_Direct._ VIII. Take special notice of what kind of beings your inquiry or disputation is, and let your terms be adapted and interpreted according to the kind of beings you dispute of. As if you be inquiring into the nature of any grace, as faith, repentance, obedience, &c. remember that it is _in genere moris_, a moral act; and therefore the terms are not to be understood as if you disputed about mere physical acts, which are considered but _in genere entis_. For that object which must essentiate one moral act, containeth many physical particles, which will make up many physical acts.[130] If you take such a man for your king, your commander, your master, your physician, &c. if you should at the bar, when you are questioned for unfaithfulness, dispute upon the word take, whether it be an act of the fantasy, or sense, or intellect, or will, &c. would you not be justly laughed at? So when you ask, What act faith or repentance is? which contain many particular physical acts. When you dispute of divinity, policy, law, war, &c. you must not use the same terms in the same sense, as when you dispute of physics, or metaphysics. _Direct._ IX. Be sure in all your disputes that you still keep distinguished before your eyes, the order of being, and the order of knowing: that the questions _de esse_ lying undetermined in your way, do not frustrate all your dispute about the question _de cognoscere_. As in the question, Whether a man should do such or such a thing, when he thinketh that it is God's command? How far conscience must be obeyed? It must first be determined _de esse_, whether indeed the thing be commanded or lawful, or not? before the case can be determined about the obligation that followeth my apprehension. For, whatever my conscience or opinion say of it, the thing either is lawful or it is not: if it be lawful, or a duty, the case is soon decided; but if it be not lawful, the error of my conscience altereth not God's law, nor will it make it lawful unto me. I am bound first to know and then to do what God revealeth and commandedeth; and this I shall be bound to, whatever I imagine to the contrary; and to lay by the error which is against it.