_Rule_ XXVII. A vow may be consequently made null or void, 1. By cessation of the matter, or any thing essential to it, (of which before,) or by a dispensation or dissolution of it by God to whom we are obliged. No doubt it is in God's power to disoblige a man from his vow; but how he ever doth such a thing is all the doubt: extraordinary revelations being ceased, there is this way yet ordinary, viz. by bringing the matter which I vowed to do, under some prohibition of a general law, by the changes of his providence. _Rule_ XXVIII. As to the power of man to dispense with oaths and vows, there is a great and most remarkable difference between those oaths and vows where man is the only party that we are primarily bound to, and God is only appealed to as witness or judge, as to the keeping of my word to man; and those oaths or vows where God is also made (either only or conjunct with man) the party to whom I primarily oblige myself. For in the first case man can dispense with my oath or vow, by remitting his own right, and releasing me from my promise; but in the second case no created power can do it. As e. g. if I promise to pay a man a sum of money, or to do him service, and swear that I will perform it faithfully; if upon some after bargain or consideration he release me of that promise, God releaseth me also, as the witnesses and judge have nothing against a man, whom the creditor hath discharged. But if I swear or vow that I will amend my life, or reform my family of some great abuse, or that I will give so much to the poor, or that I will give up myself to the work of the gospel, or that I will never marry, or never drink wine, or never consent to popery or error, &c.; no man can dispense with my vow, nor directly disoblige me in any such case; because no man can give away God's right: all that man can do in any such case is, to become an occasion of God's disobliging me: if he can so change the case, or my condition, as to bring me under some law of God, which commandeth me the contrary to my vow, then God disobligeth me, or maketh it unlawful to keep that vow. And here because a vow is commonly taken for such a promise to God, in which we directly bind ourselves to him, therefore we say, that a vow (thus strictly taken) cannot be dispensed with by man; though in the sense aforesaid, an oath sometimes may. The papists deal most perversely in this point of dispensing with oaths and vows; for they give that power to the pope over all the christian world, who is a usurper, and none of our governor, which they deny to princes and parents that are our undoubted governors: the pope may disoblige vassals from their oaths of allegiance to their princes, (as the council of Lateran before cited,) but no king or parent may disoblige a man from his oath to the pope: nay, if a child vow a monastical life, and depart from his parents, they allow not the parents to disoblige him.