2. It is uncertain whether this power of disannulling vows do belong also to other superiors,[79] to princes, to inferior magistrates, to pastors, masters, to commanders, as to their soldiers, as well as to parents and husbands. Some think it doth, because there is, say they, a parity of reason. Others think it is dangerous disannulling oaths and vows upon pretences of parity of reason, when it is uncertain whether we know all God's reasons: and they think there is not a parity, and that it extendeth not to others. 1. Because parents and husbands are so emphatically named in the contents in the end, ver. 16. 2. Because it had been as easy to God to name the rest. 3. Because there is no instance in Scripture of the exercise of such a power, when there was much occasion for it. 4. Because else vows signify no more in a kingdom than the king please, and in an army than the general and officers please, and among servants than the master please; which is thought a dangerous doctrine. 5. Because there will be an utter uncertainty when a vow bindeth and when it doth not to almost all the people in the world; for one superior may contradict it, and another or a hundred may be silent: the king and most of the magistrates through distance will be silent, when a master, or a justice, or a captain that is at hand may disannul it: one officer may be for it, and another against it; a master or a pastor may be for it, and the magistrate against it: and so perjury will become the most controverted sin, and a matter of jest. 6. Because public magistrates, and commanders, and pastors, have not the near and natural interest in their inferiors as parents and husbands have in their children and wives; and therefore parents have not only a restraining power, (as husbands here also have,) but also a disposing power of the relation of their infant children, and may enter them in baptism into the vow and covenant of christianity, the will and act of the parents standing for the child's till he come to age; but if you say that, upon a parity of reason, all princes, and rulers, and pastors may do so with all that are their inferiors, it will seem incredible to most christians. 7. Because public magistrates are justly supposed to be so distant from almost all their individual subjects, as not to be capable of so speedy a disowning their personal vows. Whatever this text doth, it is certain that other texts enough forbid covenants and combinations against the persons, or power, or rights of our governors, and not only against them, but without them, in cases where our place and calling alloweth us not to act without them. But it is certain that God, who commanded all Israel to be entered successively into the covenant of circumcision with him, would not have held them guiltless for refusing that covenant, if the prince had been against it. And few divines think that a subject, or soldier, or servant, that