naturally and internally so, as, glorification of God, loving him, obeying him, praying to him, believing him, and such other inward actions which are taught to us by our natural reason and our prime notices of God. But external actions and ministries are then capable of being made religion, when God appoints them, and not else; because God will be worshipped externally as he is pleased to appoint, according to that saying of Origen i, "Nemo qui oculis animæ cernit, alio modo Deum colit, quam sicut ipse docuit;""That man is blind in his reason, that will worship God otherwise than he himself hath taught."

3. This only; The church can adopt actions into religion, which God hath made ready, and which he hath prepared and fitted for religion; such as are free-will-offerings and counsels evangelical. For when any man does choose to do any act, which God hath recommended and not enjoined, this is religion; but this is only in such things which are real graces appointed by the divine law, and the instance only is left undetermined. How far the church can command any of these things, I shall afterward inquire; but for the present, these things can pass into religion, because God hath so prepared them.

4. But secondly; external observances can become religion, if they be the outward act of an inward grace; as, giving money to the poor, worshipping God with the body; that is, when they naturally express what is conceived and acted within, not when they come from without: a commandment of man may make these actions to be obedience, but they are made religion by the grace within, or not at all. Thus fasting can be an act of religion, when it is naturally consequent to penitential sorrow, and the hatred of sin: but when it is enjoined by men, then it is but an instrument, and may be separate from all religion, and may be no act of repentance, and can be made to be religion by no man but by the nature of the thing.

5. But thirdly; ceremonies and rituals and gestures and manners of doing outward actions, cannot be made to be any thing but obedience: they are neither fitted by God, as counsels evangelical are,-nor yet by nature, as the outward actions of virtue are, to become religion; nay they are separated i Contra Celsum, lib. 7.

from being religion by the word of God, by the coming of Christ, by his death upon the cross; and days, and meats and drinks, and carnal purities, and external observances, are now, both by God and by nature, removed far from being any thing of the Christian, that is, of the spiritual religion.

6. The consequent of these things is this,-When a law is made, it binds either by the natural goodness of the thing, or by the order and usefulness of its ministry to something else, or only by the authority. Ceremonies cannot be of the first sort, but of the second they may, and then they oblige only so long, as they can minister to the end of their designation, but no longer. For if that be the only reason of their obliging, then they oblige not, when that reason is away. Now because they are made only for order and decency, both which are relative terms, and suppose an action done in public, there is no need, no use of them in private. But, because, even after the reason ceases, the authority hath reasons of its own to be regarded, and things that are not binding by their absolute or relative nature, may yet bind by the authority and for the reverence of that, till there be opportunity to annul the law, therefore when the reason of the ceremony does cease, or is useless and operates not at all, we must yet regard the authority; that is, do it honour, as Samuel did to Saul. If the thing itself be of an intrinsic goodness, though made necessary only by the positive command, then it is to be done for itself, and in private as well as public: but if it be only a relative ministry, then it hath no reason beyond that relation; and if that relation be public, it binds only in public: but if it be only matter of obedience, and have no reason else either absolute or relative, then the law does not bind the conscience, but even then we are bound so to comport ourselves, that the authority may not be despised nor offended; that is, it is not to be slighted or reproached, nor publicly disregarded: though for the obedience itself in this case there is no absolute obligation, but the not obeying is to be conducted humbly, inoffensively, prudently, and regardfully. The reason of these things is this, because the church makes no absolute laws; she makes them for good ends, and beyond that she hath no authority: her legislative is wholly a ministry of grace and godliness, not of empire and dominion. For the difference is this; civil laws oblige in public

and in private, for reason and for empire,-when the cause ceases, and when it remains,-when the breach is scandalous, and when it is not scandalous: but the canons of the church oblige only for their reason and religion, for edification and for charity, when the thing is useful to others or good in itself; but the authority itself being wholly for these purposes, is a ministry of religion, but hath in it nothing of empire, and therefore does not oblige for itself and by itself, but for the doing good, and for the avoiding evil: and this is that, which is meant by the cases of contempt and scandal. These are the negative measures of ecclesiastical laws. The positive measures are these :

RULE XIX.

Ecclesiastical Laws must be charitable and easy; and, when they are not, they oblige not.

1. WHEN ecclesiastical laws were conducted and made by the spiritual power, the bishops, rulers of churches, before the civil power was Christian,-their laws were either commandments of essential duty, or of that which was next to it and necessary for it: or else they were indicted to a voluntary people, and therefore to be presumed easy and gentle, charitable and useful; or it is not to be thought the people would have been willing long to bear them. But when the civil power was the ecclesiastical ruler, and the commonwealth became a church, the spiritual sword was put into a temporal scabbard, and the canons ecclesiastical became civil laws, though, in their matter religious, and in their original, they were ecclesiastical. Now if the laws be established by the civil power, they must indeed be just and good; but yet if they be laws of burden, and contain a load that is supportable, they are to be obeyed. "Quod quidem perquam durum est, sed ita lex scripta est," said Ulpian; The case is hard, but so the law is written:" meaning, that though it be hard, yet the law is to be obeyed, so long as it is just. But when the ecclesiastical law is indicted by the spiritual power, the civil power only consenting and establishing the indicted

k Lib. Prospicit. ff. qui à quibus.

canon, that corroboration adds no other band to the canon, than that it be obeyed according to the intention of the spiritual power, only so it becomes a law indeed, but it is a law only as the church can intend a law, or desire it to be imposed; that is, what the church might reasonably persuade, and fitly enjoin, that so much and no more, in that manner and no other, the civil power does corroborate it. For the ecclesiastical canon, put into the hands of the civil power and made into a law, is like a twig of an apple-tree grafted into the stock of a thorn; it changes not the nature of it, but is still an apple: so is the canon,-still it is but an injunction of the church, though the church be enabled temporally to chastise the rebellious; but still the twig that is so ingrafted, must retain its own nature, and must be no sowerer than if it grew upon its own stock; it must be such as is fit to be persuaded, such which men can be willing to, and easy under, and of which they shall have no cause to complain. For since the church, in these things, hath no power but to exhort and to persuade, and therefore can enjoin nothing but what can be reasonably persuaded; she must not, by the aid of the temporal power, enjoin those things which are cruel and vexatious, and such to which no argument but fear can make the subject willing. The church, when she hath temporal possessions, always is a good landlady; and when she makes judgments she meddles not with blood, but gives the gentlest sentences; and when she is admitted to a legislative, she enjoins a túyos XenoTòs, an easy, a gentle yoke;' and when she does not, the subject is concerned to avoid the temporal evil threatened by the civil power; but not to give obedience to the intolerable law of the church, as in that capacity; for unless the law of the church be such, that good men may willingly obey it, it cannot be enjoined by the church, and the church ought not to desire the civil power to do it for her for since she hath no power to command in such things, where the divine authority does not intervene, all the rest is but persuasion; and he that hath power only to persuade, cannot be supposed to persuade against our will: and therefore matters of intolerable burden are not the matter of ecclesiastical laws, because they certainly are against the will of all men, who can serve God and go to heaven without them.

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2. Not that it is permitted to any man, as he please, to obey or not to obey the ecclesiastical laws; nor that the spiritual authority so depends upon the consent of ject, that he is at his choice, whether he will keep it or no: but that he is to obey willingly; that is, that no more be imposed than what he may be willing to; and then that he be not disobedient, when, if he were not peevish, he ought to be willing. For this is all that share of Christian liberty, which under his just superiors every single subject can enjoy ; he may not break the law when he please, but when he cannot keep it; not when he is not in the humour, but when he is not in capacity; not because he will, but because without great evil he cannot.

3. I shall give an instance in the ecclesiastical laws of fasting, and, by an inquiry into their obligation, state the sense and intention of this rule.

What Persons are tied to the Observation of ecclesiastical Fasts, and in what Cases.

4. To the solution of which question, first we are to consider to what end the church enjoins her fast. For whoever is involved in that end, is also concerned in the law, ordinarily and regularly. Thus if a fast be only indicted to suppress incontinence, they who have no temptation to it, or have a sufficient remedy by which they please God, are not bound by that law, but in the cases of scandal and contempt. Fasting spittle kills a serpent,' saith Pierius 1; but if a man have a rod in his hand that will do it sooner, that law would be fantastical, that should command him to stay, till he could kill the snake with his fasting-spittle. But if the church intends many good ends in the canon, any one is sufficient to tie the law upon the conscience, because for that one good end, it can be serviceable to the soul. And indeed fasting is of that nature, that it can be a ministry of repentance by the affliction,—and it can be a help to prayer, by taking off the loads of flesh and a full stomach,-and it can be aptly ministerial to contemplation; and if fasting were only for mortification of lustful appetites, then a virgin might not safely fast in public, lest she fall into the suspicion of incontinence, or be exposed to the bolder solicitations of the young men. Now be

1 Lib. 14. Hier.