4. Temperance and fasting, when there is need, and avoiding fulness, and flesh-pleasing meats and drinks. Gluttons and drunkards are fitted to be boars and stallions.

5. To keep a conscionable government of the eye, and thoughts, and call them off as soon as Satan tempteth them.

6. Above all, to be sure to keep far enough from tempting persons. Touch them not; be not private with them. There is no safety when fire and gunpowder are long near, and in an infectious house. Distance is the greatest means of safety.

7. Another means is to foresee the end, and think what will follow specially think of death and judgment. Consider what the alluring flesh will be when the small-pox shall cover it with scabs, or when it shall have lain a few weeks stinking in a grave. This must be. But O the thoughts of the judgment of God, and the torment of a guilty conscience, should be more mortifying helps. To go to the house of mourning, and see the end of all men, and see what the dust and bones of men are when they are cast up out of the grave, and to think where the souls are and must be for ever, methinks should cure the folly of lust.

Q. 21. Is it unlawful for men and women, especially the unmarried, to set out themselves in such ornaments of apparel as may make them seem most comely and desirable?

A. 1. The common rule is to be clothed with decent, but modest apparel, such as shows the body without deceit to be what it is, which is neither loathsome nor alluring. 2. And persons must be invited to conjugal desires by truth, and not by deceit, and by the matters of real worth, such as wisdom, godliness, patience, and meekness, and not by fleshly snares; for marriages so contracted are like to turn to continued misery to both, when the body is known without the ornaments, and deceit and diseases of the soul become ́vexatious.

3. But there is much difference to be made of the time, and ends.c A young woman that hath a suitor, and intendeth marriage, may go further in adorning herself to please him that chooseth her, and a wife to please her husband's eye, than they may do to strangers, where there is no such purpose or relation. To use a procatious garb to be thought amiable to others, where it may become a snare, but can do no good, is the act of one that hath the folly of pride, and some of the disposition of a harlot; even a pleasure and desire to have those think them

Jer. ii. 32; 1 Pet. iii. 3, 4; Gen. xxxviii. 15; Prov. vii. 10.

amiable, desirable persons, in whom it may kindle concupiscence likelier than good.

Q. 22. But may not a crooked or deformed person hide their deformity by apparel, or other means?

A. Yes, so far as it only tends to avoid men's disdain in a common conversation; but not so as to deceive men in marriage desires, or purposes, or practice.

Q. 23. What if one's condition be such that marriage is like to impoverish them in the world, and cast them into great straits and temptations, and yet they feel a bodily necessity of it?

A. God casteth none into a necessity of sinning. Fornication must not be committed to avoid poverty. If such can by lawful means overcome their lust, they must do it; if not, they must marry, though they suffer poverty.

Q. 24. What if parents forbid their children necessary marriage?

A. Such children must use all lawful means to make marriage unnecessary to them. But if that cannot be done, they must marry whether their parents will or not. For man hath no power to forbid what God commandeth.

Q. 25. Is that marriage void which is without the consent of parents, and must such be separate as adulterers?

A. Some marriage, as aforesaid, is lawful without their consent; some is sinful, but yet not null, nor to be dissolved, which is the most usual case. Because all at age do choose for themselves, even in the matters of salvation: and though they ought to be ruled by parents, yet when they are not, their own act bindeth them. But if the incapacity of the persons make it null, that is another case.

Q. 26. How shall men be sure what degrees are prohibited, and what is incest, when Moses's law is abrogated, and the law of nature is dark and doubtful in it, and Christ saith little of it?

A. 1. Those passages in Moses's laws, which are but God's explication of a dark law of nature, do still tell us how God once expounded it, and consequently how far it doth extend, though Moses's law as such be abrogated.

2. The laws about such restraint of marriage are laws of order; and therefore bind when order is necessary for the thing ordered, but not when it destroyeth the good of the thing ordered, which is its end. Therefore incest is unlawful out of

such cases of necessity; but to Adam's sons and daughters it was a duty and all the children of Noah's three sons must needs marry either their own brothers and sisters, or the children of their father's brethren, which moved Lot's daughters to do what they did.

3. In these matters of order some laws of the land must be obeyed, though they restrain men more than the laws of God. Q. 27. Is marriage in every forbidden degree to be dissolved? A. Not if it be a degree only forbidden by man's laws or if it were in such foresaid cases of absolute necessity, but that which God doth absolutely forbid, must not be continued but dissolved; as the case of Herod, and him, 1 Cor. v., tells us.

CHAP. XLI.

Of the Eighth Commandment.

Q. 1. WHAT are the words of the eighth commandment?
A. Thou shalt not steal.

Q. 2. What is the stealing here forbidden?

A. All injurious getting or keeping that which is another's. Q. 3. When is it injurious?

A. When it is done without right: and that is, when it is done without the owner's consent, or by a fraudulent and forcible getting his consent, and without just authority from a superior power, who may warrant it.

Q. 4. What power may allow one to take that which is another's?

A. 1. God, who is the only absolute owner of all, did allow the Israelites to take the Egyptians' and Canaanites' goods; and so may do by whom he will. 2. And a magistrate may take away the goods of a delinquent who forfeiteth them; and may take from an unwilling subject such tribute as is his due, and as much of his estate as the law alloweth him to take for the ne cessary defence of the commonwealth, and may force him to pay his debts and a father may take from his child, who is but a conditional sub-proprietor, what he seeth meet.

Q. 5. But what if it be so small a matter, as will be no loss to him? Is it sinful theft to take it?

A. Yes; if there be none of his consent, nor any law to warrant you, it is theft, how small soever the thing be. But if the common sense of mankind suppose that men would consent if they knew it; or if the law of God, or the just law of man, enable you to take it, it is no theft. And so God allowed the Israelites to pluck the ears of corn, or eat fruit as they passed through a vineyard in hunger, so be it that they carried none away. And a man may gather a leaf of an herb for a medicine in another man's ground, because humanity supposeth that the owner will not be against it.d

Q. 6. But what if he can spare it, and I am in great necessity, and it be his duty to relieve me, and he refuseth?

A. You are not allowed to be your own carver; the common good must be preferred before your own. And if every one shall be judge when their necessity alloweth them to take from another, the property and right of all men will be vain, and the common order and peace be overthrown. And while you may either beg, or seek to the parish or magistrate for relief, there is no place for a just plea of your necessity.

Q. 7. But should a man rather die by famine, than take from another that is bound to give, and will not?

A. If his taking will, by encouraging thieves, do the commonwealth more hurt than his life will do good, he is bound rather to die than steal. But I dare not say that it is so, where all these following conditions concur. 1. If it be so small a thing as is merely to save life (as God allowed the aforesaid taking of fruit and corn). 2. If you have first tried all other means, as begging, or seeking to the magistrate. 3. If by the secrecy, or by the effect, it be no hurt to the commonwealth, but good. As for instance, if to save life, one take an apple from a tree of him that is unwilling; or eat pease or corn in the field: if children have parents that would famish them; if a company in a ship should lose all their provision save one man's, and he have enough for them all, and would give them none, I think the law of nature alloweth them to take as much as will save their lives, against his will. If David, the Lord's anointed, and his six hundred men, want bread, they think they may take it from a churlish Nabal. If an army, which is necessary to save a kingdom from a foreign enemy, should want money and food, and none would give it them, it seemeth unnatural to say, that

d Deut. xxiii. 25; Matt. xii. 1; Luke vi. 1.

• Even King Ahab might not take Naboth's vineyard.

they should all famish, and lose the kingdom, rather than take free quarter, or things absolutely necessary, from the unwilling. The commonwealth's right in every subject's estate is greater than his own, as the common good is better than his. But these rare cases are no excuse for the unjust taking of the least that is another's without his consent.

Q. 8. But may not a child, or servant, take that meat or drink which is but meet, if the parents and masters be unwilling?

A. No, unless, as aforesaid, merely to save life. If children have hard parents, they must patiently bear it. If servants have hard masters, they may leave them, or seek remedy of the magistrate for that which they are unable to bear. But the world must not be taught to invade other men's property, and be judges of it themselves.

Q. 9. But what if he owe me a debt and will not pay me, or keep unjust possession of my goods, may I not take my own by stealth or force, if I be able?

A. Not without the magistrate, who is the preserver of common order and peace, when your taking it would break that order; and such liberty would encourage robbery. If you take it, you sin not against his right, but you sin against the greater right and peace of the commonwealth.

Q. 10. But what if I owe him as much as he oweth me, may I not stop it, and refuse to pay him?

A. Yes, if the law and common good allow it, but not else; for you must rather lose your right, than hurt the commonwealth, by breaking the law which keeps its peace.

Q. 11. What if I win it by gaming, or a wager, when he consented to run the hazard?

A. Such gaming as is used in a covetous desire of getting from another, without giving him any thing valuable for it, is sinful in the winner and the loser; and another's covetous, sinful consent to stand to the hazard, maketh it not lawful for you to take it. You forfeit it on both sides, and the magistrate may do well to take it from you both. But if a moderate wager be laid, only to be a penalty to the loser for being confident in some untruth, it is just to take his wager as a penalty, and give it to the poor. But the just law of exchanging rights by contract is, to take nothing that is another's, without giving him for it that which is worth it.

Q. 12. Is it lawful to try masteries for a prize or wager; as