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A Christian Directory, Part 3: Christian Ecclesiastics
Saith Claudian,
In prolem dilatarunt perjuria patris,Et pœnam merito filius ore luit. —So Tibullus,
Ah miser: et siquis primo perjuria celat,Sera tamen tacitus pœna venit pedibus.Saith Pausanias, The fraud that is committed by perjury, falleth upon posterity. 6. Perjury and perfidiousness are virtually treason, rebellion, and murder against kings and magistrates, and no more to be favoured in a kingdom, by a king that loveth his life and safety, than the plague in a city, or poison to the body. Tristissimum et domesticum regibus omnibus pharmacum, liberorum, amicorum et exercitus perfidia, saith Appian. What security have princes of their crowns, or lives, where oaths and covenants seem not obligatory? There is then nothing left but fear of punishment to restrain the violence of any one that would do them mischief; and craft or strength will easily break the bonds of fear. He that would dissolve the bond of oaths, and teach men to make light of perjury, is no more to be endured in a kingdom, than he that openly inviteth the subjects to kill their king, or rise up in rebellion against him. If he that breaketh the least of God's commands, and teacheth men so to do, shall be called least in the kingdom of God, Matt. v. 19, then surely he that breaketh the great commands by the most odious sin of perjury, and teacheth men so to do, should neither be great, nor any thing, in the kingdoms of men. 7. Perjury is the poison of all societies, and of friendship, and of human converse, and turneth all into a state of enmity, or hostility, and teacheth all men to live together like foes. He that is not to be believed when he sweareth, is never to be believed: and when oaths and covenants signify nothing, and no man can believe another, what are they but as so many foes to one another? How can there be any relations of governors and subjects? of husband and wife? of master and servants? or how can there be any trading or commerce, when there is no trust? Perjury dissolveth all societies by loosening all the bonds of association. Well might Dionys. Halic. lib. iii. say, The perfidious are far worse than open enemies, and worthy of far greater punishment. For a man may more easily avoid the ambushments of foes, and repel their assaults, than escape the perfidiousness of seeming friends. Saith Val. Max. lib. ix. c. 6, Perfidiousness is a hidden and insnaring mischief; whose effectual force is in lying and deceiving: its fruit consisteth in some horrid villany; which is ripe and sure when it hath compassed cruelty with wicked hands; bringing as great mischief to mankind, as fidelity bringeth good and safety. He that teacheth the doctrine of perjury and perfidiousness, doth bid every man shift for himself, and trust no more his friend or neighbour, but all take heed of one another, as so many serpents or wild beasts. Lions and bears may better be suffered to live loose among men, than those that teach men to make light of oaths. 8. Thus also it destroyeth personal love, and teacheth all men to be haters of each other: for it can be no better when men become such hateful creatures to each other, as not at all to be credited or sociably conversed with. 9. Perjury and perfidiousness do proclaim men deplorate; and stigmatize them with this character, that they are persons that will stick at the committing of no kind of villany in the world, further than their fleshly interest hindereth them. No charity bindeth a man to think that he will make conscience of murder, rebellion, deceit, adultery, or any imaginable wickedness, who maketh no conscience of perjury and perfidiousness. Such a person alloweth you to judge that if the temptation serve, he will do any thing that the devil bids him: and that he is virtually a compound of all iniquity, and prepared for every evil work. 10. Lastly, as perjury doth thus dissolve societies, and turn mankind into enmity with each other, so it would make the misery uncurable, by making even penitents incredible. Who will believe him, even while he professeth to repent, that hath showed that when he sweareth he is not to be believed? He that dare forswear himself, dare lie when he pretendeth repentance for his perjury. It must be some deeds that are more credible than words and oaths, that must recover the credit of such a man's professions. If perjury have violated any relations, it leaveth the breach almost uncurable, because no professions of repentance or future fidelity can be trusted. Thus I have partly showed you the malignity of perjury and covenant-breaking.
Direct. II. Be sure that you make no vow or covenant which God hath forbidden you to keep. It is rash vowing and swearing which is the common cause of perjury. You should, at the making of your vow, have seen into the bottom of it, and foreseen all the evils that might follow it, and the temptations which were like to draw you into perjury. He is virtually perjured as soon as he hath sworn, who sweareth to do that which he must not do; the preventive means are here the best.
Direct. III. Be sure you take no oath or vow which you are not sincerely resolved to perform.61 They that swear or vow with a secret reserve, that rather than they will be ruined by keeping it, they will break it, are habitually and reputatively perjured persons, even before they break it; besides that, they show a base, hypocritical, profligate conscience, that can deliberately commit so great a sin.
Direct. IV. See that all fleshly, worldly interest be fully subdued to the interest of your souls, and to the will of God. He that at the heart sets more by his body than his soul, and loveth his worldly prosperity above God, will lie, or swear, or forswear, or do any thing to save that carnal interest which he most valueth. He that is carnal and worldly at the heart, is false at the heart; the religion of such a hypocrite will give place to his temporal safety or commodity, and will carry him no further than the way is fair. It is no wonder that a proud man, or a worldling, will renounce both God and his true felicity for the world, seeing indeed he taketh it for his god and his felicity; even as a believer will renounce the world for God.62
Direct. V. Beware of inordinate fear of man, and of a distrustful withdrawing of your heart from God. Else you will be carried to comply with the will of man before the will of God, and to avoid the wrath of man before the wrath of God. Read and fear that heavy curse, Jer. xvii. 5, 6. God is unchangeable, and hath commanded you so far to imitate him, as "If a man vow a vow unto the Lord, or swear an oath to bind his soul with a bond, he shall not break his word; he shall do according to all that proceedeth out of his mouth," Numb. xxx. 2. But man is mutable, and so is his interest and his affairs; and therefore if you are the servants of men, you must swear one year, and forswear it, or swear the contrary, the next: when their interest requireth it, you must not be thought worthy to live among men, if you will not promise or swear as they command you; and when their interest altereth and requireth the contrary, you must hold all those bonds to be but straws, and break them for their ends.
Direct. VI. Be sure that you lose not the fear of God, and the tenderness of your consciences. When these are lost, your understanding, and sense, and life are lost; and you will not stick at the greatest wickedness; nor know when you have done it, what you did. If faith see not God continually present, and foresee not the great approaching day, perjury or any villany will seem tolerable, for worldly ends: for when you look but to men's present case, you will see that "the righteous and the wise, and their works, are in the hands of God; no man knoweth love or hatred by all that is before them. All things come alike to all; there is one event to the righteous, and to the wicked; to the good, and to the clean, and to the unclean; to him that sacrificeth, and to him that sacrificeth not: as is the good, so is the sinner; and he that sweareth, as he that feareth an oath," Eccles. ix. 1, 2. But in the end, men "shall discern between the righteous and the wicked," Mal. iii. 18. Therefore it is the believing foresight of the end, that by preserving the fear of God and tenderness of conscience, must save you from this, and all other heinous sin.
Direct. VII. Be not bold and rash about such dreadful things as vows. Run not as fearlessly upon them as if you were but going to your dinner; the wrath of God is not to be jested with. Usque ad aras, was the bounds even of a heathen's kindness to his friend. Meddle with oaths with the greatest fear, and caution, and circumspection. It is terrible here to find that you were mistaken, through any temerity, or negligence, or secret seduction of a carnal interest.
Direct. VIII. Especially be very fearful of owning any public doctrine, or doing any public act, which tendeth to harden others in their perjury, or to encourage multitudes to commit the sin.63 To be forsworn yourselves is a dreadful case; but to teach whole nations or churches to forswear themselves, or to plead for it, or justify it as a lawful thing, is much more dreadful. And though you teach not or own not perjury under the name of perjury, yet if first you will make plain perjury to seem no perjury, that so you may justify it, it is still a most inhuman, horrid act. God knoweth I insult not over the papists, with a delight to make any christians odious! but with grief I remember how lamentably they have abused our holy profession, while not only their great doctors, but their approved general council at the Lateran under Pope Innocent the Third, in the third canon hath decreed that the pope may depose temporal lords from their dominions, and give them unto others, and discharge their vassals from their allegiance and fidelity, if they be heretics, or will not exterminate heretics (even such as the holy men there condemned were, in the pope's account). To declare to many christian nations, that it is lawful to break their oaths and promises to their lawful lords and rulers, or their vows to God, and to undertake, by defending or owning this, to justify all those nations that shall be guilty of this perjury and perfidiousness, oh what a horrid crime is this! what a shame even unto human nature! and how great a wrong to the christian name!
Direct. IX. Understand and remember these following rules, to acquaint you how far a vow is obligatory: which I shall give you for the most part out of Dr. Sanderson, because his decisions of these cases are now of best esteem.
Rule I. The general rule laid down Numb. xxx. 2, 3, doth make a vow, as such, to be obligatory, though the party should have a secret equivocation or intent, that though he speak the words to deceive another, yet he will not oblige himself. Such a reserve not to oblige himself hindereth not the obligation, but proveth him a perfidious hypocrite. Dr. Sanderson, p. 23, Juramentum omne ex sua natura est obligatorium: ita ut si quis juret non intendens se obligare, nihilominus tamen suscipiendo juramentum ipso facto obligetur: that is, If he so far understand what he doth, as that his words may bear the definition of an oath or vow; otherwise if he speak the words of an oath in a strange language, thinking they signify something else, or if he speak in his sleep, or deliration, or distraction, it is no oath, and so not obligatory.
Rule II. Those conditions are to be taken as intended in all oaths, (whether expressed or no,) which the very nature of the thing doth necessarily imply64 (unless any be so brutish as to express the contrary). And these are all reducible to two heads: 1. A natural, and, 2. A moral impossibility. 1. Whoever sweareth to do any thing, or give any thing, is supposed to mean, If I live; and if I be not disabled in my body, faculties, estate; if God make it not impossible to be, &c. For no man can be supposed to mean, I will do it whether God will or not, and whether I live or not, and whether I be able or not. 2. Whoever voweth or sweareth to do any thing, must be understood to mean it, If no change of providence make it a sin; or if I find not, contrary to my present supposition, that God forbiddeth it. For no man that is a christian is to be supposed to mean when he voweth, I will do this, though God forbid it, or though it prove to be a sin; especially when men therefore vow it, because they take it to be a duty. Now as that which is sinful is morally impossible, so there are divers ways by which a thing may appear or become sinful to us. (1.) When we find it forbidden directly in the word of God, which at first we understood not. (2.) When the change of things doth make that a sin, which before was a duty; of which may be given an hundred instances; as when the change of a man's estate, of his opportunities, of his liberty, of his parts and abilities, of objects, of customs, of the laws of civil governors, doth change the very matter of his duty.
Quest. But will every change disoblige us? If not, what change must it be? seeing casuists use to put it as a condition in general, rebus sic stantibus. Answ. No: it is not every change of things that disobligeth us from the bonds of a vow. For then vows were of no considerable signification. But, 1. If the very matter that was vowed, or about which the vow was, do cease, cessante materia, cessat obligatio:65 as if I promise to teach a pupil, I am disobliged when he is dead. If I promise to pay so much money in gold, and the king should forbid gold and change his coin, I am not obliged to it. 2. Cessante termino vel correlato, cessat obligatio: If the party die to whom I am bound, my personal obligation ceaseth. And so the conjugal bond ceaseth at death, and civil bonds by civil death. 3. Cessante fine, cessat obligatio: If the use and end wholly cease, my obligation, which was only to that use and end, ceaseth. As if a physician promise to give physic for nothing for the cure of the plague, to all the poor of the city; when the plague ceaseth, his end, and so his obligation, ceaseth. 4. Cessante persona naturali relata, cessat obligatio personalis: When the natural person dieth, the obligation ceaseth. I cannot be obliged to do that when I am dead, which is proper to the living. The subject of the obligation ceasing, the accidents must cease. 5. Cessante relatione vel persona civili, cessat obligatio talis, qua talis: The obligation which lay on a person in any relation merely as such, doth cease when that relation ceaseth. A king is not bound to govern or protect his subjects if they traitorously depose him, or if he cast them off, and take another kingdom (as when Henry III. of France left the kingdom of Poland): nor are subjects bound to allegiance and obedience to him that is not indeed their king. A judge, or justice, or constable, or tutor, is no longer bound by his oath to do the offices of these relations, than he continueth in the relation. A divorced wife is not bound by her conjugal vow to her husband as before, nor masters and servants, when their relations cease; nor a soldier to his general by his military sacrament, when the army is disbanded, or he is cashiered or dismissed.
Rule III. No vows or promises of our own can dissolve the obligation laid upon us by the law of God. For we have no co-ordinate, much less superior authority over ourselves; our self-obligations are but for the furthering of our obedience.
Rule IV. Therefore no vows can disoblige a man from any present duty, nor justify him in the committing of any sin. Vows are to engage us to God, and not against him: if the matter which we vow be evil, it is a sin to vow it, and a sin to do it upon pretence of a vow. Sin is no acceptable sacrifice to God.
Rule V. If I vow that I will do some duty better, I am not thereby disobliged from doing it at all, when I am disabled from doing it better.66 Suppose a magistrate, seeing much amiss in church and commonwealth, doth vow a reformation, and vow against the abuses which he findeth; if now the people's obstinacy and rebellion disable him to perform that vow, it doth not follow that he must lay down his sceptre, and cease to govern them at all, because he cannot do it as he ought, if he were free. So if the pastors of any church do vow the reformation of church abuses, in their places, if they be hindered by their rulers, or by the people, it doth not follow that they must lay down their callings, and not worship God publicly at all, because they cannot do it as they would, and ought if they were free; as long as they may worship him without committing any sin. God's first obligation on me is to worship him, and the second for the manner, to do it as near his order as I can: now if I cannot avoid the imperfections of worship, though I vowed it, I must not therefore avoid the worship itself (as long as corruptions destroy not the very nature of it, and I am put myself upon no actual sin). For I was bound to worship God before my vows, and in order of nature before my obligation de modo: and my vow was made with an implied condition, that the thing were possible and lawful: and when that ceaseth to be possible or lawful which I vowed, I must, nevertheless, do that which still remaineth possible and lawful. To give over God's solemn worship with the church, is no reformation. To prefer no worship before imperfect worship, is a greater deformation and corruption, than to prefer imperfect worship before that which is more perfect. And to prefer a worship imperfect in the manner, before no church worship at all, is a greater reformation than to prefer a more perfect manner of worship before a more imperfect and defective. To worship God decently and in order, supposeth that he must be worshipped; and he that doth not worship at all, doth not worship him decently. If a physician vow that he will administer a certain effectual antidote to all his patients that have the plague, and that he will not administer a certain less effectual preparation, which some apothecaries, through covetousness or carelessness, had brought into common use, to the injury of the sick; his vow is to be interpreted with these exceptions: I will do it if I can, without dishonesty or a greater mischief: I will not administer the sophisticated antidote when I can have better: I vow this for my patients' benefit, and not for their destruction. Therefore if the sophisticated antidote is much better than none, and may save men's lives, and the patients grow wilful and will take no other, or authority forbid the use of any other, the physician is neither bound to forsake his calling rather than use it, nor to neglect the life of his patients (if their lives indeed lie upon his care, and they may not be in some good hopes without him, and the good of many require him not to neglect a few). But he must do what he can, when he cannot do what he would, and only show that he consenteth not to the sophistication.
Rule VI. Though he that voweth a lawful thing, must be understood to mean, if it continue possible and lawful; yet if he himself be the culpable cause that afterwards it becometh impossible or unlawful, he violateth his vow. He that voweth to give so much to the poor, and after prodigally wasteth it, and hath it not to give, doth break his vow; which he doth not if fire or thieves deprive him of it against his will. He that voweth to preach the gospel, if he cut out his own tongue, or culpably procure another to imprison, silence, or hinder him, doth break his vow; which he did not if the hinderance were involuntary and insuperable: consent doth make the impedition his own act.
Rule VII. In the taking and keeping of oaths and vows we must deal simply and openly without equivocation and deceit.67 Psal. xxiv. 3-5, "Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully. He shall receive the blessing from the Lord, and righteousness from the God of his salvation."
Rule VIII. He that juggleth or stretcheth his conscience by fraudulent shifts and interpretations afterwards, is as bad as he that dissembleth in the taking of the oath. To break it by deceit, is as bad as to take it in deceit. Psal. xv. 1, 4, "Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle – he that sweareth to his own hurt and changeth not." Saith Dr. Sanderson,68 Ista mihi aut non cogitare, &c. "It seemeth to me that the greater part of the men of these times either think not of these things, or at least not seriously; who fear not, at large and in express words, without going about, to swear to all that, whatever it be, which is proposed to them by those that have power to hurt them: yea, and they take themselves for the only wise men, and not without some disdain deride the simplicity and needless fear of those, that lest they hurt their consciences forsooth, do seek a knot in a rush, and oppose the forms prescribed by those that have power to prescribe them. And in the mean time they securely free themselves from all crime and fear of perjury, and think they have looked well to themselves and their consciences, if either when they swear, like Jesuits, they can defend themselves by the help of some tacit equivocation, or mental reservation, or subtle interpretation which is strained and utterly alien from the words; or else after they have sworn can find some thing to slip through, some cunning evasion, as a wise remedy, by which they may so elude their oath, as that keeping the words, the sense may by some sophism be eluded, and all the force of it utterly enervated. The ancient christians knew not this divinity, nor the sounder heathens this moral philosophy. For otherwise saith Augustine, They are perjured, who keeping the words, deceive the expectation of those they swear to: and otherwise saith Cicero," &c. He goeth on to confirm it at large by argument.
Rule IX. An oath is to be taken and interpreted strictly. Sanderson saith,69 Juramenti obligatio est stricti juris; that is, non ut excludat juris interpretationem æquitate temperatam; sed ut excludat juris interpretationem gratia corruptam: "not as excluding an equitable interpretation, but as excluding an interpretation corrupted by partiality: " that it be a just interpretation, between the extremes of rigid, and favourable or partial; and in doubtful cases it is safer to follow the strict, than the benign or favourable sense. It is dangerous stretching and venturing too far in matters of so sacred a nature, and of such great importance as vows and oaths.
Rule X. In the exposition of such doubtful oaths and vows, 1. We must specially watch against self-interest or commodity, that it corrupt not our understandings. 2. And we must not take our oaths or any part of them in such a sense, as a pious, prudent stander-by that is impartial, and no whit interested in the business, cannot easily find in the words themselves.70
Rule XI. In doubtful cases the greatest danger must be most carefully avoided, and the safer side preferred: but the danger of the soul by perjury is the greatest, and therefore no bodily danger should so carefully be avoided: and therefore an oath that in the common and obvious sense seemeth unlawful should not be taken, unless there be very full evidence that it hath another sense. Sand. p. 46, Nititur autem, &c. This reason leaneth on that general and most useful rule, that in doubtful cases we must follow the safer side: but it is safer not to swear, where the words of the oath proposed, do seem according to the common and obvious sense of the words to contain in them something unlawful; than by a loose interpretation so to lenify them for our own ends, that we may the more securely swear them. For it is plain that such an oath may be refused without the peril of perjury; but not that it can be taken without some danger or fear. The same rule must guide us also in keeping vows.
Rule XII. It is ordinarily resolved that imposed oaths must be kept according to the sense of the imposer. See Sanders. p. 191, 192. But I conceive that assertion must be more exactly opened and bounded. 1. Where justice requireth that we have respect to the will or right of the imposer, there the oath imposed must be taken in his sense; but whether it must be kept in his sense is further to be considered. 2. When I have done my best to understand the sense of the imposer in taking the oath, and yet mistake it, and so take it (without fraud) in another sense, the question then is somewhat hard, whether I must keep it in the sense I took it in, or in his sense, which then I understood not. If I must not keep it in my own sense, which I took it in, then it would follow that I must keep another oath, and not that which I took: for it is the sense that is the oath. And I never obliged myself to any thing, but according to my own sense: and yet on the other side, if every man may take oaths in their private sense, then oaths will not attain their ends, nor be any security to the imposers.
