tions of the school, which inquire into the power of God: as whether, by God's absolute power, a body can be in two places:'—whether God can give leave to a man to sin:'and very many there are of them to as little purpose. But yet here I am willing to speak in the like manner of expression, because the consequent and effect of it goes not to a direct inquiry concerning the Divine power, for it intends to remonstrate, that because God does actually dispense in his own law, this prime law of God, or the law of nature, is nothing else but the express and declared will of God in matters proportionable to right reason and the nature of

man.

2. But in order to the present inquiry, it is to be observed that God's dispensation is otherwise than man's dispensation; 1. God is the supreme lawgiver, and hath immediate power and influence over laws, and can cancel these, and impose those, new or old, as he please. By this power it is, that he can relax to particular persons their personal obligation quod hic et nunc et sic;' and if he does, the law still remaining in its force and power to other persons and in other cases, this is properly dispensation. 2. God is the supreme Lord, and can transfer dominions and take away kingdoms, and give them to whom he please; and when lie makes such changes, if he commands any one to be his minister in such translations, he does legitimate all those violences, by which those changes are to be effected: and this also is a dispensation: but improperly. 3. God is also the supreme judge, and can punish and exauctorate whom he please, and substitute others in their room: and when he does so by command and express declaration of his will, then also he dispenses in those obligations of justice, or obedience, or duty respectively, by which the successor or substitute, or minister, was hindered from doing that which, before the command, was a sin, but now is none: and this also is another manner of dispensation. Some doctors of the law are resolved to call nothing dispensation, but the first of these and the other under another name shall signify the same thing; but, say they, he only dispenses who takes off the obligation directly, by his legislative power, without using his judicative and potestative, he who does it as an act of direct jurisdiction, not as a lord, or a judge, but

as a lawgiver:- now say they, God does never, as a lawgiver, cancel or abrogate any law of nature: but, as a lord, he transfers rights,-and, as a judge, he may use what instruments he please in executing his sentence, and so by subtracting or changing the matter of the laws of nature, he changes the whole action.'-To these things I make this reply.

1. That this is doing the same thing under another manner of speaking. For when it is inquired, whether the law of nature is dispensable, the meaning is, whether or no that which is forbidden by the law of nature, may, in certain cases, be done without sin: but we mean not to inquire whether or no this change of actions from unlawful to lawful be that which the lawyers, in their words of art, and as they define it, call'dispensation:' for in matters of conscience, it is pedantry to dispute concerning the forms and terms of art, which men, to make their nothings seem learning, dress up into order and methods, like the dressings and paintings of people that have no beauty of their own: but here the inquiry is, and ought to be, more material, in order to practice and cases of conscience. For if I may by God be permitted to do that, which by the law of nature I am not permitted, then I am dispensed with in the law of nature, that is, a leave is given to me to do what otherwise I might not.

2. That the doing of this by any of the forenamed instruments or ways, is a dispensation, and so really to be called, appears in the instances of all laws. For if it be pretended, that the pope can dispense in the matter of vows, or a prince in the matter of marriages; which are rate and firm by the law of nature; he cannot do it by direct jurisdiction or by annulling the law, which is greater than either king or bishop: for when a dispensation is given in these instances, it is not given but when there is cause: and when there is cause, the matter is changed; and though the law remains, yet in a changed matter the obligation is taken off; and this is that, which all the world calls dispensation, and so it is in the present question; when God changes the matter or the case is pitiable, or some greater end of God is to be served, that is, when there is cause, God dispenses, that is, takes off the obligation. Here only is the difference.

3. In Divine dispensations, God makes the cause; for his

laws are so wise, so prudent, so fitted for all needs and persons and all cases, that there is no defailance or new arising case which God did not foresee: but because he hath ends of providence, of justice, of goodness, or power to serve, he often introduces new causes of things, and then he gives leave to men to finish his designs by instruments, which, without such leave, would be unlawful. But, in human dispensations, the cause is prepared beforehand, not by the lawgiver, but by accident and unavoidable defect: for, without cause, dispensations are not to be granted; but in both, the dispensation is not without the changing of the matter, that is, without altering the case. God does not give leave to any man to break a natural law, as long as he keeps that natural law in its own force and reason; and neither does a prince or bishop give leave to any subject to break any of his laws when there is no need: for the first would be a contradiction, and the second a plain ruin of his power, and a contempt to his laws: therefore, in the sum of affairs, it is all one; and because actions, generally forbidden by the law of nature, may by God be commanded to be done, and then are made lawful by a temporal command, which he made unlawful by nature or first sanction; this is a direct dispensing with single persons in the law of nature. And to say it is not a dispensation, because God does not do it by an act of simple jurisdiction, but by the intertexture of his dominative and judicial power,-is nothing but to say that God, having made a law agreeable to reason, will not do against that reason which himself made, till he introduces a higher, or another.. For while all things remain as was foreseen or intended in the law, both divine and human laws are indispensable; that is, neither God in his providence, nor men in the administration of justice and government, do at all relax their law. If it be said, a king can do it by his absolute power, though it be unjust: I confess this God cannot do, because he can do no wrong: but if God does it, his very doing it makes it just and this a king cannot do. But if the question be of matter of power, abstracting from considerations of just or unjust; there is no peradventure but God can do in his own law, as much as any prince can in his. When the matter is changed, the Divine law is as changeable as the human, with this only difference, that to

change the matter of a Divine natural law, is like the changing of the order of nature; sometimes it is done by miracle; and so is the law also changed, by extraordinary dispensation; but this, although it can happen as often as God please, yet it does happen but seldom as a miracle; but, in human laws, it can and does often happen, and therefore they are to be dispensed with frequently: and sometimes the case can so wholly alter, and the face of things be so entirely new, and the inconvenience so intolerable, that the whole law must pass away into desuetude and nullity; which can never happen in the Divine natural law; because the reason of it is as eternal as nature herself: and can only be interrupted by rare contingencies of God's procuring, as the order of nature is by miracle; but will revert, because nature will return into her channel, and her laws into their proper obligation.

4. But now to the matter of fact that God hath dispensed not only by subtraction or alteration of the matter, but by direct jurisdiction,—that is, as he is a judge, and a lord, and a lawgiver, even in all the ways, in which dispensations can be made,-appears in several instances.

1. That the marriage of one man and one woman is by the law of nature, appears by the institution of marriage, and by Christ's revocation of it to the first sanction. It was so from the beginning: and if any thing be a law of nature, that is one by the consent of all men: and yet Moses permitted divorces; and God, and Moses, his servant, permitted polygamy, when there was no necessity, no change of the matter or of case, but only that men had a mind to it. For if the conjunction of male and female was established in singulari conjugio' at the first, when there might be a greater necessity of multiplying wives for the peopling of the world, then as the world grew more populous, the necessity could less be pretended; therefore, this must be an act of pure jurisdiction: the causes of exception or dispensation grew less, when the dispensation was more frequent, and, therefore, it was only a direct act of jurisdiction. Though I confess that to distinguish dominion from jurisdiction, and the power of a judge from that of a lawgiver, I mean when both are supreme, and the power of a lord from them both, is a distinction without real difference; for as he is our lord

he gives us laws, and judges us by those laws : and, therefore, nothing is material in this inquiry, but whether the action can pass from unlawful to lawful; though because lawyers and other schools of learning use to speak their shibboleth, I thought it not amiss to endeavour to be understood by them in their own way. So again, that brother and sister should not marry, is supposed to be a law of nature; but yet God dispensed with it in the case of Cain and his sister: and this he did as a lord or as a lawgiver; he made it necessary to be SO, and yet it was not necessary he should make it so; for he could have created twenty men and twenty women as well as one: but that which is incest in others, was not so in him; but there was no signal act of dominion or of judicature in this, but it was the act of a free agent; and done because God would do so; whether this be jurisdiction or dominion, let who can, determine.

2. But in some things God did dispense by changing the matter, using that which men are pleased to call the right of dominion. Thus God did, dispense with Abraham in the matter of the sixth commandment; God commanded him to kill his son, and he obeyed, that is, resolved to do it, and willed that, which in others would be wilful murder. Now God was lord of Isaac's life, and might take it away himself, and therefore it was just: but when he gave Abraham command to do it, he did not do it but by dispensing with him, in that commandment. It is true that God, by his dominion, made the cause for the dispensation; but yet it was a direct dispensation; and it is just as if God should, by his dominion, resolve to take away the lives of the men in a whole nation, and should give leave to all mankind to kill all that people as fast as they could meet them, or when they had a mind to it: and this was the case of the sons of Israel, who had leave to kill the Canaanites and their neighbours. God dispensed with them in the matter of the sixth and eighth commandments: for it is not enough to say, that God, as lord of lives and fortunes, had divested them of their rights, and permitted them to others: for that is not enough, that God, as lord, hath taken away the lives, and liberties, and possessions of any man, or community of men: for that act of dominion is not enough to warrant any man to execute the divine decree; nay, though God hath decreed