All such vows are widely different from those restraints which have no higher recommendation than human authority. "Popish monastic vows of perpetual single life, professed poverty, and regular obedience, are so far from being degrees of higher perfection, that they are superstitious and sinful snares, in which no Christian may entangle himself."[252] The latter are countenanced by no class of vows lawfully made, either in Old Testament times or in a later period. The vows of the Nazarite were dutiful under the former dispensation. There is no good ground for the statement made in reference to that class of vows, that "they are merely arbitrary, prior to the making of them." Had not Providence, by the light of the word, with a precision not less complete than the tenor of any definite precept, dictated the service vowed, it had been unlawful to vow it, or to keep the vow. When the vows of the Nazarite were made lawfully, their matter was not indifferent. And even as these were acceptably made when duty presented itself, vows may be made with acceptance still, when duty by whatever means is made manifest. No more did there exist under the former dispensations a class of services that might or might not be performed, than there does under the present. And though there may be no evidence that the things vowed by the Nazarite are incumbent in these last times, yet the laws that enjoin the duties of vowing and paying, were not less applicable to the observances, which, on the mistaken ground that they were obligatory only according to the will of men, have been improperly denominated "indifferences," than they are to every duty, however exhibited, that is obligatory now. If certain things which may be done by some in given circumstances, but not in others, may be denominated "indifferent," then those things which should be performed only by some in given stations in the Church or in civil society, may be called indifferent too. The manner of representation is altogether objectionable. Nothing is indifferent. Men may err in their sentiments concerning duty, and call some things indifferent either in regard to time or to matter; others not. But there is nothing which ought to be done, that is strictly indifferent. There is nothing which men ought to do merely of their own good pleasure. What God makes known, and that alone, should be vowed and performed.