[113] It is not Mr. Humphrey alone that hath written that laws bind not in conscience to obedience which are against the public good. The greatest casuists say the same, excepting the case of scandal: he that would see this in them may choose but these two special authors, Bapt. Fragos. de Regimine Reipublicæ, and Greg. Sayrus in his Clavis Regia, and in them he shall find enough more cited. Though I think some further cautions would make it more satisfactory. CHAPTER IV. DIRECTIONS TO LAWYERS ABOUT THEIR DUTY TO GOD. Gentlemen, you need not meet these directions with the usual censures or suspicions, that divines are busying themselves with the matters of your calling, which belong not to them, and which they do not understand; you shall see that I will as much forbear such matters as you can well desire. If your calling be not to be sanctified by serving God in it, and regulating it by his law, it is then neither honourable nor desirable. But if it be, permit me very briefly so far to direct you.[114] _Direct._ I. Take the whole frame of polity together, and study each part in its proper place, and know it in its due relation to the rest; that is, understand first the doctrine of polity and laws _in genere_, and next the universal polity and laws of God _in specie_; and then study human polity and laws, as they stand in their due subordination to the polity and laws of God, as the by-laws of corporations do to the general laws of the land. He that understandeth not what polity and law is _in genere_, is unlike to understand what divine or human polity or law is _in specie_; he that knoweth not what government is, and what a community, and what a politic society is, will hardly know what a commonwealth or church is: and he that knoweth not what a commonwealth is _in genere_, what is its end, and what its constitutive parts, and what the efficient causes, and what a law, and judgment, and execution is, will study but unhappily the constitution or laws of the kingdom which he liveth in.