_Prop._ VI. If I be primarily obliged to maintain wife and children, or any others, with my estate, I am bound on their behalf to use all just means to vindicate it from any that shall injuriously invade it; otherwise I am guilty of their sufferings whom I should maintain; I may no more suffer a thief than a dog to go away with my children's meat. _Prop._ VII. And as I must vindicate my estate for others to whom I am intrusted to administer it by God, so must I for myself also, so far as God would have me use it myself. For he that hath charged me to provide for my family, requireth also that I famish not myself; and he hath required me to love my neighbour but as myself; and therefore as I am bound to vindicate and help my neighbour if a thief or oppressor would rob him, (according to my place and power,) so must I do also for myself. In all these seven cases I am not obliged to forgive. But on the other side, in all these cases following, I am bound to forgive and let go my right. _Prop._ I. As the church may declare to penitent sinners, the remission of the eternal punishment, so may it remit the temporal punishment of excommunication, to the penitent; yea, this they are obliged by Christ to do, ministerially, as under him. _Prop._ II. When the repentance and satisfaction of the sinner is like to conduce more to the public good, and the honour of God, and other ends of government, than his punishment would do, a private man may not be obliged to prosecute him before the magistrate, and the magistrate hath power to forgive him as to the penalty which it belongeth to him to inflict. (Though this may not extend to the remitting of crimes ordinarily and frequently, nor to the remitting of some sort of heinous crimes at all; because this cannot attain the ends of government as aforesaid.) _Prop._ III. All personal wrongs, so far as they are merely against myself, and disable me not from my duty to God and my neighbour, I may and must forgive: for my own interest is put more in my own power; and here it is that I am commanded to forgive. If you say that I am bound to preserve my own life and soul as much as another's; I answer, it is true, I am bound to preserve my own and another's ultimately for the service and glory of God; and God's interest in me I cannot remit or give away. As there is no obligation to duty but what is originally from God, so there is none but what is ultimately for God, even to please and glorify him.