_Rule_ XII. It is ordinarily resolved that imposed oaths must be kept according to the sense of the imposer. See Sanders. p. 191, 192. But I conceive that assertion must be more exactly opened and bounded. 1. Where justice requireth that we have respect to the will or right of the imposer, there the oath imposed must be taken in his sense; but whether it must be kept in his sense is further to be considered. 2. When I have done my best to understand the sense of the imposer in taking the oath, and yet mistake it, and so take it (without fraud) in another sense, the question then is somewhat hard, whether I must keep it in the sense I took it in, or in his sense, which then I understood not. If I must not keep it in my own sense, which I took it in, then it would follow that I must keep another oath, and not that which I took: for it is the sense that is the oath. And I never obliged myself to any thing, but according to my own sense: and yet on the other side, if every man may take oaths in their private sense, then oaths will not attain their ends, nor be any security to the imposers. In this case you must carefully distinguish between the formal obligation of the oath or vow as such, and the obligation of justice to my neighbour which is a consequent of my vow. And for the former I conceive (with submission) that an oath or vow cannot bind me, formally as such, in any sense but my own in which _bona fide_ I took it. Because formally an oath cannot bind me which I never took: but I never took that which I never meant, nor thought of; if you so define an oath as to take in the sense, which is the soul of it. But then in regard of the consequential obligation in point of justice unto man, the question I think must be thus resolved: 1. We must distinguish between a lawful imposer or contractor, and a violent usurper or robber that injuriously compelleth us to swear. 2. Between the obvious, usual sense of the words, and an unusual, forced sense. 3. Between a sincere, involuntary misunderstanding the imposer, and a voluntary, fraudulent reservation or private sense. 4. Between one that I owe something to antecedently, and one that I owe nothing to but by the mere self-obligation of my vow. 5. Between an imposer that is himself the culpable cause of my misunderstanding him, and one that is not the cause, but my own weakness or negligence is the cause. 6. Between a case where both senses may be kept, and a case where they cannot, being inconsistent. Upon these distinctions, I thus resolve the question. _Prop._ I. If I fraudulently and wilfully take an oath in a sense of my own, contrary to the sense of the imposer, and the common and just sense of the words themselves, I am guilty of perfidiousness and profaneness in the very taking of it.[71] _Prop._ II. If it be long of my own culpable ignorance or negligence that I misunderstood the imposer, I am not thereby disobliged from the public sense.