4. A vow of celibate or chastity during life, which hath this condition or exception expressed or implied in the true intent of the votary, (unless any thing fall out which shall make it a sin to me not to marry,) may in some cases be a lawful vow; as to one that foreseeth great inconveniences in marriage, and would by firm resolution fortify himself against temptations and mutability. 5. If there were no such excepting thought in the person vowing, yet when the thing becometh unlawful, the vow is not to be kept; though it oblige us under guilt for sinful making it, yet God commandeth us not to keep it, because we vowed that which he forbad us not only to vow but to do. 6. Either the papists suppose such exceptions to be always implied by their votaries, or at least that they are contained in the law of God, or else sure they durst never pretend that the pope hath power to dispense with such vows (as they have oft done for princes, men and women, that they might be taken from a monastery to a crown). For if they suppose, that the persons before the dispensation are under the obligation of their vow, and bound by God to keep it, then it would be too gross and odious blasphemy for the pope to claim a power of disobliging them, and dissolving God's commands; and not only antichristianity, but antitheistical, or a setting himself above God Almighty, under pretence of his own commission. But if they only pretend to dissolve such vows judicially or decisively, by judging when the person is no longer obliged to keep them by God's law, then they suppose, that the obligation of God's law is ceased, before they judicially declare it to be ceased. And if that were all that the pope undertook, he had no power to do it out of his own parish, nor more than any lawful bishop hath in his proper charge. 7. The matter of a vow of celibate or chastity is then unlawful, when it cannot be kept without greater sin than that life of chastity escapeth, and which would be escaped if it were forsaken; or without the omission of greater duty, and omission of greater good, than that life of chastity containeth or attaineth. For the further opening of this, let it be noted, that, 8. It is not every degree of sin which marriage would cure, that will warrant the breach of a vow of chastity. As if I had some more lustful thoughts or instigations and irritations in a single life than I should have if I married. The reason is, because, 1. No man liveth without some sin, and it is supposed that there are greater sins of another kind, which by a life of chastity I avoid. And the breach of the vow itself is a greater matter than a lustful thought.