in
vowing might be performed, the vow had not been enjoined. Without the
paying of the vow, the vowing of the vow were unnecessary, nay, sinful.
A disruption of ends from means, grosser than the separation of the
fulfilment of the vow from the making of it, could not be perpetrated.
The vow is nothing; yea, worse than nothing; injurious to those who make
it, and dishonouring to God, if it be not performed.

Nor, because under the law, a commutation for some vows was accepted,
are we to conceive that the passages in which the payment of the vow is
commanded are not to be interpreted according to the utmost force of
their obvious import. It is true that some things vowed might have been
withheld, but not without the offering of a definite sum of money. These
might have been redeemed by the payment of a price exceeding by
one-fifth part of it, their value estimated by the priest, or when the
parties were poor, by the giving of the amount at which the priest might
value them.[336] By whichever of the two methods that might be adopted,
the vow was virtually paid. The payment actually of the vow, or that of
the compensation, was commanded; and either the one or the other behoved
to be made. Nor when either of them was resorted to, seeing that any one
of them was warranted, was the vow left unpaid. This variety of manner
in the payment of vows, was suited to the circumstances of the Church
under the Levitical institutes. By using any one of the methods, the vow
was substantially fulfilled, not merely according to the will of man,
but agreeably to the express appointment of God. As, had there been only
one way then of fulfilling the obligation of the vow, it had been
incumbent to proceed by that alone; so, under the present dispensation,
the single method of implementing Covenant engagements that has been
inculcated, because that no other is of Divine appointment, must be
adopted. Even as under the law there were some things which, having been
devoted to God under a curse, could not, because of the manner of their
dedication, be redeemed,[337] so under the gospel, what is vowed to the
Lord cannot without sacrilege be kept back.

Fourthly. The Lord threatens those who keep not his Covenant. Temporal
and spiritual deprivations enter into his denunciations on such.[338]
"Cursed be the man that obeyeth not the words of this covenant, which I
commanded your fathers in the day that I brought them forth out of the
land of Egypt, fro