Against the Protestants, when th' happen
To find their churches taken napping.
As thus: a breach of oath is duple,
And either way admits a scruple,270
And may be, ex parte of the maker,
More criminal than the injur'd taker;
For he that strains too far a vow,
Will break it, like an o'er-bent bow:
And he that made, and forc'd it, broke it,275
Not he that for convenience took it.
A broken oath is, quatenus oath,
As sound t' all purposes of troth,
As broken laws are ne'er the worse,
Nay, 'till they're broken, have no force.280
What's justice to a man, or laws,
That never comes within their claws?
They have no pow'r, but to admonish;
Cannot control, coerce, or punish,
Until they're broken, and then touch285
Those only that do make them such.
Beside, no engagement is allow'd,
By men in prison made, for good;[1]
For when they're set at liberty,
They're from th' engagement too set free.290
The Rabbins write, when any Jew
Did make to God or man a vow,
Which afterwards he found untoward,
And stubborn to be kept, or too hard;
Any three other Jews o' th' nation295
Might free him from the obligation:[2]
- ↑ See the history of the Treaty of Newport with Charles I., for ample proof of the employment of this mode of reasoning.
- ↑ There is a traditional doctrine among the Jews, which Maimonides asserts to have come down from Moses, though not in the written law, that if any person has made a vow, which he afterwards wishes to recall, he may go to a Rabbi, or three other men, and if he can prove to them that no injury will be sustained by any one, they may free him from its obligation.
supposes to answer the final intent of the demand. The MS. was seized by Sir Edward Coke, in Sir Thomas Tresham's chamber, in the Inner Temple, and is now in the Bodleian Library, at Oxford, MS. Laud. E. 45, with the attestation in Sir Edward Coke's hand-writing, 6 December, 1605, and the following motto: Os quod mentitur occidit animam.
