishing the bans of matrimony, by an ordinary incommodity; the fasting days of the church, by a little sickness or a journey; and therefore much rather if my estate, and most of all if my life, be in danger with it: and to say, that, in these cases, there is no interpretative permission to omit the particular action, is to accuse the laws and the lawgiver, the one of unreasonableness, the other of uncharitableness.

22. Fourthly: These considerations are upon the execution of the duty; but even towards man our obedience must

" Vide Part ii. Disc. x. n. 11.

have a mixture of the will and choice, like as our injunction of obedience to the Divine command. "With good will doing service," (saith the apostle,) for it is impossible to secure the duty of inferiors but by conscience and good will; unless provision could be made against all their secret arts, and concealments, and escapings; which, as no providence can foresee, so no diligence can cure. It is but an 66 service," whatsoever is compelled and involuntary. Nothing rules a man in private, but God and his own desires; and they give laws in a wilderness, and accuse in a cloister, and do execution in a closet, if there be any prevarication.

eye

23. Fifthly: But obedience to human laws goes no farther: we are not bound to obey with a direct and particular act of understanding, as in all Divine sanctions; for so long as our superiors are fallible, though it be highly necessary we conform our wills to their innocent laws, yet it is not a duty, we should think the laws most prudent or convenient; because all laws are not so; but it may concern the interest of humility and self-denial, to be subject to an inconvenient, so it be not a sinful, command: for so we must choose an affliction, when God offers it, and give God thanks for it; and yet we may cry under the smart of it, and call to God for ease and remedy. And yet it were well, if inferiors would not be too busy in disputing the prudence of their governors, and the convenience of their constitutions: whether they be sins or no in the execution, and to our particulars, we are concerned to look to; I say, as to our particulars; for an action may be a sin in the prince commanding it, and yet innocent in the person executing as in the case of unjust wars, in which the subject, who cannot, ought not to be a judge, yet must be a minister; and it is notorious in the case of executing an unjust sentence, in which not the executioner, but the judge, is the only unjust person; and he that serves his prince in an unjust war, is but the executioner of an unjust sentence: but whatever goes farther, does but undervalue the person, slight the government, and unloose the golden cords of discipline. For we are not intrusted in providing for degrees, so we secure the kind and condition of

Is damnum dat, qui jubet dare: ejus verò nulla culpa est, cui parere necesse fit, Ulpian, I. 130.

our actions. And since God, having derived rays and beams of majesty, and transmitted it in parts upon several states of men', hath fixed human authority and dominion in the golden candlestick of understanding, he that shall question the prudence of his governor, or the wisdom of his sanction, does unclasp the golden rings, that tie the purple upon the prince's shoulder; he tempts himself with a reason to disobey, and extinguish the light of majesty by overturning the candlestick, and hiding the opinion of his wisdom and understanding. And let me say this; he that is confident of his own understanding and reasonable powers, (and who is more than he, that thinks himself wiser than the laws?) needs no other devil in the neighbourhood, no tempter but himself to pride and vanity, which are the natural parents of disobedience.

24. But a man's disobedience never seems so reasonable, as when the subject is forbidden to do an act of piety, commanded indeed in the general, but uncommanded in certain circumstances. And forward piety and assiduous devotion, a great and indiscreet mortifier, is often tempted to think no authority can restrain the fervours and distempers of zeal in such holy exercises; and yet it is very often as necessary to restrain the indiscretions of a forward person, as to excite the remissness of the cold and frozen. Such persons were the Sarabaites, spoken of by Cassian, who were greater labourers and stricter mortifiers, than the religious in families and colleges; and yet they endured no superior, nor laws. But such customs as these are humiliation without humility; humbling the body, and exalting the spirit; or, indeed, sacrifices, and no obedience. It was an argument of the great wisdom of the fathers of the desert: when they heard of the prodigious severities exercised by Simeon Stylites upon himself, they sent one of the religious to him, with power to inquire what was his manner of living, and what warrant he had for such a rigorous undertaking, giving in charge to command him to

* Μὴ ἔριζε γονεῦσι, καν δίκαια λέγῃς. — Laert.

z Modum autem tenere in eo difficile est, quod bonum esse credideris.

Sen. ep. 23.

a Collat. xviii. c. 17.

Apud Euagrinm. De eodem Stylite consulat lector Epiph. lib. i. c. 13. Theod. et 7. Synod. gener. et Baron. ad A.D. 432.