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performance of a promise, which may not as reasonably be applied to the non-observation of an oath; and in truth, men have not been observed to be much restrained by their oaths, who have not been punctual in their promises, the same sincerity of nature being requisite to both. The philosopher went farther than his profession obliged him, or in truth than it admitted, when he would not have the performance exacted, unless " omnia essent eadem, quæ fuerint cum promitteres;" and the distinction was necessary, when he thought it fit to avoid a promise he had made to a man that appears to be an ill man, who seemed a very good and worthy person when he made this promise: and a greater change could not be: yet he seemed not over pleased with his own distinction, and would rather comply with his promise, if it could be done without much inconvenience. But too many Christian casuists have gone much farther in finding out many inventions and devices to evade and elude the faith of promise, if there hath been force or fraud, or any other circumvention, in the contriving the promise and engagement; which must dissolve all the contracts and bargains which are commonly made among men, who still contend to be too hard for one another, that they may advance or lessen their commodity. And no doubt the forming and countenancing those dispensations hath introduced much improbity and tergiversation into the nature and minds of men, which they were not acquainted with whilst they had a due consideration of the sacredness of their word and promise. It is from the impiety of this doctrine, that we run with that precipitation into promises and

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and princes are less direct in the observation of their promises and contracts than republics are; and that a little benefit and advantage disposes them to violate them, when no profit that can accrue prevails upon the other to recede from the obligation: which would be indeed an argument of weight and importance, if it were true. Nor does the instance he gives us in any degree prove his assertion; for it was not the justice of the senate of Athens that refused the proposition made by Themistocles, for the destruction of the whole fleet of the rest of Greece, to whom it was never made, but the particular exactness of Aristides, to whom it was discovered by order of the senate, that he might consider it; and he reported, that the proposition was indeed very profitable, but most dishonest, upon which the senate rejected it, without knowing more of it; which, if they had done, it is probable, by their other practices, that they might not so readily have declined it. Nor is the instance he gives of Philip of Macedon other than a general averment, without stating the case: as his adored republic of Rome never outlived that infamous judgment, that, when a difference between two of their neighbours was by a joint consent referred to their arbitrement, to whom a piece of land in difference and dispute between them should belong, determined that it should belong to neither of them, but that they the republic of Rome should enjoy it themselves, because it lay very convenient for them; so that form of government hath never since raised any monuments of their truth and justice, in the observation of the promises and contracts which they have made. But though his comparison and preference had no good foundation, he had too much reason to observe, in the time in which he lived, how little account princes made of their word and promises, by the several and contradictory investitures which in a short time had been given of the kingdom of Naples, which overflowed all Italy with a deluge of blood, by the inconstancy and tergiversation of Ferdinand of Ar--ragon, who swallowed up all the other investitures; and afterwards, by the insatiable ambition and animosity between Charles the Fifth and Francis the First, when treaties and leagues were entered into, that they might take breath when they were weary, and with no other purpose than to watch an opportunity to break it to their advantage. This indeed was too great a prostitution of the dignity and faith of kings to the censure and reproach of their subjects, who found themselves every day under sentences and judgments for the breach of their words and contracts, which they had not entered into with half that solemnity, and that they must be bound to waste their estates, and lose or venture their lives in the maintenance and defence of their prince's wilful and affected violation of their word, promise, and oath, to satisfy their pride or their humour: and it may be, that easy inclination to faithlessness, in which God Almighty was made a party and a property in all their contracts, hath been a principal motive and cause of his heavy judgments upon those royal families; of which one, after a numerous issue, which might naturally have lasted to the end of the world, hath been long since so fully extinguished, that the name of Valois is lost in any lawful line; and the other is so near

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LIBERTY is the charm, which mutinous and seditious persons use, to pervert and corrupt the affections of weak and wilful people, and to lead then

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