needs it not; or he hath another remedy; or he is sufficiently contrite for his sins, and does his penance by internal sorrow; or, it may be, he cannot at that time mourn; or, it may be, the cause is altered, or a greater cause intervenes; and that ought to be served, and therefore not this; for if you serve both, you tire obedience, and make religion to be a burden: but which is most of all, a law of burden, if it be perpetual, makes the willing to be slaves, and tempts the unwilling to be rebels; and because it is intended to minister to things contingent and infinitely alterable, if the law be not so too, it must pass into an opinion of being a divine worship and religion, or else into more than an opinion and imagination of tyranny. Add to this, that laws of burden are always against charity, if they be not done in great necessity, or not effective of a good greater than the evil; and therefore to impose such laws, with a perpetual obligation upon churches, when it cannot be of perpetual use, and at all times good, or just, at such times necessary,-is against the equity and charity of that power which Christ intrusted in the hands of them, whom he made stewards of his household, feeders of his flock, and fathers of his family. ever. 24. But if the laws be relative to what is past, and no burden, but matter of ease or benefit, or comes from a perpetual cause, or that which is unalterable, then the law may be such, which will be perpetually consented to, and kept for Thus the Catholic church keeps the Lord's day, not by an everlasting ordinance, but by a perpetual consent, and for a never-failing reason; and that which makes it necessary now to keep that day, and will do so for ever, is, because the reason of it is always the same; and in this case, that which was fit at first, will be so at last, and all the way and things are in that constitution and conjunction, that no man can despise that day, without being careless to return thanks for the resurrection of Christ, and to separate a just portion of his time to the more solemn services of God. But for all this, this is not a perpetual law imposed upon all churches; for God did not impose it, and no man hath power to do it; for no man's power can last longer than his life: and therefore no bishop can oblige his successors by any canon, without the civil power supervenes and fixes that law by continuation. And therefore although God did enjoin the Jews an annual fast for ever, and although the rulers of the Jews did add some more, and they were observed for ever: yet this will not infer that therefore now this may be done in a law of the church. For God who is a lawgiver, does abide for ever; and therefore his laws are to remain as long as he please: and the rulers of the Jews had both the powers, civil and ecclesiastical, conjunct, and they by a current legislation still caused their fasts to be observed; yet the succeeding ages had been at liberty, and the sanhedrim might have changed those solemn days, but that they were established by prophets and by those, whom they believe to speak the will of God: all which make their case special, and not to be drawn into example and warranty in the sanction of ecclesiastical laws in the Christian church. To which let this be added, that the Jews might keep and observe a religion of days and meats; and it not being against the analogy of their manner of serving God, their rulers had an equal power to make laws in the difference of days and meats, as in any other matter whatsoever. But the laws of the church must minister to piety and holiness, and to nothing else; and they must be exacted with prudence and charity, and in no other manner; and must be obeyed in love and liberty, and by no other measures: but the day or the meat must ever be the less principal in constitution; they may be the circumstances, but no part of the religion, and therefore cannot be perpetual; but just as a Venice glass may, that is, if there be nothing to break it, abide for many ages, but every thing that strikes it can break the glass, and every requisite of reason or charity can put a period, or take off the necessity of that portion, in the law which, because it must be less principally regarded, must accordingly be imposed and exacted, but cannot be universal and perpetual. 25. The result of these considerations is this; (1.) Ecclesiastical laws may be made by particular churches, to prevail in their own governments, and to pass on their own subjects, -but may not, by one church, be imposed upon another, much less from one to pass upon all. 26. (2.) Ecclesiastical laws may be made and continued by any authority so long as that power lasts, and so long as the reason of the law does last; but it can be no longer a law than it hath influence from the remaining power, who is to establish it according to the remaining usefulness. 27. (3.) All ecclesiastical laws, in the matter of meats and drinks and days, must be wholly relative to religion, and the effect of graces and proper duties, and must not at all be imposed with any regard to themselves, but to the ends of their ministry, and must live and die according to the nature of relative beings; but cannot be perpetual, but where neither the cause nor the subject alters. 28. (4.) All ecclesiastical laws must be imposed with liberty: not with liberty of the subjects to obey or not to obey, but with the liberty of the whole church, to change them or to continue them, to exact or relax them, to bind or to loose, as may best stand with prudence and charity, with the interest of virtue or the good of the subject. : 29. (5.) Ecclesiastical laws must serve religion, but must never pretend to be religion or a direct service of God. It is true that all religious laws of our just superiors, rightly imposed in order to any virtue, are adopted into the society of that virtue as a law of fasting does also enjoin a duty of temperance; a law of Christian festivity, in order to our joy in God, and praising his name, and paying him thanks, promotes all these graces; and therefore he that keeps that day to these purposes besides his obedience, does an act of all those graces. Yet it is to be observed, that the observation of these laws can never formally be reckoned to be actions of those graces; they are but ministries and instruments, and they not necessary but useful only and therefore he that does not observe that day, though, it may be, he sins against obedience, yet he is not to be judged as if he were intemperate, or unthankful, or unmindful of God's benefits; because though these appointments are made for the services of these graces, yet these are not the adequate ministries of them; they may be done by other ways at other times, and they may, at that time, be omitted without any neglect of such graces. If there be a just cause to omit the observation, then the omission is neither disobedience, nor intemperance, nor unthankfulness: but if there be no just cause, it is disobedience; and may be any of the other as it happens, but is not certainly so. But though in these respects to obey an ecclesiastical law may be a doing an act of virtue together with the obedience, and so a serving of God; yet because it is only in the regard of the concomitant act of virtue, which is served by the law,-if that law do not serve that virtue, but by any cause be destitute of its purpose, that external action which the law enjoins, is so far from being a service of God, that if it be urged imperiously, or acted for itself, and delighted in upon the natural account, it enters into religion, with which it hath nothing to do, and so passes into super stition. 30. (6.) Ecclesiastical laws, if by any means they be taught for doctrines and commandments of God, become unlawful in the imposition, though the actions of themselves be lawful; that is, they are unlawful laws, and do not bind the conscience: for they are such things in which no man can have authority; for they are a direct destruction to Christian liberty, which no man ought to take from us. If they once pretend to a necessity besides the equal necessity of obedience, they do not oblige the subjects of any government; but if they pretend to a necessity of obedience, they do not oblige any churches besides that, whose governors have made the law. RULE XVIII. Ecclesiastical Laws of Ceremonies and Circumstances of ternal Observances, do not bind the Conscience beyond the Cases of Contempt and Scandal. 1. THAT is, they bind only in public, and not in private; they bind not for any thing that is in themselves, but for something that is better than themselves; they bind, not for our own sakes, but for their sakes that look on: and therefore when nobody looks on, when they have no end to serve, when they do no good, when they signify nothing, they cannot bind at all; for whatsoever binds only for this reason, does not bind at all when this reason is not. The church of England commands, that, when the priest says the responsory after the Creed at morning or evening prayer, he shall stand up: the purpose of it is, that the people who are concerned to answer, may the better hear: but if the prayers be said in private, none being by, or, it may be, two or three that kneel near him, it is ridiculous to suppose that the priest sins, if he kneels on to the end of those ejaculations. In some cases, he that officiates, is bound to turn his face to the west, or to the body of the church; but if there be nobody in the church, but the clerk at his side, why he should do so, there is no reason to be given, and therefore it cannot be supposed to be bound upon him by the law of the church. 2. For it is highly considerable, that in these laws of ceremonies, it is otherwise than in laws, which concern the matter and instances of divine commandments. Because the laws of commonwealths can change actions, of themselves indifferent, into the order of virtue and vice, if they be of the same matter and naturally capable; as when incest is defined to be a forbidden conjunction of persons too near in blood, the law, by forbidding the marriage of uncle and niece for that reason, can make that to be incest; and killing can, by the law be made murder, when it is forbidden,-or not to be murder, when it is justly commanded. Thus if there be a law made, that corn or gold lace shall be sold at a certain price, the law which is the measure of justice in contracts, makes that price to be the instance of justice, and what exceeds it, to be unjust, if it be a just law. Because these actions lying next to the instances of the divine commandment, and placed there as outer guards to God's law, and being naturally the same actions, when the prohibition comes from a just authority, then it is made to be a sin by the law, and that sin by the nature and participation of the same reason. For he that kills his adulterous daughter where it is permitted, does do the natural act of killing as much as he that kills his father; but where there is no law against it, but by law she is sentenced to death, and that without solemnities, there is no ἀνομία, and therefore no ἁμαρτία,— it is not a sin, unless it be the transgression of a law. So that the natural capacity and the supervening law together make up the action to be such a sin. But now this thing can never be in ecclesiastical laws of ceremonies and rules of order: for they are not in their matter and in their own nature like to religion or next to it: and nothing can be religion but that service, which God hath chosen of himself, and that which is |