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know to be unlawful to perform. What is this but to proclaim perjury to be lawful, at the committing whereof every Christian heart ought to tremble; or rather to declare that there is no such sin, no such thing as perjury? There is no question, no man ought to perform an unlawful much less a wicked oath or promise; but the wickedness of executing it doth not absolve any man from the guilt and wickedness of swearing that he would do it; he is perjured in not performing that which he would be more perjured in performing; and men who unwarily involve themselves in those labyrinths, cannot find the way out of them with innocence, and seldom chuse to do it with that which is next to it, hearty repentance; but devise new expedients, which usually increase their crime and their perplexity. Where nothing of the law of God or some manifest deduction from thence doth controul our promises, it is great pity that the mere human law and policy of government should absolve men from the performance; and a good conscience will compel him to do that whom the law will not compel, but suffer to evade for his own benefit. We have not that probity which nature stated us in, if we do not castigare promittendi temeritatem, redeem the rashness and incogitance of our promise, by submitting to the inconvenience and damage of performance.

It is one of the greatest arguments which makes Machiavel seem to prefer the government of a commonwealth before that of monarchy (for he doth but seem to do it, how great a republican soever he is thought to be,) because he says kings and princes are less direct in the observation of their promises and contracts than republics are; and that a little benefit and advantage disposes them to violate them, when no profit that can accrue prevails upon the other to recede from the obligation: which would be indeed an argument of weight and importance, if it were true. Nor does the instance he gives us in any degree prove his assertion; for it was not the justice of the senate of Athens that refused the proposition made by Themistocles, for the destruction of the whole fleet of the rest of Greece, to whom it was never made, but the particular exactness of Aristides, to whom it was discovered by order of the senate, that he might consider it; and he reported, that the proposition was indeed very profitable, but most dishonest, upon which the senate rejected it, without knowing more of it; which, if they had done, it is probable, by their other practices, that they might not so readily have declined it. Nor is the instance he gives of Philip of Macedon other than a general averment, without stating the case: as his adored republic of Rome never out

lived that infamous judgment, that, when a difference between two of their neighbours was by a joint consent referred to their arbitrement, to whom a piece of land in difference and dispute between them should belong, determined that it should belong to neither of them, but that they the republic of Rome should enjoy it themselves, because it lay very convenient for them; so that form of government hath never since raised any monuments of their truth and justice, in the observation of the promises and contracts which they have made. But though his comparison and preference had no good foundation, he had too much reason to observe, in the time in which he lived, how little account princes made of their word and promises, by the several and contradictory investitures which in a short time had been given of the kingdom of Naples, which overflowed all Italy with a deluge of blood, by the inconstancy and tergiversation of Ferdinand of Arragon, who swallowed up all the other investitures; and afterwards, by the insatiable ambition and animosity between Charles the Fifth and Francis the First, when treaties and leagues were entered into, that they might take breath when they were weary, and with no other purpose than to watch an opportunity to break it to their advantage. This indeed was too great a prostitution of the dignity and faith of kings to the censure and

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reproach of their subjects, who found themselves every day under sentences and judgments for the breach of their words and contracts, which they had not entered into with half that solemnity, and that they must be bound to waste their estates, and lose or venture their lives in the maintenance and defence of their prince's wilful and affected violation of their word, promise, and oath, to satisfy their pride or their humour: and it may be, that easy inclination to faithlessness, in which God Almighty was made a party and a property in all their contracts, hath been a principal motive and cause of his heavy judgments upon those royal families; of which one, after a numerous issue, which might naturally have lasted to the end of the world, hath been long since so fully extinguished, that the name of Valois is lost in any lawful line; and the other is so near expired, that it hath not strength left to draw much fear from their neighbours or reverence from their subjects, as if they looked upon it as worn out and forsaking the world. How observable soever the fate of those very great princes hath been, yet their successors have taken little notice of it; and though their virtues (for they had both transcendent princely qualities) have languished in imitation, their vices have been propagated with great vigour and Christianity hath not a fitter. scene for lamentation, than the consideration how

little account kings and princes still make of the faith they give to each other, and upon how little or no provocation they break it, upon the least temptation of their inconveniency, or only because they are able to do it without controul or opposition: so that it is looked upon as no crime in a king, which is infamy in a gentleman; as if because there is no tribunal before which they can be accused, they cannot therefore be guilty of perjury. But they should wisely remember and foresee, that there is a high court of justice before which they must inevitably appear, where the perjury of princes will be so much more severely punished than that of private men, by how much it is always attended with a train of blood, and rapine, and other ill consequences, which the other is not guilty of.

OF LIBERTY.

Montpellier, 1670.

LIBERTY is the charm, which mutinous and seditious persons use, to pervert and corrupt the affections of weak and wilful people, and to lead them into rebellion against their princes and lawful superiors: En illa, quam sæpe optastis, libertas, said Catiline, when he would draw the poor people

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