them For it is a thing that dependeth not on Nature but on the scope of the Writer and is subservient to every mans proper method In the Institutions of Justinian we find seven sorts of Civill Lawes 1. The Edicts Constitutions and Epistles of the Prince that is of the Emperour because the whole power of the people was in him Like these are the Proclamations of the Kings of England 2. The Decrees of the whole people of Rome comprehending the Senate when they were put to the Question by the Senate These were Lawes at first by the vertue of the Soveraign Power residing in the people and such of them as by the Emperours were not abrogated remained Lawes by the Authority Imperiall For all Lawes that bind are understood to be Lawes by his authority that has power to repeale them Somewhat like to these Lawes are the Acts of Parliament in England 3. The Decrees of the Common people excluding the Senate when they were put to the question by the Tribune of the people For such of them as were not abrogated by the Emperours remained Lawes by the Authority Imperiall Like to these were the Orders of the House of Commons in England 4. Senatûs consulta the Orders of the Senate because when the people of Rome grew so numerous as it was inconvenient to assemble them it was thought fit by the Emperour that men should Consult the Senate in stead of the people And these have some resemblance with the Acts of Counsell 5. The Edicts of Praetors and in some Cases of the Aediles such as are the Chiefe Justices in the Courts of England 6. Responsa Prudentum which were the Sentences and Opinions of those Lawyers to whom the Emperour gave Authority to interpret the Law and to give answer to such as in matter of Law demanded their advice which Answers the Judges in giving Judgement were obliged by the Constitutions of the Emperour to observe And should be like the Reports of Cases Judged if other Judges be by the Law of England bound to observe them For the Judges of the Common Law of England are not properly Judges but Juris Consulti of whom the Judges who are either the Lords or Twelve men of the Country are in point of Law to ask advice 7. Also Unwritten Customes which in their own nature are an imitation of Law by the tacite consent of the Emperour in case they be not contrary to the Law of Nature are very Lawes Another division of Lawes is into Naturall and Positive Naturâ—…ll are those which have been Lawes from all Eternity and are called not onely Naturall but also Morall Lawes consisting in the Morall Vertues as Justice Equity and all habits of the mind that conduce to Peace and Charity of which I have already spoken in the fourteenth and fifteenth Chapters Positive are those which have not been from Eternity but have been made Lawes by the Will of those that have had the Soveraign Power over others and are either written or made known to men by some other argument of the Will of their Legislator Again of Positive Lawes some are Humane some Divine And of Humane positive lawes some are Distributive some Penal Distributive are those that determine the Rights of the Subjects declaring to every man what it is by which he acquireth and holdeth a propriety in lands or goods and a right or liberty of action and these speak to all the Subjects Penal are those which declare what Penalty shall be inflicted on those that violate the Law and speak to the Ministers and Officers ordained for execution For though every one ought to be informed of the Punishments ordained before-hand for their transgression neverthelesse the Command is not addressed to the Delinquent who cannot be supposed will faithfully punish himselfe but to publique Ministers appointed to see the Penalty executed And these Penal Lawes are for the most part written together with the Lawes Distributive and are sometimes called Judgements For all Lawes are generall Judgements or Sentences of the Legislator as also every particular Judgement is a Law to him whose case is Judged Divine Positive Lawes for Naturall Lawes being Eternall and Universall are all Divine are those which being the Commandements of God not from all Eternity nor universally addressed to all men but onely to a certain people or to certain persons are declared for such by those whom God hath authorised to declare them But this Authority of man to declare what be these Positive Lawes of God how can it be known God may command a man by a supernaturall way to deliver Lawes to other men But because it is of the essence of Law that he who is to be obliged be assured of the Authority of him that declareth it which we cannot naturally take notice to be from God How can a man without supernaturall Revelation be assured of the Revelation received by the declarer and how can he be bound to obey them For the first question how a man can be assured of the Revelation of another without a Revelation particularly to himselfe it is evidently impossible For though a man may be induced to believe such Revelation from the Miracles they see him doe or from seeing the Extraordinary sanctity of his life or from seeing the Extraordinary wisedome or Extraordinary felicity of his Actions all which are marks of God extraordinary favour yet they are not assured evidences of speciall Revelation Miracles are Marvellous workes but that which is marvellous to one may not be so to another Sanctity may be feigned and the visible felicities of this world are most often the work of God by Naturall and ordinary causes And therefore no man can infallibly know by naturall reason that another has had a supernaturall revelation of Gods will but only a beliefe every one as the signs thereof shall appear greater or lesser a firmer or a weaker belief But for the second how he can be bound to obey them it is not so hard For if the Law declared be not against the Law of Nature which is undoubtedly Gods Law and he undertake to obey it he is bound by his own act bound I say to obey it but not bound to believe it for mens beliefe and interiour cogitations are not subject to the commands but only to the operation of God ordinary or extraordinary Faith of Supernaturall Law is not a fulfilling but only an assenting to the same and not a duty that we exhibite to God but a gift which God freely giveth to whom he pleaseth as also Unbelief is not a breach of any of his Lawes but a rejection of them all except the Laws Naturall But this that I say will be made yet cleerer by the Examples and Testimonies concerning this point in holy Scripture The Covenant God made with Abraham in a Supernaturall manner was thus This is the Covenant which thou shalt observe between Me and Thee and thy Seed after thee Abrahams Seed had
no Law of England nor is the condemnation grounded upon a Presumption of Law but upon the Presumption of the Judges It is also against Law to say that no Proofe shall be admitted against a Presumption of Law For all Judges Soveraign and subordinate if they refuse to heare Proofe refuse to do Justice for though the Sentence be Just yet the Judges that condemn without hearing the Proofes offered are Unjust Judges and their Presumption is but Prejudice which no man ought to bring with him to the Seat of Justice whatsoever precedent judgements or examples he shall pretend to follow There be other things of this nature wherein mens Judgements have been perverted by trusting to Precedents but this is enough to shew that though the Sentence of the Judge be a Law to the party pleading yet it is no Law to any Judge that shall succeed him in that Office In like manner when question is of the Meaning of written Lawes he is not the Interpreter of them that writeth a Commentary upon them For Commentaries are commonly more subject to cavill than the Text and therefore need other Commentaries and so there will be no end of such Interpretation And therefore unlesse there be an Interpreter authorised by the Soveraign from which the subordinate Judges are not to recede the Interpreter can be no other than the ordinary Judges in the same manner as they are in cases of the unwritten Law and their Sentences are to be taken by them that plead for Lawes in that particular case but not to bind other Judges in like cases to give like judgements For a Judge may erre in the Interpretation even of written Lawes but no errour of a subordinate Judge can change the Law which is the generall Sentence of the Soveraigne In written Lawes men use to make a difference between the Letter and the Sentence of the Law And when by the Letter is meant whatsoever can be gathered from the bare words 't is well distinguished For the significations of almost all words are either in themselves or in the metaphoricall use of them ambiguous and may be drawn in argument to make many senses but there is onely one sense of the Law But if by the Letter be meant the literall sense then the Letter and the Sentence or intention of the Law is all one For the literall sense is that which the Legislator intended should by the letter of the Law be signified Now the Intention of the Legislator is alwayes supposed to be Equity For it were a great contumely for a Judge to think otherwise of the Soveraigne He ought therefore if the Word of the Law doe not fully authorise a reasonable Sentence to supply it with the Law of Nature or if the case be difficult to respit Judgement till he have received more ample authority For Example a written Law ordaineth that he which is thrust out of his house by force shall be restored by force It happens that a man by negligence leaves his house empty and returning is kept out by force in which case there is no speciall Law ordained It is evident that this case is contained in the same Law for else there is no remedy for him at all which is to be supposed against the Intention of the Legislator Again the word of the Law commandeth to Judge according to the Evidence A man is accused falsly of a fact which the Judge saw himself done by another and not by him that is accused In this case neither shall the Letter of the Law be followed to the condemnation of the Innocent nor shall the Judge give Sentence against the evidence of the Witnesses because the Letter of the Law is to the contrary but procure of the Soveraign that another be made Judge and himself Witnesse So that the incommodity that follows the bare words of a written Law may lead him to the Intention of the Law whereby to interpret the same the better though no Incommodity can warrant a Sentence against the Law For every Judge of Right and Wrong is not Judge of what is â—…ommodious or Incommodious to the Common-wealth The abilities required in a good Interpreter of the Law that is to say in a good Judge are not the same with those of an Advocate namely the study of the Lawes For a Judge as he ought to take notice of the Fact from none but the Witnesses so also he ought to take notice of the Law from nothing but the Satutes and Constitutions of the Soveraign alledged in the pleading or declared to him by some that have authority from the Soveraign Power to declare them and need not take care before-hand what hee shall Judge for it shall bee given him what hee shall say concerning the Fact by Witnesses and what hee shall say in point of Law from those that shall in their pleadings â—…hew it and by authority interpret it upon the place The Lords of Parlament in England were Judges and most difficult causes have been heard and determined by them yet few of them were much versed in the study of the Lawes and fewer had made profession of them and though they consulted with Lawyers that were appointed to be present there for that purpose yet they alone had the authority of giving Sentence In like manner in the ordinary trialls of Right Twelve men of the common People are the Judges and give Sentence not onely of the Fact but of the Right and pronounce simply for the Complaynant or for the Defendant that is to say are Judges not onely of the Fact but also of the Right and in a question of crime not onely determine whether done or not done but also whether it be Murder Homicide Felony Assault and the like which are determinations of Law but because they are not supposed to know the Law of themselves there is one that hath Authority to enforme them of it in the particular case they are to Judge of But yet if they judge not according to that he tells them they are not subject thereby to any penalty unlesse it be made appear they did it against their consciences or had been corrupted by reward The things that make a good Judge or good Interpreter of the Lawes are first A right understanding of that principall Law of Nature called Equity which depending not on the reading of other mens Writings but on the goodnesse of a mans own naturall Reason and Meditation is presumed to be in those most that have had most leisure and had the most inclination to meditate thereon Secondly Contempt of unnecessary Riches and Preferments Thirdly To be able in judgement to devest himselfe of all feare anger hatred love and compassion Fourthly and lastly Patience to heare diligent attention in hearing and memory to retain digest and apply what he hath heard The difference and division of the Lawes has been made in divers manners according to the different methods of those men that have written of
contriving their Titles to save the People from the shame of receiving them To have a known Right to Soveraign Power is so popular a quality as he that has it needs no more for his own part to turn the hearts of his Subjects to him but that they see him able absolutely to govern his own Family Nor on the part of his enemies but a disbanding of their Armies For the greatest and most active part of Mankind has never hetherto been well contented with the present Concerning the Offices of one Soveraign to another which are comprehended in that Law which is commonly called the Law of Nations I need not say any thing in this place because the Law of Nations and the Law of Nature is the same thing And every Soveraign hath the same Right in procuring the safety of his People that any particular man can have in procuring the safety of his own Body And the same Law that diâ—…tateth to men that have no Civil Government what they ought to do and what to avoyd in regard of one another dictateth the same to Common-wealths that is to the Consciences of Soveraign Princes and Soveraign Assemblies there being no Court of Naturall Justice but in the Conscience onely where not Man but God raigneth whose Lawes such of them as oblige all Mankind in respect of God as he is the Author of Nature are Naturall and in respect of the same God as he is King of Kings are Lawes But of the Kingdome of God as King of Kings and as King also of a peculiar People I shall speak in the rest of this discourse CHAP. XXXI Of the KINGDOME OF GOD BY NATURE THat the condition of meer Nature that is to say of absolute Liberty such as is theirs that neither are Soveraigns nor Subjects is Anarchy and the condition of Warre That the Praecepts by which men are guided to avoyd that condition are the Lawes of Nature That a Common-wealth without Soveraign Power is but a word without substance and cannot stand That Subjects owe to Soveraigns simple Obedience in all things wherein their obedience is not repugnant to the Lawes of God I have sufficiently proved in that which I have already written There wants onely for the entire knowledge of Civill duty to know what are those Lawes of God For without that a man knows not when he is commanded any thing by the Civill Power whether it be contrary to the â—…aw of God or not and so either by too much civill obedience offends the Divine Majesty or through feare of offending God transgresses the commandements of the Common-wealth To avoyd both these Rocks it is necessary to know what are the Lawes Divine And seeing the knowledge of all Law dependeth on the knowledge of the Soveraign Power I shall say something in that which followeth of the KINGDOME OF GOD. God is King let the Earth rejoyce saith the Psalmist And again God is King though the Nations be angry and he that sitteth on the Cherubins though the earth be moved Whether men will or not they must be subject alwayes to the Divine Power By denying the Existence or Providence of God men may shake off their Ease but not their Yoke But to call this Power of God which extendeth it selfe not onely to Man but also to Beasts and Plants and Bodies inanimate by the name of Kingdome is but a metaphoricall use of the word For he onely is properly said to Raigne that governs his Subjects by his Word and by promise of Rewards to those that obey it and by threatning them with Punishment that obey it not Subjects therefore in the Kingdome of God are not Bodies Inanimate nor creatures Irrationall because they understand no Precepts as his Nor Atheists nor they that believe not that God has any care of the actions of mankind because they acknowledge no Word for his nor have hope of his rewards or fear of his threatnings They therefore that believe there is a God that goeverneth the world and hath given Praecepts and propounded Rewards and Punishments to Mankind are Gods Subjects all the rest are to be understood as Enemies To rule by Words requires that such Words be manifestly made known for else they are no Lawes For to the nature of Lawes belongeth a sufficient and clear Promulgation such as may take away the excuse of Ignorance which in the Lawes of men is but of one onely kind and that is Proclamation or Promulgation by the voyce of man But God declareth his Lawes three wayes by the Dictates of Naturall Reason by Revelation and by the Voyce of some man to whom by the operation of Miracles he procureth credit with the rest From hence there ariseth a triple Word of God Rational Sensible and Prophetique to which Correspondeth a triple Hearing Right Reason Sense Supernaturall and Faith As for Sense Supernaturall which consisteth in Revelation or Inspiration there have not been any Universall Lawes so given because God speaketh not in that manner but to particular persons and to divers men divers things From the difference between the other two kinds of Gods Word Rationall and Prophetique there may be attributed to God a twofold Kingdome Naturall and Prophetique Naturall wherein he governeth as many of Mankind as acknowledge his Providence by the naturall Dictates of Right Reason And Prophetique wherein having chosen out one peculiar Nation the Jewes for his Subjects he governed them and none but them not onely by naturall Reason but by Positive Lawes which he gave them by the mouths of his holy Prophets Of the Naturall Kingdome of God I intend to speak in this Chapter The Right of Nature whereby God reigneth over men and punisheth those that break his Lawes is to be derived not from his Creating them as if he required obedience as of Gratitude for his benefits but from his Irresistible Power I have formerly shewn how the Soveraign Right ariseth from Pact To shew how the same Right may arise from Nature requires no more but to shew in what case it is never taken away Seeing all men by Nature had Right to All things they had Right every one to reigne over all the rest But because this Right could not be obtained by force it concerned the safety of every one laying by that Right to set up men with Soveraign Authority by common consent to rule and defend them whereas if there had been any man of Power Irresistible there had been no reason why he should not by that Power have ruled and defended both himselfe and them according to his own discretion To those therefore whose Power is irresistible the dominion of all men adhaereth naturally by their excellence of Power and consequently it is from that Power that the Kingdome over men and the Right of afflicting men at his pleasure belongeth Naturally to God Almighty not as Creator and Gracious but as Omnipotent And though Punishment be due for Sinne onely because by
when the Books of Scripture were gathered into one body of the Law to the end that not the Doctrine only but the Authors also might be extant Of the Prophets the most ancient are Sophoniah Jonas Amos Hosea Isaiah and Michaiah who lived in the time of Amaziah and Azariah otherwise Ozias Kings of Judah But the Book of Jonas is not properly a Register of his Prophecy for that is contained in these few words Fourty dayes and Ninivy shall be destroyed but a History or Narration of his frowardnesse and disputing Gods commandements so that there is small probability he should be the Author seeing he is the subject of it But the Book of Amos is his Prophecy Jeremiah Abdias Nahum and Habakkuk prophecyed in the time of Josiah Ezekiel Daniel Aggeus and Zacharias in the Captivity When Ioel and Malachi prophecyed is not evident by their Writings But considering the Inscriptions or Titles of their Books it is manifest enough that the whole Scripture of the Old Testament was set forth in the form we have it after the return of the Iews from their Captivity in Babylon and before the time of Ptolemaeus Philadelphus that caused it to bee translated into Greek by seventy men which were sent him out of Iudea for that purpose And if the Books of Apocrypha which are recommended to us by the Church though not for Canonicall yet for profitable Books for our instruction may in this point be credited the Scripture was set forth in the form wee have it in by Esdâ—… as may appear by that which he himself saith in the second book chapt 14. verse 21 22 c. where speaking to God he saith thus Thy law is burnt therefore no man knoweth the things which thou hast done or the works that are to begin But if I have found Grace before thee send down the holy Spirit into me and I shall write all that hath been done in the world since the beginning which were written in thy Law that men may find thy path and that they which will live in the later days may live And verse 45. And it came to passe when the forty dayes were fulfilled that the Highest spake saying The first that thou hast written publish openly that the worthy and unworthy may read it but keep the seventy last that thou mayst deliver them onely to such as be wise among the people And thus much concerning the time of the writing of the Bookes of the Old Testament The Writers of the New Testament lived all in lesse then an age after Christs Ascension and had all of them seen our Saviour or been his Disciples except St. Paul and St. Luke and consequently whatsoever was written by them is as ancient as the time of the Apostles But the time wherein the Books of the New Testament were received and acknowledged by the Church to be of their writing is not altogether so ancient For as the Bookes of the Old Testament are derived to us from no other time then that of Esdras who by the direction of Gods Spirit retrived them when they were lost Those of the New Testament of which the copies were not many nor could easily be all in any one private mans hand cannot bee derived from a higher time than that wherein the Governours of the Church collected approved and recommended them to us as the writings of those Apostles and Disciples under whose names they go The first enumeration of all the Bookes both of the Old and New Testament is in the Canons of the Apostles supposed to be collected by Clement the first after St. Peter Bishop of Rome But because that is but supposed and by many questioned the Councell of Laodicea is the first we know that recommended the Bible to the then Christian Churches for the Writings of the Prophets and Apostles and this Councell was held in the 364. yeer after Christ. At which time though ambition had so far prevailed on the great Doctors of the Church as no more to esteem Emperours though Christian for the Shepherds of the people but for Sheep and Emperours not Christian for Wolves and endeavoured to passe their Doctrine not for Counsell and Information as Preachers but for Laws as absolute Governours and thought such frauds as tended to make the people the more obedient to Christian Doctrine to be pious yet I am perswaded they did not therefore falsifie the Scriptures though the copies of the Books of the New Testament were in the hands only of the Ecclesiasticks because if they had had an intention so to doe they would surely have made them more favorable to their power over Christian Princes and Civill Soveraignty than they are I see not therefore any reason to doubt but that the Old and New Testament as we have them now are the true Registers of those things which were done and said by the Prophets and Apostles And so perhaps are some of those Books which are called Apocrypha and left out of the Canon not for inconformity of Doctrine with the rest but only because they are not found in the Hebrew For after the conquest of Asia by Alexander the Great there were few learned Jews that were not perfect in the Greek tongue For the seventy Interpreters that converted the Bible into Greek were all of them Hebrews and we have extant the works of Philo and Josephus both Jews written by them eloquently in Greek But it is not the Writer but the authority of the Church that maketh a Book Canonicall And although these Books were written by divers men yet it is manifest the Writers were all indued with one and the same Spirit in that they conspire to one and the same end which is the setting forth of the Rights of the Kingdome of God the Father Son and Holy Ghost For the Book of Genesis deriveth the Genealogy of Gods people from the creation of the World to the going into Egypt the other four Books of Moses contain the Election of God for their King and the Laws which hee prescribed for their Government The Books of Joshua Judges Ruth and Samuel to the time of Saul describe the acts of Gods people till the time they cast off Gods yoke and called for a King after the manner of their neighbour nations The rest of the History of the Old Testament derives the succession of the line of David to the Captivity out of which line was to spring the restorer of the Kingdome of God even our blessed Saviour God the Son whose coming was foretold in the Bookes of the Prophets after whom the Evangelists write his life and actions and his claim to the Kingdome whilst he lived on earth and lastly the Acts and Epistles of the Apostles declare the coming of God the Holy Ghost and the Authority he left with them and their successors for the direction of the Jews and for the invitation of the Gentiles In summe the Histories and the Prophecies of the old Testament
God himself was their King and Moses Aaron and the succeeding High Priests were his Lieutenants it is manifest that the Right of Tythes and Offerings was constituted by the Civill Power After their rejection of God in the demanding of a King they enjoyed still the same revenue but the Right thereof was derived from that that the Kings did never take it from them for the Publique Revenue was at the disposing of him that was the Publique Person and that till the Captivity was the King And again after the return from the Captivity they paid their Tythes as before to the Priest Hitherto therefore Church Livings were determined by the Civill Soveraign Of the maintenance of our Saviour and his Apostles we read onely they had a Purse which was carried by Judas Iscariot and that of the Apostles such as were Fisher-men did sometimes use their trade and that when our Saviour sent the Twelve Apostles to Preach he forbad them to carry Gold and Silver and Brasse in their purses for that the workman is worthy of his hire By which it is probable their ordinary maintenance was not unsuitable to their employment for their employment was ver 8. freely to give because they had freely received and their maintenance was the free gift of those that beleeved the good tyding they carryed about of the coming of the Messiah their Saviour To which we may adde that which was contributed out of gratitude by such as our Saviour had healed of diseases of which are mentioned Certain women Luke 8. 2 3. which had been healed of evill spirits and infirmities Mary Magdalen out of whom went seven Devills and Ioanna the wife of Chuza Herods Steward and Susanna and many others which ministred unto him of their substance After our Saviours Ascension the Christians of every City lived in Common upon the mony which was made of the sale of their lands and possessions and laid down at the feet of the Apostles of good will not of duty for whilest the Land remained saith S. Peter to Ananias Acts 5. 4. was it not thine and after it was sold was it not in thy power which sheweth he needed not have saved his land nor his money by lying as not being bound to contribute any thing at all unlesse he had pleased And as in the time of the Apostles so also all the time downward till after Constantine the Great we shall find that the maintenance of the Bishops and Pastors of the Christian Church was nothing but the voluntary contribution of them that had embraced their Doctrine There was yet no mention of Tythes but such was in the time of Constantine and his Sons the affection of Christians to their Pastors as Ammianus Marcellinus saith describing the sedition of Damasus and Vrsicinus about the Bishopricke that it was worth their contention in that the Bishops of those times by the liberality of their flock and especially of Matrons lived splendidly were carryed in Coaches and were sumptuous in their fare and apparell But here may some ask whether the Pastor were then bound to live upon voluntary contribution as upon almes For who saith S. Paul 1 Cor. 9. 7. goeth to war at his own charges or who feedeth a flock and eateth not of the milke of the flock And again Doe ye not know that they which minister about holy things live of the things of the Temple and they which wait at the Altar partake with the Altar that is to say have part of that which is offered at the Altar for their maintenance And then he concludeth Even so hath the Lord appointed that they which preach the Gospel should live of the Gospel From which place may be inferred indeed that the Pastors of the Church ought to be maintained by their flocks but not that the Pastors were to determine either the quantity or the kind of their own allowance and be as it were their own Carvers Their allowance must needs therefore be determined either by the gratitude and liberality of every particular man of their flock or by the whole Congregation By the whole Congregation it could not be because their Acts were then no Laws Therefore the maintenance of Pastors before Emperours and Civill Soveraigns had made Laws to settle it was nothing but Benevolence They that served at the Altar lived on what was offered So may the Pastors also take what is offered them by their flock but not exact what is not offered In what Court should they sue for it who had no Tribunalls Or if they had Arbitrators amongst themselves who should execute their Judgments when they had no power to arme their Officers It remaineth therefore that there could be no certaire maintenance assigned to any Pastors of the Church but by the whole Congregation and then onely when their Decrees should have the force not onely of Canons but also of Laws which Laws could not be made but by Emperours Kings or other Civill Soveraignes The Right of Tythes in Moses Law could not be applyed to the then Ministers of the Gospell because Moses and the High Priests were the Civill Soveraigns of the people under God whose Kingdom amongst the Jews was present whereas the Kingdome of God by Christ is yet to come Hitherto hath been shewn what the Pastors of the Church are what are the points of their Commission as that they were to Preach to Teach to Baptize to be Presidents in their severall Congregations what is Ecclesiasticall Censure viz. Excommunication that is to say in those places where Christanity was forbidden by the Civill Laws a putting of themselves out of the company of the Excommunicate and where Christianity was by the Civill Law commanded a putting the Excommunicate out of the Congregations of Christians who elected the Pastors and Ministers of the Church that it was the Congregation who consecrated and blessed them that it was the Pastor what was their due revenue that it was none but their own possessions and their own labour and the voluntary contributions of devout and gratefull Christians We are to consider now what Office in the Church those persons have who being Civill Soveraignes have embraced also the Christian Faith And first we are to remember that the Right of Judging what Doctrines are fit for Peace and to be taught the Subjects is in all Common-wealths inseparably annexed as hath been already proved cha 18. to the Soveraign Power Civill whether it be in one Man or in one Assembly of men For it is evident to the meanest capacity that mens actions are derived from the opinions they have of the Good or Evill which from those actions redound unto themselves and consequently men that are once possessed of an opinion that their obedience to the Soveraign Power will bee more hurtfull to them than their disobedience will disobey the Laws and thereby overthrow the Common-wealth and introduce confusion and Civill war for the avoiding whereof all Civill Government was
the terrour of Death or other great corporall punishment it is not Idolatry For the Worship which the Soveraign commandeth to bee done unto himself by the terrour of his Laws is not a sign that he that obeyeth him does inwardly honour him as a God but that he is desirous to save himselfe from death or from a miserable life and that which is not a sign of internall honor is no Worship and therefore no Idolatry Neither can it bee said that hee that does it scandalizeth or layeth any stumbling block before his Brother because how wise or learned soever he be that worshippeth in that manner another man cannot from thence argue that he approveth it but that he doth it for fear and that it is not his act but the act of his Soveraign To worship God in some peculiar Place or turning a mans faâ—… towards an Image or determinate Place is not to worship or honor the Place or Image but to acknowledge it Holy that is to say to acknowledge the Image or the Place to be set apart from common use for that is the meaning of the word Holy which implies no new quality in the Place or Image but onely a new Relation by Appropriation to God and therefore is not Idolatry no more than it was Idolatry to worship God before the Brazen Serpent or for the Jews when they were out of their owne countrey to turn their faces when they prayed toward the Temple of Jerusalem or for Moses to put off his Shoes when he was before the Flaming Bush the ground appertaining to Mount Sinai which place God had chosen to appear in and to give his Laws to the People of Israel and was therefore Holy ground not by inhaerent sanctity but by separation to Gods use or for Christians to worship in the Churches which are once solemnly dedicated to God for that purpose by the Authority of the King or other true Representant of the Church But to worship God as inanimating or inhabiting such Image or place that is to say an infinite substance in a finite place is Idolatry for such finite Gods are but Idols of the brain nothing reall and are commonly called in the Scripture by the names of Vanity and Lyes and Nothing Also to worship God not as inanimating or present in the place or Image but to the end to be put in mind of him or of some works of his in case the Place or Image be dedicated or set up by private authority and not by the authority of them that are our Soveraign Pastors is Idolatry For the Commandement is Thou shalt not make to thy selfe any graven Image God commanded Moses to set up the Brazen Serpent hee did not make it to himselfe it was not therefore against the Commandement But the making of the Golden Calfe by Aaron and the People as being done without authority from God was Idolatry not onely because they held it for God but also because they made it for a Religious use without warrant either from God their Soveraign or from Moses that was his Lieutenant The Gentiles worshipped for Gods Jupiter and others that living were men perhaps that had done great and glorious Acts and for the Children of God divers men and women supposing them gotten between an Immortall Deity and a mortall man This was Idolatry because they made them so to themselves having no authority from God neither in his eternall Law of Reason nor in his positive and revealed Will. But though our Saviour was a man whom wee also beleeve to bee God Immortall and the Son of God yet this is no Idolatry because wee build not that beleef upon our own fancy or judgment but upon the Word of God revealed in the Scriptures And for the adoration of the Eucharist if the words of Christ This is my Body signifie that he himselfe and the seeming bread in his hand and not onely so but that all the seeming morsells of bread that have ever since been and any time hereafter shall bee consecrated by Priests bee so many Christs bodies and yet all of them but one body then is that no Idolatry because it is authorized by our Saviour but if that text doe not signifie that for there is no other that can be alledged for it then because it is a worship of humane institution it is Idolatry For it is not enough to say God can transubstantiate the Bread into Christs Body For the Gentiles also held God to be Omnipotent and might upon that ground no lesse excuse their Idolatry by pretending as well as others a transubstantiation of their Wood and Stone into God Almighty Whereas there be that pretend Divine Inâ—…piration to be a supernaturall entring of the Holy Ghost into a man and not an acquisition of Gods graces by doctrine and study I think they are in a very dangerous Dilemma For if they worship not the men whom they beleeve to be so inspired they fall into Impiety as not adoring Gods supernaturall Presence And again if they worship him they commit Idolatry for the Apostles would never permit themselves to be so worshipped Therefore the safest way is to beleeve that by the Descending of the Dove upon the Apostles and by Christs Breathing on them when hee gave them the Holy Ghost and by the giving of it by Iâ—…position of Hands are understood the signes which God hath been pleased to use or ordain to bee used of his promise to assist those persons in their study to Preach his Kingdome and in their Conversation that it might not be Scandalous but Edifying to others Besides the Idolatrous Worship of Images there is also a Scandalous Worship of them which is also a sin but not Idolatry For Idolatry is to worship by signes of an internall and reall honour but Scandalous Worship is but Seeming Worship and may sometimes bee joined with an inward and hearty detestation both of the Image and of the Phantasticall Daemon or Idol to which it is dedicated and proceed onely from the fear of death or other grievous punishment and is neverthelesse a sin in them that so worship in case they be men whose actions are looked at by others as lights to guide them by because following their ways they cannot but stumble and fall in the way of Religion Whereas the example of those we regard not works not on us at all but leaves us to our own diligence and caution and consequently are no causes of our falling If therefore a Pastor lawfully called to teach and direct others or any other of whose knowledge there is a great opinion doe externall honor to an Idol for fear unlesse he make his feare and unwillingnesse to it as evident as the worship he Scandalizeth his Brother by seeming to approve Idolatry For his Brother arguing from the action of his teacher or of him whose knowledge he esteemeth great concludes it to bee lawfull in it selfe And this Scandall is Sin and a Scandall given But
of themselves thereby have made an Artificiall Man which we call a Common-wealth so also have they made Artificiall Chains called Civill Lawes which they themselves by mutuall covenants have fastned at one end to the lips of that Man or Assembly to whom they have given the Soveraigne Power and at the other end to their own Ears These Bonds in their own nature but weak may neverthelesse be made to hold by the danger though not by the difficulty of breaking them In relation to these Bonds only it is that I am to speak now of the Liberty of Subjects For seeing there is no Common-wealth in the world wherein there be Rules enough set down for the regulating of all the actions and words of men as being a thing impossible it followeth necessarily that in all kinds of actions by the laws praetermitted men have the Liberty of doing what their own reasons shall suggest for the most profitable to themselves For if wee take Liberty in the proper sense for corporall Liberty that is to say freedome from chains and prison it were very absurd for men to clamor as they doe for the Liberty they so manifestly enjoy Againe if we take Liberty for an exemption from Lawes it is no lesse absurd for men to demand as they doe that Liberty by which all other men may be masters of their lives And yet as absurd as it is this is it they demand not knowing that the Lawes are of no power to protect them without a Sword in the hands of a man or men to cause those laws to be put in execution The Liberty of a Subject lyeth therefore only in those things which in regulating their actions the Soveraign hath praetermitted such as is the Liberty to buy and sell and otherwise contract with one another to choose their own aboad their own diet their own trade of life and institute their children as they themselves think fit the like Neverthelesse we are not to understand that by such Liberty the Soveraign Power of life and death is either abolished or limited For it has been already shewn that nothing the Soveraign Representative can doe to a Subject on what pretence soever can properly be called Injustice or Injury because every Subject is Author of every act the Soveraign doth so that he never wanteth Right to any thing otherwise than as he himself is the Subject of God and bound thereby to observe the laws of Nature And therefore it may and doth often happen in Common-wealths that a Subject may be put to death by the command of the Soveraign Power and yet neither doe the other wrong As when Jeptha caused his daughter to be sacrificed In which and the like cases he that so dieth had Liberty to doe the action for which he is neverthelesse without Injury put to death And the same holdeth also in a Soveraign Prince that putteth to death an Innocent Subject For though the action be against the law of Nature as being contrary to Equitie as was the killing of Uriah by David yet it was not an Injurie to Uriah but to God Not to Uriah because the right to doe what he pleased was given him by Uriah himself And yet to God because David was Gods Subject and prohibited all Iniquitie by the law of Nature Which distinction David himself when he repented the fact evidently confirmed saying To thee only have I sinned In the same manner the people of Athens when they â—…anished the most potent of their Common-wealth for ten years thought they committed no Injustice and yet they never questioned what crime he had done but what hurt he would doe Nay they commanded the banishment of they knew not whom and every Citizen bringing his Oystershell into the market place written with the name of him he desired should be banished without actuall accusing him sometimes banished an Aristides for his reputation of Justice And sometimes a scurrilous Jester as Hyperbolus to make a Jest of it And yet a man cannot say the Soveraign People of Athens wanted right to banish them or an Athenian the Libertie to Jest or to be Just. The Libertie whereof there is so frequent and honourable mention in the Histories and Philosophy of the Antient Greeks and Romans and in the writings and discourse of those that from them have received all their learning in the Politiques is not the Libertie of Particular men but the Libertie of the Common-wealth which is the same with that which every man then should have if there were no Civil Laws nor Common-wealth at all And the effects of it also be the same For as amongst masterlesse men there is perpetuall war of every man against his neighbour no inheritance to transmit to the Son nor to expect from the Father no propriety of Goods or Lands no security but a full and absolute Libertie in every Particular man So in States and Common-wealths not dependent on one another every Common-wealth not every man has an absolute Libertie to doe what it shall judge that is to say what that Man or Assemblie that representeth it shall judge most conducing to their benefit But withall they live in the condition of a perpetuall war and upon the confines of battel with their frontiers armed and canons planted against their neighbours round about The Athenians and Romanes were free that is free Common-wealths not that any particular men had the Libertie to resist their own Representative but that their Representative had the Libertie to resist or invade other people There is written on the Turrets of the city of Luca in great characters at this day the word LIBERTAS yet no man can thence inferre that a particular man has more Libertie or Immunitie from the service of the Commonwealth there than in Constantinople Whether a Common-wealth be Monarchicall or Popular the Freedome is still the same But it is an easy thing for men to be deceived by the specious name of Libertie and for want of Judgement to distinguish mistake that for their Private Inheritance and Birth right which is the right of the Publique only And when the same errour is confirmed by the authority of men in reputation for their writings in this subject it is no wonder if it produce sedition and change of Government In these westerne parts of the world we are made to receive our opinions concerning the Institution and Rights of Common-wealths from Aristotle Cicero and other men Greeks and Romanes that living under Popular States derived those Rights not from the Principles of Nature but transcribed them into their books out of the Practise of their own Common-wealths which were Popular as the Grammarians describe the Rules of Language out of the Practise of the time or the Rules of Poetry out of the Poems of Homer and Virgil. And because the Athenians were taught to keep them from desire of changing their Government that they were Freemen and all that lived under Monarchy were slaves
interest But if he whose private interest is to be debated and judged in the Assembly make as many friends as he can in him it is no Injustice because in this case he is no part of the Assembly And though he hire such friends with mony unlesse there be an expresse Law against it yet it is not Injustice For sometimes as mens manners are Justice cannot be had without mony and every man may think his own cause just till it be heard and judged In all Common-wealths if a private man entertain more servants than the government of his estate and lawfull employment he has for them requires it is Faction and unlawfull For having the protection of the Common-wealth he needeth not the defence of private force And whereas in Nations not throughly civilized severall numerous Families have lived in continuall hostility and invaded one another with private force yet it is evident enough that they have done unjustly or else that they had no Common-wealth And as Factions for Kindred so also Factions for Government of Religion as of Papists Protestants c. or of State as Patricians and Plebeians of old time in Rome and of Aristocraticalls and Democraticalls of old time in Greece are unjust as being contrary to the peace and safety of the people and a taking of the Sword out of the hand of the Soveraign Concourse of people is an Irregular Systeme the lawfulnesse or unlawfulnesse whereof dependeth on the occasion and on the number of them that are assembled If the occasion be lawfull and manifest the Concourse is lawfull as the usuall meeting of men at Church or at a publique Shew in usuall numbers for if the numbers be extraordinarily great the occasion is not evident and consequently he that cannot render a particular and good account of his being amongst them is to be judged conscious of an unlawfull and tumultuous designe It may be lawfull for a thousand men to joyn in a Petition to be delivered to a Judge or Magistrate yet if a thousand men come to present it it is a tumultuous Assembly because there needs but one or two for that purpose But in such cases as these it is not a set number that makes the Assembly Unlawfull but such a number as the present Officers are not able to suppresse and bring to Justice When an unusuall number of men assemble against a man whom they accuse the Assembly is an Unlawfull tumult because they may deliver their accusation to the Magistrate by a few or by one man Such was the case of St. Paul at Ephesus where Demetrius and a great number of other men brought two of Pauls companions before the Magistrate saying with one Voyce Great is Diana of the Ephesians which was their way of demanding Justice against them for teaching the people such doctrine as was against their Religion and Trade The occasion here considering the Lawes of that People was just yet was their Assembly Judged Unlawfull and the Magistrate reprehended them for it in these words If Demetrius and the other work-men can accuse any man of any thing there be Pleas and Deputies let them accuse one another And if you have any other thing to demand your case may be judged in an Assembly Lawfully called For we are in danger to be accused for this dayes sedition because there is no cause by which any man can render any reason of this Concourse of People Where he calleth an Assembly whereof men can give no just account a Sedition and such as they could not answer for And this is all I shall say concerning Systemes and Assemblyes of People which may be compared as I said to the Similar parts of mans Body such as be Lawfull to the Muscles such as are Unlawfull to Wens Biles and Apostemes engendred by the unnaturall conflux of evill humours CHAP. XXIII Of the PUBLIQUE MINISTERS of Soveraign Power IN the last Chapter I have spoken of the Similar parts of a Common-wealth In this I shall speak of the parts Organicall which are Publique Ministers A PUBLIQUE MINISTER is he that by the Soveraign whether a Monarch or an Assembly is employed in any affaires with Authority to represent in that employment the Person of the Common-wealth And whereas every man or assembly that hath Soveraignty representeth two Persons or as the more common phrase is has two Capacities one Naturall and another Politique as a Monarch hath the person not onely of the Common-wealth but also of a man and a Soveraign Assembly hath the Person not onely of the Common-wealth but also of the Assembly they that be servants to them in their naturall Capacity are not Publique Ministers but those onely that serve them in the Administration of the Publique businesse And therefore neither Ushers nor Sergeants nor other Officers that waite on the Assembly for no other purpose 〈◊〉 for the commodity of the men assembled in an Aristocracy or Democracy nor Stewards Chamberlains Cofferers or any other Officers of the houshold of a Monarch are Publique Ministers in a Monarchy Of Publique Ministers some have charge committed to them of a generall Administration either of the whole Dominion or of a part thereof Of the whole as to a Protector or Regent may bee committed by the Predecessor of an Infant King during his minority the whole Administration of his Kingdome In which case every Subject is so far obliged to obedience as the Ordinances he â—…all make and the commands he shall give be in the Kings name and not inconsistent with his Soveraigne Power Of a part or Province as when either a Monarch or a Soveraign Assembly shall give the generall charge thereof to a Governour Lieutenant Praefect or Vice-Roy And in this case also every one of that Province is obliged to all he shall doe in the name of the Soveraign and that not incompatible with the Soveraigns Right For such Protectors Vice-Roys and Governors have no other right but what depends on the Soveraigns Will and no Commission that can be given them can be interpretâ—…d for a Declaration of the will to transferre the Sovernignty without expresse and perspicuous words to that purpose And this kind of Publique Ministers resembleth the Nerves and Tendons that move the severall limbs of a body naturall Others have speciall Administration that is to say charges of some speciall businesse either at home or abroad As at home First for the Oeconomy of a Common-wealth They that have Authority concerning the Treasure as Tributes Impositions Rents Fines or whatsoever publique revenue to collect receive issue or take the Accounts thereof are Publique Ministers Ministers because they serve the Person Representative and can doe nothing against his Command nor without his Authority Publique because they serve him in his Politicall Capacity Secondly they that have Authority concerning the Militia to have the custody of Armes Forts Ports to Levy Pay or Conduct Souldiers or to provide for any necessary
is once settled then are they actually Lawes and not before as being then the commands of the Common-wealth and therefore also Civill Lawes For it is the Soveraign Power that obliges men to obey them For in the differences of private men to declare what is Equity what is Justice and what is morall Vertue and to make them binding there is need of the Ordinances of Soveraign Power and Punishments to be ordaine d for such as shall break them which Ordinances are therefore part of the Civill Law The Law of Nature therefore is a part of the Civill Law in all Common-wealths of the world Reciprocally also the Civill Law is a part of the Dictates of Nature For Justice that is to say Performance of Covenant and giving to every man his own is a Dictate of the Law of Nature But every subject in a Common-wealth hath covenanted to obey the Civill Law either one with another as when they assemble to make a common Representative or with the Representative it selfe one by one when subdued by the Sword they promise obedience that they may receive life And therefore Obedience to the Civill Law is part also of the Law of Nature Civill and Naturall Law are not different kinds but different parts of Law whereof one part being written is called Civill the other unwritten Naturall But the Right of Nature that is the naturall Liberty of man may by the Civill Law be abridged and restrained nay the end of making Lawes is no other but such Restraint without the which there cannot possibly be any Peace And Law was brought into the world for nothing else but to limit the naturall liberty of particular men in such manner as they might not hurt but assist one another and joyn together against a common Enemy 5. If the Soveraign of one Common-wealth subdue a People that have lived under other written Lawes and afterwards govern them by the same Lawes by which they were governed before yet those Lawes are the Civill Lawes of the Victor and not of the Vanquished Common-wealth For the Legislator is he not by whose authority the Lawes were first made but by whose authority they now continue to be Lawes And therefore where there be divers Provinces within the Dominion of a Common-wealth and in those Provinces diversity of Lawes which commonly are called the Customes of each severall Province we are not to understand that such Customes have their force onely from Length of Time but that they were antiently Lawes written or otherwise made known for the Constitutions and Statutes of their Soveraigns and are now Lawes not by vertue of the Praescription of time but by the Constitutions of their present Soveraigns But if an unwritten Law in all the Provinces of a Dominion shall be generally observed and no iniquity appear in the use thereof that Law can be no other but a Law of Nature equally obliging all man-kind 6. Seeing then all Lawes written and unwritten have their Authority and force from the Will of the Common-wealth that is to say from the Will of the Representative which in a Monarchy is the Monarch and in other Common-wealths the Soveraign Assembly a man may wonder from whence proceed such opinions as are found in the Books of Lawyers of eminence in severall Common-wealths directly or by consequence making the Legislative Power depend on private men or subordinate Judges As for example That the Common Law hath no Controuler but the Parlament which is true onely where a Parlament has the Soveraign Power and cannot be assembled nor dissolved but by their own discretion For if there be a right in any else to dissolve them there is a right also to controule them and consequently to controule their controulings And if there be no such right then the Controuler of Lawes is not Parlamentum but Rex in Parlamento And were a Parlament is Soveraign if it should assemble never so many or so wise men from the Countries subject to them for whatsoever cause yet there is no man will believe that such an Assembly hath thereby acquired to themselves a Legislative Power Item that the two arms of a Common-wealth are Force and Justice the first whereof is in the King the other deposited in the hands of the Parlament As if a Common-wealth could consist where the Force were in any hand which Justice had not the Authority to command and govern 7. That Law can never be against Reason our Lawyers are agreed and that not the Letter that is every construction of it but that which is according to the Intention of the Legislator is the Law And it is true but the doubt is of whose Reason it is that shall be received for Law It is not meant of any private Reason for then there would be as much contradiction in the Lawes as there is in the Schooles nor yet as Sr. Ed. Coke makes it an Artificiall perfection of Reason gotten by long study observation and experience as his was For it is possible long study may encrease and confirm erroneous Sentences and where men build on false grounds the more they build the greater is the ruine and of those that study and observe with equall time and diligence the reasons and resolutions are and must remain discordant and therefore it is not that Juris prudentia or wisedome of subordinate Judges but the Reason of this our Artificiall Man the Common-wealth and his Command that maketh Law And the Common-wealth being in their Representative but one Person there cannot easily arise any contradiction in the Lawes and when there doth the same Reason is able by interpretation or alteration to take it away In all Courts of Justice the Soveraign which is the Person of the Common-wealth is he that Judgeth The subordinate Judge ought to have regard to the reason which moved his Soveraign to make such Law that his Sentence may be according thereunto which then is his Soveraigns Sentence otherwise it is his own and an unjust one 8. From this that the Law is a Command and a Command consisteth in declaration or manifestation of the will of him that commandeth by voyce writing or some other sufficient argument of the same we may understand that the Command of the Common-wealth is Law onely to those that have means to take notice of it Over naturall fooles children or mad-men there is no Law no more than over brute beasts nor are they capable of the title of just or unjust because they had never power to make any covenant or to understand the consequences thereof and consequently never took upon them to authorise the actions of any Soveraign as they must do that make to themselves a Common-wealth And as those from whom Nature or Accident hath taken away the notice of all Lawes in generall so also every man from whom any accident not proceeding from his own default hath taken away the means to take notice of any particular Law is excused if
he observe it not And to speak properly that Law is no Law to him It is therefore necessary to consider in this place what arguments and signes be sufficient for the knowledge of what is the Law that is to say what is the will of the Soveraign as well in Monarchies as in other formes of government And first if it be a Law that obliges all the Subjects without exception and is not written nor otherwise published in such places as they may take notice thereof it is a Law of Nature For whatsoever men are to take knowledge of for Law not upon other mens words but every one from his own reason must be such as is agreeable to the reason of all men which no Law can be but the Law of Nature The Lawes of Nature therefore need not any publishing nor Proclamation as being contained in this one Sentence approved by all the world Do not that to another which thou thinkest unreasonable to be done by another to thy selfe Secondly if it be a Law that obliges only some condition of men or one particular man and be not written nor published by word then also it is a Law of Nature and known by the same arguments and signs that distinguish those in such a condition from other Subjects For whatsoever Law is not written or some way published by him that makes it Law can be known no way but by the reason of him that is to obey it and is therefore also a Law not only Civill but Naturall For Example if the Soveraign employ a Publique Minister without written Instructions what to doe he is obliged to take for Instructions the Dictates of Reason As if he make a Judge The Judge is to take notice that his Sentence ought to be according to the reason of his Soveraign which being alwaies understood to be Equity he is bound to it by the Law of Nature Or if an Ambassador he is in all things not conteined in his written Instructions to take for Instruction that which Reason dictates to be most conducing to his Soveraigns interest and so of all other Ministers of the Soveraignty publique and private All which Instructions of naturall Reason may be comprehended under one name of Fidelity which is a branch of naturall Justice The Law of Nature excepted it belongeth to the essence of all other Lawes to be made known to every man that shall be obliged to obey them either by word or writing or some other act known to proceed from the Soveraign Authority For the will of another cannot be understood but by his own word or act or by conjecture taken from his scope and purpose which in the person of the Common-wealth is to be supposed alwaies consonant to Equity and Reason And in antient time before letters were in common use the Lawes were many times put into verse that the rude people taking pleasure in singing or reciting them might the more easily reteine them in memory And for the same reason Solomon adviseth a man to bind the ten Commandements upon his ten fingers And for the Law which Moses gave to the people of Israel at the renewing of the Covenant * he biddeth them to teach it their Children by discoursing of it both at home and upon the way at going to bed and at rising from bed and to write it upon the posts and dores of their houses and to assemble the people man woman and child to heare it read Nor is it enough the Law be written and published but also that there be manifest signs that it proceedeth from the will of the Soveraign For private men when they have or think they have force enough to secure their unjust designes and convoy them safely to their ambitious ends may publish for Lawes what they please without or against the Legislative Authority There is therefore requisite not only a Declaration of the Law but also sufficient signes of the Author and Authority The Author or Legislator is supposed in every Common-wealth to be evident because he is the Soveraign who having been Constituted by the consent of every one is supposed by every one to be sufficiently known And though the ignorance and security of men be such for the most part as that when the memory of the first Constitution of their Common-wealth is worn out they doe not consider by whose power they use to be defended against their enemies and to have their industry protected and to be righted when injury is done them yet because no man that considers can make question of it no excuse can be derived from the ignorance of where the Soveraignty is placed And it is a Dictate of Naturall Reason and consequently an evident Law of Nature that no man ought to weaken that power the protection whereof he hath himself demanded or wittingly received against others Therefore of who is Soveraign no man but by his own fault whatsoever evill men suggest can make any doubt The difficulty consisteth in the evidence of the Authority derived from him The removing whereof dependeth on the knowledge of the publique Registers publique Counsels publique Ministers and publique Seales by which all Lawes are sufficiently verified Verifyed I say not Authorised for the Verification is but the Testimony and Record not the Authority of the Law which consisteth in the Command of the Soveraign only If therefore a man have a question of Injury depending on the Law of Nature that is to say on common Equity the Sentence of the Judge that by Commission hath Authority to take cogninisance of such causes is a sufficient Verification of the Law of Nature in that individuall case For though the advice of one that professeth the study of the Law be usefull for the avoyding of contention yet it is but advice t is the Judge must tell men what is Law upon the hearing of the Controversy But when the question is of injury or crime upon a written Law every man by recourse to the Registers by himself or others may if he will be sufficiently enformed before he doe such injury or commit the crime whither it be an injury or not Nay he ought to doe so For when a man doubts whether the act he goeth about be just or injust and may informe himself if he will the doing is unlawfull In like manner he that supposeth himself injured in a case determined by the written Law which he may by himself or others see and consider if he complaine before he consults with the Law he does unjustly and bewrayeth a disposition rather to vex other men than to demand his own right If the question be of Obedience to a publique Officer To have seen his Commission with the Publique Seale and heard it read or to have had the means to be informed of it if a man would is a sufficient Verification of his Authority For every man is obliged to doe his best endeavour to informe himself of
not this revelation nor were yet in being yet they are a party to the Covenant and bound to obey what Abraham should declare to them for Gods Law which they could not be but in vertue of the obedience they owed to their Parents who if they be Subject to no other earthly power as here in the case of Abraham have Soveraign power over their children and servants Againe where God saith to Abraham In thee shall all Nations of the earth be blessed For I know thou wilt command thy children and thy house after thee to keep the way of the Lord and to observe Righteousnesse and Judgement it is manifest the obedience of his Family who had no Revelation depended on their former obligation to obey their Soveraign At Mount Sinai Moses only went up to God the people were forbidden to approach on paine of death yet were they bound to obey all that Moses declared to them for Gods Law Upon what ground but on this submission of their own Speak thou to us and we will heare thee but let not God speak to us lest we dye By which two places it sufficiently appeareth that in a Common-wealth a subject that has no certain and assured Revelation particularly to himself concerning the Will of God is to obey for such the Command of the Common-wealth for if men were at liberty to take for Gods Commandements their own dreams and fancies or the dreams and fancies of private men scarce two men would agree upon what is Gods Commandement and yet in respect of them every man would despise the Commandements of the Common-wealth I conclude therefore that in all things not contrary to the Morall Law that is to say to the Law of Nature all Subjects are bound to obey that for divine Law which is declared to be so by the Lawes of the Common-wealth Which also is evident to any mans reason for whatsoever is not against the Law of Nature may be made Law in the name of them that have the Soveraign power and there is no reason men should be the lesse obliged by it when t is propounded in the name of God Besides there is no place in the world where men are permitted to pretend other Commandements of God than are declared for such by the Common-wealth Christian States punish those that revolt from Christian Religion and all other States those that set up any Religion by them forbidden For in whatsoever is not regulated by the Common-wealth t is Equity which is the Law of Nature and therefore an eternall Law of God that every man equally enjoy his liberty There is also another distinction of Laws into Fundamentall and not Fundamentall but I could never see in any Author what a Fundamentall Law signifieth Neverthelesse one may very reasonably distinguish Laws in that manner For a Fundamentall Law in every Common-wealth is that which being taken away the Common-wealth faileth and is utterly dissolved as a building whose Foundation is destroyed And therefore a Fundamentall Law is that by which Subjects are bound to uphold whatsoever power is given to the Soveraign whether a Monarch or a Soveraign Assembly without which the Common-wealth cannot stand such as is the power of War and Peace of Judicature of Election of Officers and of doing whatsoever he shall think necessary for the Publique good Not Fundamentall is that the abrogating whereof draweth not with it the dissolution of the Common-Wealth such as are the Lawes concerning Controversies between subject and subject Thus much of the Division of Lawes I find the words Lex Civilis and Jus Civile that is to say Law and Right Civil promiscuously used for the same thing even in the most learned Authors which neverthelesse ought not to be so For Right is Liberty namely that Liberty which the Civil Law leaves us But Civill Law is an Obligation and takes from us the Liberty which the Law of Nature gave us Nature gave a Right to every man to secure himselfe by his own strength and to invade a suspected neighbour by way of prevention but the Civill Law takes away that Liberty in all cases where the protection of the Law may be safely stayd for Insomuch as Lex and Jus are as different as Obligation and Liberty Likewise Lawes and Charters are taken 〈◊〉 for the same thing Yet Charters are Donations of the Soveraign and not Lawes but exemptions from Law The phrase of a Law is Jubeo Injungo I Command and Enjoyn the phrase of a Charter is Dedi Concessi I have Given I have Granted but what is given or granted to a man is not forced upon him by a Law A Law may be made to bind All the Subjects of a Common-wealth a Liberty or Charter is only to One man or some One part of the people For to say all the people of a Common-wealth have Liberty in any case whatsoever is to say that in such case there hath been no Law made or else having been made is now abrogated CHAP. XXVII Of CRIMES EXCUSES and EXTENUATIONS A Sinne is not onely a Transgression of a Law but also any Contempt of the Legislator For such Contempt is a breach of all his Lawes at once And therefore may consist not onely in the Commission of a Fact or in the Speaking of Words by the Lawes forbidden or in the Omission of what the Law commandeth but also in the Intention or purpose to transgresse For the purpose to breake the Law is some degree of Contempt of him to whom it belongeth to see it executed To be delighted in the Imagination onely of being possessed of another mans goods servants or wife without any intention to take them from him by force or fraud is no breach of the Law that sayth Thou shalt not covet nor is the pleasure a man may have in imagining or dreaming of the death of him from whose life he expecteth nothing but dammage and displeasure a Sinne but the resolving to put some Act in execution that tendeth thereto For to be pleased in the fiction of that which would please a man if it were reall is a Passion so adhaerent to the Nature both of man and every other living creature as to make it a Sinne were to make Sinne of being a man The consideration of this has made me think them too severe both to themselves and others that maintain that the First motions of the mind though checked with the fear of God be Sinnes But I confesse it is safer to erre on that hand than on the other A CRIME is a sinne consisting in the Committing by Deed or Word of that which the Law forbiddeth or the Omission of what it hath commanded So that every Crime is a sinne but not every sinne a Crime To intend to steale or kill is a sinne though it never appeare in Word or Fact for God that seeth the thoughts of man can lay it to his charge but till it appear by some thing
the same Authority controuleth it and in all Crimes that contain not in them a denyall of the Soveraign Power nor are against an evident Law Excuseth totally whereas he that groundeth his actions on his private Judgement ought according to the rectitude or errour thereof to stand or fall The same Fact if it have been constantly punished in other men is a greater Crime than if there have been many precedent Examples of impunity For those Examples are so many hopes of Impunity given by the Soveraign himselfe And because he which furnishes a man with such a hope and presumption of mercy as encourageth him to offend hath his part in the offence he cannot reasonably charge the offender with the whole A Crime arising from a sudden Passion is not so great as when the same ariseth from long meditation For in the former case there is a place for Extenuation in the common infirmity of humane nature but he that doth it with praemeditation has used circumspection and cast his eye on the Law on the punishment and on the consequence thereof to humane society all which in committing the Crime hee hath contemned and postposed to his own appetite But there is no suddennesse of Passion sufficient for a totall Excuse For all the time between the first knowing of the Law and the Commission of the Fact shall be taken for a time of deliberation because he ought by meditation of the Law to rectifie the irregularity of his Passions Where the Law is publiquely and with assiduity before all the people read and interpreted a fact done against it is a greater Crime than where men are left without such instrustion to enquire of it with difficulty uncertainty and interruption of their Callings and be informed by priuate men for in this case part of the fault is discharged upon common infirmity but in the former there is apparent negligence which is not without some contempt of the Sovetaign Power Those facts which the Law expresly condemneth but the Law-maker by other manifest signes of his will tacitly approveth are lesse Crimes than the same facts condemned both by the Law and Law-maker For seeing the will of the Law-maker is a Law there appear in this case two contradictory Lawes which would totally Excuse if men were bound to take notice of the Soveraigns approbation by other arguments than are expressed by his command But because there are punishments consequent not onely to the transgression of his Law but also to the observing of it he is in part a cause of the transgression and therefore cannot reasonably impute the whole Crime to the â—…quent For example the Law condemneth Duells the punishment is made capitall On the contrary part he that refuseth Duell is subject to contempt and 〈◊〉 without remedy and sometimes by the Soveraign himselfe thought unworthy to have any charge or preferment in Warre If thereupon he accept Duell considering all men lawfully endeavour to obtain the good opinion of them that have the Soveraign Power he ought not in reason to be 〈◊〉 punished seeing part of the fault may be discharged on the punisher which I say not as wishing liberty of private revenges or any other kind of disobedience but a care in Governours not to countenance any thing obliquely which directly they forbid The examples of Princes to those that see them are and ever have been more potent to govern their actions than the Lawes themselves And thought it be our duty to do not what they do but what they say yet will that duty never be performed till it please God to give men an extraordinary and supernaturall grace to follow that Precept Again if we compare Crimes by the mischiefe of their Effects First the same fact when it redounds to the dammage of many is greater than when it redounds to the hurt of few And therefore when a fact hurteth not onely in the present but also by example in the future it is a greater Crime than if it hurt onely in the present for the former is a fertile Crime and multiplyes to the hurt of many the later is barren To maintain doctrines contrary to the Religion established in the Common-wealth is a greater fault in an authorised Preacher than in a private person So also is it to live prophanely incontinently or do any irreligious act whatsoever Likewise in a Professor of the Law to maintain any point or do any act that tendeth to the weakning of the Soveraign Power is a greater Crime than in another man Also in a man that hath such reputation for wisedome as that his counsells are followed or his actions imitated by many his fact against the Law is a greater Crime than the same fact in another For such men not onely commit Crime but teach it for Law to all other men And generally all Crimes are the greater by the scandall they give that is to say by becomming stumbling-blocks to the weak that look not so much upon the way they go in as upon the light that other men carry before them Also Facts of hostility against the present state of the Common-wealth are greater Crimes than the same acts done to private men For the dammage extends it selfe to all Such are the betraying of the strengths or revealing of the secrets of the Common-wealth to an Enemy also all attempts upon the Representative of the Common-wealth be it a Monarch or an Assembly and all endeavours by word or deed to diminish the Authority of the same either in the present time or in succession which Crimes the Latines understand by Crimina laesae Majestatis and consist in designe or act contrary to a Fundamentall Law Likewise those Crimes which render Judgements of no effect are greater Crimes than Injuries done to one or a few persons as to receive mony to give False judgement or testimony is a greater Crime than otherwise to deceive a man of the like or a greater summe because not onely he has wrong that falls by such judgements but all Judgements are rendered uselesse and occasion ministred to force and private revenges Also Robbery and Depeculation of the Publique treasure or Revenues is a greater Crime than the robbing or defrauding of a Private man because to robbe the publique is to robbe many at once Also the Counterfeit usurpation of publique Ministery the Counterfeiting of publique Seales or publique Coine than counterfeiting of a private mans person or his seale because the fraud thereof extendeth to the dammage of many Of facts against the Law done to private men the greater Crime is that where the dammage in the common opinion of men is most sensible And therefore To kill against the Law is a greater Crime than any other injury life preserved And to kill with Torment greater than simply to kill And Mutilation of a limbe greater than the spoyling a man of his goods And the spoyling a man of his goods by
a Power to punish him which is to make a new Soveraign and again for the same reason a third to punish the second and so continually without end to the Confusion and Dissolution of the Common-wealth A Fifâ—…h doctrine that tendeth to the Dissolution of a Common-wealth is That every private man has an absolute Propriety in his Goods such as excludeth the Right of the Soveraign Every man has indeed a Propriety that excludes the Right of every other Subject And he has it onely from the Soveraign Power without the protection whereof every other man should have equall Right to the same But if the Right of the Soveraign also be excluded he cannot performe the office they have put him into which is to defend them both from forraign enemies and from the injuries of one another and consequently there is no longer a Common-wealth And if the Propriety of Subjects exclude not the Right of the Soveraign Representative to their Goods much lesse to their offices of Judicature or Execution in which they Represent the Soveraign himselfe There is a Sixth doctrine plainly and directly against the essence of a Common-wealth and 't is this That the Soveraign Power may be divided For what is it to divide the Power of a Common-wealth but to Dissolve it for Powers divided mutually destroy each other And for these doctrines men are chiefly beholding to some of those that making profession of the Lawes endeavour to make them depend upon their own learning and not upon the Legislative Power And as False Doctrine so also often-times the Example of different Government in a neighbouring Nation disposeth men to alteration of the forme already setled So the people of the Jewes were stirred up to reject God and to call upon the Prophet Samuel for a King after the manner of the Nations So also the lesser Cities of Greece were continually disturbed with seditions of the Aristocraticall and Democraticall factions one part of almost every Common-wealth desiring to imitate the Lacedaemonians the other the Athenians And I doubt not but many men have been contented to see the late troubles in England out of an imitation of the Low Countries supposing there needed no more to grow rich than to change as they had done the forme of their Government For the constitution of mans nature is of it selfe subject to desire novelty When therefore they are provoked to the same by the neighbourhood also of those that have been enriched by it it is almost impossible for them not to be content with those that solicite them to change and love the first beginnings though they be grieved with the continuance of disorder like hot blouds that having gotten the itch tear themselves with their own nayles till they can endure the smart no longer And as to Rebellion in particular against Monarchy one of the most frequent causes of it is the Reading of the books of Policy and Histories of the antient Greeks and Romans from which young men and all others that are unprovided of the Antidote of solid Reason receiving a strong and delightfull impression of the great exploits of warre atchieved by the Conductors of their Armies receive withall a pleasing Idea of all they have done besides and imagine their great prosperity not to have proceeded from the aemulation of particular men but from the vertue of their popular forme of government Not considering the frequent Seditions and Civill warres produced by the imperfection of their Policy From the reading I say of such books men have undertaken to kill their Kings because the Greek and Latine writers in their books and discourses of Policy make it lawfull and laudable for any man so to do provided before he do it he call him Tyrant For they say not Regicide that is killing of a King but Tyrannicide that is killing of a Tyrant is lawfull From the same books they that live under a Monarch conceive an opinion that the Subjects in a Popular Common-wealth enjoy Liberty but that in a Monarchy they are all Slaves I say they that live under a Monarchy conceive such an opinion not they that live under a Popular Government for they find no such matter In summe I cannot imagine how any thing can be more prejudiciall to a Monarchy than the allowing of such books to be publikely read without present applying such correctives of discreet Masters as are fit to take away their Venime Which Venime I will not doubt to compare to the biting of a mad Dogge which is a disease the Physicians call Hydrophobia or fear of Water For as he that is so bitten has a continuall torment of thirst and yet abhorreth water and is in such an estate as if the poyson endeavoured to convert him into a Dogge So when a Monarchy is once bitten to the quick by those Democraticall writers that continually snarle at that estate it wanteth nothing more than a strong Monarch which neverthelesse out of a certain Tyrannophobia or feare of being strongly governed when they have him they abhorre As there have been Doctors that hold there be three Soules in a man so there be also that think there may be more Soules that is more Soveraigns than one in a Common-wealth and set up a Supremacy against the Soveraignty Canons against Lawes and a Ghostly Authority against the Civill working on mens minds with words and distinctions that of themselves signifie nothing but bewray by their obscurity that there walketh as some think invisibly another Kingdome as it were a Kingdome of Fayries in the dark Now seeing it is manifest that the Civill Power and the Power of the Common-wealth is the same thing and that Supremacy and the Power of making anons and granting Faculties implyeth a Common-wealth it followeth that where one is Soveraign another Supreme where one can make Lawes and another make Canons there must needs be two Common-wealths of one the same Subjects which is a Kingdome divided in it selfe and cannot stand For notwithstanding the insignificant distinction of Temporall and Ghostly they are still two Kingdomes and every Subject is subject to two Masters For seeing the Ghostly Power challengeth the Right to declare what is Sinne it challengeth by consequence to declare what is Law Sinne being nothing but the transgression of the Law and again the Civill Power challenging to declare what is Law every Subject must obey two Masters who both will have their Commands be observed as Law which is impossible Or if it be but one Kingdome either the Civill which is the Power of the Common-wealth must be subordinate to the Ghostly and then there is no Soveraignty but the Ghostly or the Ghostly must be subordinate to the Temporall and then there is no Supremacy but the Temporall When therefore these two Powers oppose one another the Common-wealth cannot but be in great danger of Civill warre and Dissolution For the Civill Authority being more visible and standing in the cleerer light
of naturall reason cannot choose but draw to it in all times a very considerable part of the people And the Spirituall though it stand in the darknesse of Schoole distinctions and hard words yet because the fear of Darknesse and Ghosts is greater than other fears cannot want a party sufficient to Trouble and sometimes to Destroy a Common-wealth And this is a Disease which not unfitly may be compared to the Epilepsie or Falling-sicknesse which the Jewes took to be one kind of possession by Spirits in the Body Naturall For as in this Disease there is an unnaturall spirit or wind in the head that obstructeth the roots of the Nerves and moving them violently taketh away the motion which naturally they should have from the power of the Soule in the Brain and thereby causeth violent and irregular motions which men call Convulsions in the parts insomuch as he that is seized therewith falleth down sometimes into the water and sometimes into the fire as a man deprived of his senses so also in the Body Politique when the Spirituall power moveth the Members of a Common-wealth by the terrour of punishments and hope of rewards which are the Nerves of it otherwise than by the Civill Power which is the Soule of the Common-wealth they ought to be moved and by strange and hard words suffocates their understanding it must needs thereby Distract the people and either Overwhelm the Common-wealth with Oppression or cast it into the Fire of a Civill warre Sometimes also in the meerly Civill government there be more than one Soule As when the Power of levying mony which is the Nutritive faculty has depended on a generall Assembly the Power of conduct and command which is the Motive faculty on one man and the Power of making Lawes which is the Rationall faculty on the accidentall consent not onely of those two but also of a third This endangereth the Common-wealth somtimes for want of consent to good Lawes but most often for want of such Nourishment as is necessary to Life and Motion For although few perceive that such government is not government but division of the Common-wealth into three Factions and call it mixt Monarchy yet the truth is that it is not one independent Common-wealth but three independent Factions nor one Representative Person but three In the Kingdome of God there may be three Persons independent without breach of unity in God that Reigneth but where men Reigne that be subject to diversity of opinions it cannot be so And therefore if the King bear the person of the People and the generall Assembly bear also the person of the People and another Assembly bear the person of a Part of the people they are not one Person nor one Soveraign but three Persons and three Soveraigns To what Disease in the Naturall Body of man I may exactly compare this irregularity of a Common-wealth I know not But I have seen a man that had another man growing out of his side with an head armes breast and stomach of his own If he had had another man growing out of his other side the comparison might then have been exact Hitherto I have named such Diseases of a Common-wealth as are of the greatest and most present danger There be other not so great which neverthelesse are not unfit to be observed As first the difficulty of raising Mony for the necessary uses of the Common-wealth especially in the approach of warre This difficulty ariseth from the opinion that every Subject hath of a Propriety in his lands and goods exclusive of the Soveraigns Right to the use of the same From whence it commeth to passe that the Soveraign Power which foreseeth the necessities and dangers of the Common-wealth finding the passage of mony to the publique Treasure obstructed by the tenacity of the people whereas it ought to extend it selfe to encounter and prevent such dangers in their beginnings contracteth it selfe as long as it can and when it cannot longer struggles with the people by stratagems of Law to obtain little summes which not sufficing he is fain at last violently to open the way for present supply or Perish and being put often to these extremities at last reduceth the people to their due temper or else the Common-wealth must perish Insomuch as we may compare this Distemper very aptly to an Ague wherein the fleshy parts being congealed or by venomous matter obstructed the Veins which by their naturall course empty themselves into the Heart are not as they ought to be supplyed from the Arteries whereby there succeedeth at first a cold contraction and trembling of the limbes and afterwards a hot and strong endeavour of the Heart to force a passage for the Bloud and before it can do that contenteth it selfe with the small refreshments of such things as coole for a time till if Nature be strong enough it break at last the contumacy of the parts obstructed and dissipateth the venome into sweat or if Nature be too weak the Patient dyeth Again there is sometimes in a Common-wealth a Disease which resembleth the Pleurisie and that is when the Treasure of the Common-wealth flowing out of its due course is gathered together in too much abundance in one or a few private men by Monopolies or by Farmes of the Publique Revenues in the same manner as the Blood in a Pleurisie getting into the Membrane of the breast breedeth there an Inflammation accompanied with a Fever and painfull stitches Also the Popularity of a potent Subject unlesse the Common-wealth have very good caution of his fidelity is a dangerous Disease because the people which should receive their motion from the Authority of the Soveraign by the flattery and by the reputation of an ambitious man are drawn away from their obedience to the Lawes to follow a man of whose vertues and designes they have no knowledge And this is commonly of more danger in a Popular Government than in a Monarchy because an Army is of so great force and multitude as it may easily be made believe they are the People By this means it was that Julius Caesar who was set up by the People against the Senate having won to himselfe the affections of his Army made himselfe Master both of Senate and People And this proceeding of popular and ambitious men is plain Rebellion and may be resembled to the effects of Witchcraft Another infirmity of a Common-wealth is the immoderate greatnesse of a Town when it is able to furnish out of its own Circuit the number and expence of a great Army As also the great number of Corporations which are as it were many lesser Common-wealths in the bowels of a greater like wormes in the entrayles of a naturall man To which may be added the Liberty of Disputing against absolute Power by pretenders to Politicall Prudence which though bred for the most part in the Lees of the people yet animated by False Doctrines are perpetually medling with
and Learned men any thing that discovereth their errours and thereby lesseneth their Authority whereas the Common-peoples minds unlesse they be tainted with dependance on the Potent or scribbled over with the opinions of their Doctors are like clean paper fit to receive whatsoever by Publique Authority shall be imprinted in them Shall whole Nations be brought to acquiescé in the great Mysteries of Christian Religion which are above Reason and millions of men be made believe that the same Body may be in innumerable places at one and the same time which is against Reason and shall not men be able by their teaching and preaching protected by the Law to make that received which is so consonant to Reason that any unprejudicated man needs no more to learn it than to hear it I conclude therefore that in the instruction of the people in the Essentiall Rights which are the Naturall and Fundamentall Lawes of Soveraignty there is no difficulty whilest a Soveraign has his Power entire but what proceeds from his own fault or the fault of those whom he trusteth in the administration of the Common-wealth and consequently it is his Duty to cause them so to be instructed and not onely his Duty but his Benefit also and Security against the danger that may arrive to himselfe in his naturall Person from Rebellion And to descend to particulars the People are to be taught First that they ought not to be in love with any forme of Government they see in their neighbour Nations more than with their own nor whatsoever present prosperity they behold in Nations that are otherwise governed than they to desire change For the prosperity of a People ruled by an Aristocraticall or Democraticall assembly commeth not from Aristocracy nor from Democracy but from the Obedience and Concord of the Subjects nor do the people flourish in a Monarchy because one man has the right to rule them but because they obey him Take away in any kind of State the Obedience and consequently the Concord of the People and they shall not onely not flourish but in short time be dissolved And they that go about by disobedience to doe no more than reforme the Common-wealth shall find they do thereby destroy it like the foolish daughters of Peleus in the fable which desiring to renew the youth of their decrepit Father did by the Counsell of Medea cut him in pieces and boyle him together with strange herbs but made not of him a new man This desire of change is like the breach of the first of Gods Commandements For there God sayes Non habebis Does alienos Thou shalt not have the Gods of other Nations and in another place concerning Kings that they are Gods Secondly they are to be taught that they ought not to be led with admiration of the vertue of any of their fellow Subjects how high soever he stand nor how conspicuously soever he shine in the Common-wealth nor of any Assembly except the Soveraign Assembly so as to deferre to them any obedience or honour appropriate to the Soveraign onely whom in their particular stations they represent nor to receive any influence from them but such as is conveighed by them from the Soveraign Authority For that Soveraign cannot be imagined to love his People as he ought that is not Jealous of them but suffers them by the flattery of Popular men to be seduced from their loyalty as they have often been not onely secretly but openly so as to proclaime Marriage with them in facie Ecclesiae by Preachers and by publishing the same in the open streets which may fitly be compared to the violation of the second of the ten Commandements Thirdly in consequence to this they ought to be informed how great a fault it is to speak evill of the Soveraign Representative whether One man or an Assembly of men or to argue and dispute his Power or any way to use his Name irreverently whereby he may be brought into Contempt with his People and their Obedience in which the safety of the Common-wealth consisteth slackened Which doctrine the third Commandement by resemblance pointeth to Fourthly seeing people cannot be taught this nor when 't is taught remember it nor after one generation past so much as know in whom the Soveraign Power is placed without setting a part from their ordinary labour some certain times in which they may attend those that are appointed to instruct them It is necessary that some such times be determined wherein they may assemble together and after prayers and praises given to God the Soveraign of Soveraigns hear those their Duties told them and the Positive Lawes such as generally concern them all read and expounded and be put in mind of the Authority that maketh them Lawes To this end had the Jewes every seventh day a Sabbath in which the Law was read and expounded and in the solemnity whereof they were put in mind that their King was God that having created the world in six dayes he rested the seventh day and by their resting on it from their labour that that God was their King which redeemed them from their servile and painfull labour in Egypt and gave them a time after they had rejoyced in God to take joy also in themselves by lawfull recreation So that the first Table of the Commandements is spent all in setting down the summe of Gods absolute Power not onely as God but as King by pact in peculiar of the Jewes and may therefore give light to those that have Soveraign Power conferred on them by the consent of men to see what doctrine they Ought to teach their Subjects And because the first instruction of Children dependeth on the care of their Parents it is necessary that they should be obedient to them whilest they are under their tuition and not onely so but that also afterwards as gratitude requireth they acknowledge the benefit of their education by externall signes of honour To which end they are to be taught that originally the Father of every man was also his Soveraign Lord with power over him of life and death and that the Fathers of families when by instituting a Common-wealth they resigned that absolute Power yet it was never intended they should lose the honour due unto them for their education For to relinquish such right was not necessary to the Institution of Soveraign Power nor would there be any reason why any man should desire to have children or take the care to nourish and instruct them if they were afterwards to have no other benefit from them than from other men And this accordeth with the fifth Commandement Again every Soveraign Ought to cause Justice to be taught which consisting in taking from no man what is his is as much asto say to cause men to be taught not to deprive their Neighbours by violence or fraud of any thing which by the Soveraign Authority is theirs Of things held in propriety those
that are dearest to a man are his own life limbs and in the next degree in most men those that concern conjugall affection and after them riches and means of living Therefore the People are to be taught to abstain from violence to one anothers person by private revenges from violation of conjugall honour and from forcible rapine and fraudulent surreption of one anothers goods For which purpose also it is necessary they be shewed the evill consequences of false Judgement by corruption either of Judges or Witnesses whereby the distinction of propriety is taken away and Justice becomes of no effect all which things are intimated in the sixth seventh eighth and ninth Commandements Lastly they are to be taught that not onely the unjust facts but the designes and intentions to do them though by accident hindred are Injustice which consisteth in the pravity of the will as well as in the irregularity of the act And this is the intention of the tenth Commandement and the summe of the second Table which is reduced all to this one Commandement of mutuall Charity Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thy selfe as the summe of the first Table is reduced to the love of God whom they had then newly received as their King As for the Means and Conduits by which the people may receive this Instruction wee are to search by what means so many Opinions contrary to the peace of Man-kind upon weak and false Principles have neverthelesse been so deeply rooted in them I mean those which I have in the precedent Chapter specified as That men shall Judge of what is lawfull and unlawfull not by the Law it selfe but by their own Consciences that is to say by their own private Judgements That Subjects sinne in obeying the Commands of the Common-wealth unlesse they themselves have first judged them to be lawfull That their Propriety in their riches is such as to exclude the Dominion which the Common-wealth hath over the same That it is lawfull for Subjects to kill such as they call Tyrants That the Soveraign Power may be divided and the like which come to be instilled into the People by this means They whom necessity or covetousnesse keepeth attent on their trades and labour and they on the other side whom superfluity or sloth carrieth after their sensuall pleasures which two sorts of men take up the greatest part of Man-kind being diverted from the deep meditation which the learning of truth not onely in the matter of Naturall Justice but also of all other Sciences necessarily requireth receive the Notions of their duty chiefly from Divines in the Pulpit and partly from such of their Neighbours or familiar acquaintance as having the Faculty of discoursing readily and plausibly seem wiser and better learned in cases of Law and Conscience than themselves And the Divines and such others as make shew of Learning derive their knowledge from the Universities and from the Schooles of Law or from the Books which by men eminent in those Schooles and Universities have been published It is therefore manifest that the Instruction of the people dependeth wholly on the right teaching of Youth in the Universities But are not may some man say the Universities of England learned enough already to do that or is it you will undertake to teach the Universities Hard questions Yet to the first I doubt not to answer that till towards the later end of Henry the eighth the Power of the Pope was alwayes upheld against the Power of the Common-wealth principally by the Universities and that the doctrines maintained by so many Preachers against the Soveraign Power of the King and by so many Lawyers and others that had their education there is a sufficient argument that though the Universities were not authors of those false doctrines yet they knew not how to plant the truâ—… For in such a contradiction of Opinions it is most certain that they have not been sufficiently instructed and 't is no wonder if they yet retain a relish of that subtile liquor wherewith they were first seasoned against the Civill Authority But to the later question it is not fit nor needfull for me to say either I or No for any man that sees what I am doing may easily perceive what I think The safety of the People requireth further from him or them that have the Soveraign Power that Justice be equally administred to all degrees of People that is that as well the rich and mighty as poor and obscure persons may be righted of the injuries done them so as the great may have no greater hope of impunity when they doe violence dishonour or any Injury to the meaner sort than when one of these does the like to one of them For in this consisteth Equity to which as being a Precept of the Law of Nature a Soveraign is as much subject as any of the meanest of his People All breaches of the Law are offences against the Common-wealth but there be some that are also against private Persons Those that concern the Common-wealth onely may without breach of Equity be pardoned for every man may pardon what is done against himselfe according to his own diseretion But an offence against a private man cannot in Equity be pardoned without the consent of him that is injured or reasonable satisfaction The Inequality of Subjects proceedeth from the Acts of Soveraign Power and therefore has no more place in the presence of the Soveraign that is to say in a Court of Justice then the Inequality between Kings and their Subjects in the presence of the King of Kings The honour of great Persons is to be valued for their beneficence and the aydes they give to men of inferiour rank or not at all And the violences oppressions and injuries they do are not extenuated but aggravated by the greatnesse of their persons because they have least need to commit them The consequences of this partiality towards the great proceed in this manner Impunity maketh Insolence Insolence Hatred and Hatred an Endeavour to pull down all oppressing and contumelious greatnesse though with the 〈◊〉 of the Common wealth To Equall Justice appertaineth also the Equall imposition of Taxes the Equality whereof dependeth not on the Equality of riches but on the Equality of the debt that every man oweth to the Common-wealth for his defence It is not enough for a man to labour for the maintenance of his life but also to fight if need be for the securing of his labour They must either do as the Jewes did after their return from captivity in re-edifying the Temple build with one hand and hold the Sword in the other or else they must hire others to fight for them For the Impositions that are layd on the People by the Soveraign Power are nothing else but the Wages due to them that hold the publique Sword to defend private men in the exercise of severall Trades and Callings Seeing then the benefit that every one
receiveth thereby is the enjoyment of life which is equally dear to poor and rich the debt which a poor man oweth them that defend his life is the same which a rich man oweth for the defence of his saving that the rich who have the service of the poor may be debtors not onely for their own persons but for many more Which considered the Equality of Imposition consisteth rather in the Equality of that which is consumed than of the riches of the persons that consume the same For what reasonis there that he which laboureth much and sparing the fruits of his labour consumeth little should be more charged then he that living idlely getteth little and spendeth all he gets seeing the one hath no more protection from the Common-wealth then the other But when the Impositions are layd upon those things which men consume every man payeth Equally for what he useth Nor is the Common-wealth defrauded by the luxurious waste of private men And whereas many men by accident unevitable become unable to maintain themselves by their labour they ought not to be left to the Charity of private persons but to be provided for as far-forth as the necessities of Nature require by the Lawes of the Common-wealth For as it is Uncharitablenesse in any man to neglect the impotent so it is in the Soveraign of a Common-wealth to expose them to the hazard of such uncertain Charity But for such as have strong bodies the case is otherwise they are to be forced to work and to avoyd the excuse of not finding employment there ought to be such Lawes as may encourage all manner of Arts as Navigation Agriculture Fishing and all manner of Manifacture that requires labour The multitude of poor and yet strong people still encreasing they are to be transplanted into Countries not sufficiently inhabited where neverthelesse they are not to exterminate those they find there but constrain them to inhabit closer together and not range a great deal of ground to snatch what they find but to court each little Plot with art and labour to give them their sustenance in due season And when all the world is overchargd with Inhabitants then the last remedy of all is Warre which provideth for every man by Victory or Death To the care of the Soveraign belongeth the making of Good Lawes But what is a good Law By a Good Law I mean not a. Just Law for no Law can be Unjust The Law is made by the Soveraign Power and all that is done by such Power is warranted and owned by every one of the people and that which every man will have so no man can say is unjust It is in the Lawes of a Common-wealth as in the Lawes of Gaming whatsoever the Gamesters all agree on is Injustice to none of them A good Law is that which is Needfull for the Good of the People and withall Perspicuous For the use of Lawes which are but Rules Authorised is not to bind the People from all Voluntary actions but to direct and keep them in such a motion as not to hurt themselves by their own impetuous desires rashnesse or indiscretion as Hedges are set not to stop Travellers but to keep them in the way And therefore a Law that is not Needfull having not the true End of a Law is not Good A Law may be conceived to be Good when it is for the benefit of the Soveraign though it be not Necessary for the People but it is not so For the good of the Soveraign and People cannot be separated It is a weak Soveraign that has weak Subjects and a weak People whose Soveraign wanteth Power to rule them at his will Unnecessary Lawes are not good Lawes but trapps for Mony which where the right of Soveraign Power is acknowledged are superfluous and where it is not acknowledged unsufficient to defend the People The Perspicuity consisteth not so much in the words of the Law it selfe as in a Declaration of the Causes and Motives for which it was made That is it that shewes us the meaning of the Legislator and the meaning of the Legislator known the Law is more easily understood by few than many words For all words are subject to ambiguity and therefore multiplication of words in the body of the Law is multiplication of ambiguity Besides it seems to imply by too much diligence that whosoever can evade the words is without the compasse of the Law And this is a cause of many unnecessary Processes For when I consider how short were the Lawes of antient times and how they grew by degrees still longer me thinks I see a contention between the Penners and Pleaders of the Law the former seeking to circumscribe the later and the later to evade their circumscriptions and that the Pleaders have got the Victory It belongeth therefore to the Office of a Legislator such as is in all Common-wealths the Supreme Representative be it one Man or an Assembly to make the reason Perspicuous why the Law was made and the Body of the Law it selfe as short but in as proper and significant termes as may be It belongeth also to the Office of the Soveraign to make a right application of Punishments and Rewards And seeing the end of punishing is not revenge and discharge of choler but correction either of the offender or of others by his example the severest Punishments are to be inflicted for those Crimes that are of most Danger to the Publique such as are those which proceed from malice to the Government established those that spring from contempt of Justice those that provoke Indignation in the Multitude and those which unpunished seem Authorised as when they are committed by Sonnes Servants or Favorites of men in Authority For Indignation carrieth men not onely against the Actors and Authors of Injustice but against all Power that is likely to protect them as in the case of Tarquin when for the Insolent act of one of his Sonnes he was driven out of Rome and the Monarchy it selfe dissolved But Crimes of Infirmity such as are those which proceed from great provocation from great fear great need or from ignorance whether the Fact be a great Crime or not there is place many times for Lenity without prejudice to the Common-wealth and Lenity when there is such place for it is required by the Law of Nature The Punishment of the Leaders and teachers in a Commotion not the poore seduced People when they are punished can profit the Common-wealth by their example To be severe to the People is to punish that ignorance which may in great part be imputed to the Soveraign whose fault it was they were no better instructed In like manner it belongeth to the Office and Duty of the Soveraign to apply his Rewards alwayes so as there may arise from them benefit to the Common-wealth wherein consisteth their Use and End and is then done when they that have well
served the Common-wealth are with as little expence of the Common Treasure as is possible so well recompenced as others thereby may be encouraged both to serve the same as faithfully as they can and to study the arts by which they may be enabled to do it better To buy with Mony or Preferment from a Popular ambitious Subject to be quiet and desist from making ill impressions in the mindes of the People has nothing of the nature of Reward which is ordained not for disservice but for service past nor a signe of Gratitude but of Fear nor does it tend to the Benefit but to the Dammage of the Publique It is a contention with Ambition like that of Hercules with the Monster Hydra which having many heads for every one that was vanquished there grew up three For in like manner when the stubbornnesse of one Popular man is overcome with Reward there arise many more by the Example that do the same Mischiefe in hope of like Benefit and as all forts of Manifacture so also Malice encreaseth by being vendible And though sometimes a Civill warre may be differred by such wayes as that yet the danger growes still the greater and the Publique ruine more assured It is therefore against the Duty of the Soveraign to whom the Publique Safety is committed to Reward those that aspire to greatnesse by disturbing the Peace of their Country and not rather to oppose the beginnings of such men with a little danger than after a longer time with greater Another Businesse of the Soveraign is to choose good Counsellours I mean such whose advice he is to take in the Government of the Common-wealth For this word Counsell Consilium corrupted from Considium is of a large signification and comprehendeth all Assemblies of men that sit together not onely to deliberate what is to be done hereafter but also to judge of Facts past and of Law for the present I take it here in the first sense onely And in this sense there is no choyce of Counsell neither in a Democracy nor Aristocracy because the persons Counselling are members of the person Counselled The choyce of Counsellours therefore is proper to Monarchy In which the Soveraign that endeavoureth not to make choyce of those that in every kind are the most able dischargeth not his Office as he ought to do The most able Counsellours are they that have least hope of benefit by giving evill Counsell and most knowledge of those things that conduce to the Peace and Defence of the Common-wealth It is a hard matter to know who expecteth benefit from publique troubles but the signes that guide to a just suspicion is the soothing of the people in their unreasonable or irremediable grievances by men whose estates are not sufficient to discharge their accustomed expences and may easily be observed by any one whom it concerns to know it But to know who has most knowledge of the Publique affaires is yet harder and they that know them need them a great deale the lesse For to know who knowes the Rules almost of any Art is a great degree of the knowledge of the same Art because no man can be assured of the truth of anothers Rules but he that is first taught to understand them But the best signes of Knowledge of any Art are much conversing in it and constant good effects of it Good Counsell comes not by Lot nor by Inheritance and therefore there is no more reason to expect good Advice from the rich or noble in matter of State than in delineating the dimensions of a fortresse unlesse we shall think there needs no method in the study of the Politiques as there does in the study of Geometry but onely to be lookers on which is not so For the Politiques is the harder study of the two Whereas in these parts of Europe it hath been taken for a Right of certain persons to have place in the highest Councell of State by Inheritance it is derived from the Conquests of the antient Germans wherein many absolute Lords joyning together to conquer other Nations would not enter in to the Confederacy without such Priviledges as might be marks of difference in time following between their Posterity and the Posterity of their Subjects which Priviledges being inconsistent with the Soveraign Power by the favour of the Soveraign they may seem to keep but contending for them as their Right they must needs by degrees let them go and have at last no further honour then adhaereth naturally to their abilities And how able soever be the Counsellours in any affaire the benefit of their Counsell is greater when they give every one his Advice and the reasons of it apart than when they do it in an Assembly by way of Orations and when they have praemeditated than when they speak on the sudden both because they have more time to survey the consequences of action and are lesse subject to be carried away to contradiction through Envy Emulation or other Passions arising from the difference of opinion The best Counsell in those things that concern not other Nations but onely the ease and benefit the Subjects may enjoy by Lawes that look onely inward is to be taken from the generall informations and complaints of the people of each Province who are best acquainted with their own wants and ought therefore when they demand nothing in derogation of the essentiall Rights of Soveraignty to be diligently taken notice of For without those Essentiall Rights as I have often before said the Common-wealth cannot at all subsist A Commander of an Army in chiefe if he be not Popular shall not be beloved nor feared as he ought to be by his Army and consequently cannot performe that office with good successe He must therefore be Industrious Valiant Affable Liberall and Fortunate that he may gain an opinion both of sufficiency and of loving his Souldiers This is Popularity and breeds in the Souldiers both desire and courage to recommend themselves to his favour and protects the severity of the Generall in punishing when need is the Mutinous or negligent Souldiers But this love of Souldiers if caution be not given of the Commanders fidelity is a dangerous thing to Soveraign Power especially when it it is in the hands of an Assembly not popular It belongeth therefore to the safety of the People both that they be good Conductors and faithfull Subjects to whom the Soveraign Commits his Armies But when the Soveraign himselfe is Popular that is reverenced and beloved of his People there is no danger at all from the Popularity of a Subject For Souldiers are never so generally unjust as to side with their Captain though they love him against their Soveraign when they love not onely his Person but also his Cause And therefore those who by violence have at any time suppressed the Power of their lawfull Soveraign before they could settle themselves in his place have been alwayes put to the trouble of
speaking by the Spirit or Inspiration was not a particular manner of Gods speaking different from Vision when they that were said to speak by the Spirit were extraordinary Prophets such as for every new message were to have a particular Commission or which is all one a new Dream or Vision Of Prophets that were so by a perpetuall Calling in the Old Testament some were supreme and some subordinate Supreme were first Moses and after him the High Priests every one for his time as long as the Priesthood was Royall and after the people of the Jews had rejected God that he should no more reign over them those Kings which submitted themselves to Gods government were also his chief Prophets and the High Priests oâ—…fice became Ministeriall And when God was to be consulted they put on the holy vestments and enquired of the Lord as the King commanded them and were deprived of their office when the King thought fit For King Saul 1 Sam. 13. 9. commanded the burnt offering to be brought and 1 Sam. 14. 18. he commands the Priest to bring the Ark neer him and ver 19. again to let it alone because he saw an advantage upon his enemies And in the same chapter Saul asketh counsell of God In like manner King David after his being anointed though before he had possession of the Kingdome is said to enquire of the Lord 1 Sam. 23. 2. whether he should fight against the Philistines at Keilah and verse 10. David commandeth the Priest to bring him the Ephod to enquire whether he should stay in Keilah or not And King Solomon 1 Kings 2. 27. took the Priesthood from Abiathar and gave it verse 35. to Zadoc Therefore Moses and the High Priests and the pious Kings who enquired of God on all extraordinary occasions how they were to carry themselves or what event they were to have were all Soveraign Prophets But in what manner God spake unto them is not manifest To say that when Moses went up to God in Mount Sinai it was a Dream or Vision such as other Prophets had is contrary to that distinction which God made between Moses and other Prophets Numb 12. 6 7 8. To say God spake or appeared as he is in his own nature is to deny his Infinitenesse Invisibility Incomprehensibility To say he spake by Inspiration or Infusion of the Holy Spirit as the Holy Spirit signifieth the Deity is to make Moses equall with Christ in whom onely the Godhead as St. Paul speaketh Col. 2. 9. dwelleth bodily And lastly to say he spake by the Holy Spirit as it signifieth the graces or gifts of the Holy Spirit is to attribute nothing to him supernaturall For God disposeth men to Piety Justice Mercy Truth Faith and all manner of Vertue both Morall and Intellectuall by doctrine example and by severall occasions naturall and ordinary And as these ways cannot be applyed to God in his speaking to Moses at Mouut Sinai so also they cannot be applyed to him in his speaking to the High Priests from the Mercy-Seat Therefore in what manner God spake to those Soveraign Prophets of the Old Testament whose office it was to enquire of him is not intelligible In the time of the New Testament there was no Soveraign Prophet but our Saviour who was both God that spake and the Prophet to whom he spake To subordinate Prophets of perpetuall Calling I find not any place that proveth God spake to them supernaturally but onely in such manner as naturally he inclineth men to Piety to Beleef to Righteousnesse and to other vertues all other Christian men Which way though it consist in Constitution Instruction Education and the occasions and invitements men have to Christian vertues yet it is truly attributed to the operation of the Spirit of God or Holy Spirit which we in our language call the Holy Ghost For there is no good inclination that is not of the operation of God But these operations are not alwaies supernaturall When therefore a Prophet is said to speak in the Spirit or by the Spirit of God we are to understand no more but that he speaks according to Gods will declared by the supreme Prophet For the most common acceptation of the word Spirit is in the signification of a mans intention mind or disposition In the time of Moses there were seventy men besides himself that Prophecyed in the Campe of the Israelites In what manner God spake to them is declared in the 11 of Numbers verse 25. The Lord came down in a cloud and spake unto Moses and took of the Spirit that was upon him and gave it to the seventy Elders And it came to passe when the Spirit rested upon them they Prophecyed and did not cease By which it is manifest first that their Prophecying to the people was subservient and subordinate to the Prophecying of Moses for that God took of the Spirit of Moses to put upon them so that they Prophecyed as Moses would have them otherwise they had not been suffered to Prophecy at all For there was verse 27. a complaint made against them to Moses and Joshua would have Moses to have forbidden them which he did not but said to Joshua Bee not jealous in my behalf Secondly that the Spirit of God in that place signifieth nothing but the Mind and Disposition to obey and assist Moses in the administration of the Government For if it were meant they had the substantiall Spirit of God that is the Divine nature inspired into them then they had it in no lesse manner then Christ himself in whom onely the Spirit of God dwelt bodily It is meant therefore of the Gift and Grace of God that guided them to co-operate with Moses from whom their Spirit was derived And it appeareth verse 16. that they were such as Moses himself should appoint for Elders and Officers of the People For the words are Gather unto me seventy men whom thou knowest to be Elders and Officers of the people where thou knowest is the same with thou appointest or hast appointed to be such For we are told before Exod. 18. that Moses following the counsell of Jethro his father-in-Father-in-law did appoint Judges and Officers over the people such as feared God and of these were those Seventy whom God by putting upon them Moses spirit inclined to aid Moses in the Administration of the Kingdome and in this sense the Spirit of God is said 1 Sam. 16. 13 14. presently upon the anointing of David to have come upon David and left Saul God giving his graces to him he chose to govern his people and taking them away from him he rejected So that by the Spirit is meant Inclination to Gods service and not any supernaturall Revelation God spake also many times by the event of Lots which were ordered by such as he had put in Authority over his people So wee read that God manifested by the Lots which Saul caused to be drawn 1 Sam. 14. 43. the
any Coelum Empyreum or other aetheriall Region saving that it is called the Kingdome of Heaven which name it may have because God that was King of the Jews governed them by his commands sent to Moses by Angels from Heaven and after their revolt sent his Son from Heaven to reduce them to their obedience and shall send him thence again to rule both them and all other faithfull men from the day of Judgment Everlastingly or from that that the Throne of this our Great King is in Heaven whereas the Earth is but his Footstoole But that the Subjects of God should have any place as high as his Throne or higher than his Footstoole it seemeth not sutable to the dignity of a King nor can I find any evident text for it in holy Scripture From this that hath been said of the Kingdom of God and of Salvation it is not hard to interpret what is meant by the WORLD TO COME There are three worlds mentioned in Scripture the Old World the Present VVorld and the VVorld to come Of the first St. Peter speaks If God spared not the Old VVorld but saved Noah the eighth person a Preacher of righteousnesse bringing the flood upon the world of the ungodly c. So the first World was from Adam to the generall Flood Of the present World our Saviour speaks Iohn 18. 36. My Kingdome is not of this VVorld For he came onely to teach men the way of Salvation and to renew the Kingdome of his Father by his doctrine Of the World to come St. Peter speaks Neverthelesse we according to his promise look for new Heavens and a new Earth This is that WORLD wherein Christ coming down from Heaven in the clouds with great power and glory shall send his Angels and shall gather together his elect from the four winds and from the uttermost parts of the Earth and thence forth reign over them under his Father Everlastingly Salvation of a sinner suppposeth a precedent REDEMPTION for he that is once guilty of Sin is obnoxious to the Penalty of the same and must pay or some other for him such Ransome as he that is offended and has him in his power shall require And seeing the person offended is Almighty God in whose power are all things such Ransome is to be paid before Salvation can be acquired as God hath been pleased to require By this Ransome is not intended a satisfaction for Sin equivalent to the Offence which no sinner for himselfe nor righteous man can ever be able to make for another The dammage a man does to another he may make amends for by restitution or recompence but sin cannot be taken away by recompence for that were to make the liberty to sin a thing vendible But sins may bee pardoned to the repentant either gratis or upon such penalty as God is pleased to accept That which God usually accepted in the Old Testament was some Sacrifice or Oblation To forgive sin is not an act of Injustice though the punishment have been threatned Even amongst men though the promise of Good bind the promiser yet threats that is to say promises of Evill bind them not much lesse shall they bind God who is infinitely more mercifull then men Our Saviour Christ therefore to Redeem us did not in that sense satisfie for the Sins of men as that his Death of its own vertue could make it unjust in God to punish sinners with Eternall death but did make that Sacrifice and Oblation of himself at his first coming which God was pleased to require for the Salvation at his second coming of such as in the mean time should repent and beleeve in him And though this act of our Redemption be not alwaies in Scripture called a Sacrifice and Oblation but sometimes a Price yet by Price we are not to understand any thing by the value whereof he could claim right to a pardon for us from his offended Father but that Price which God the Father was pleased in mercy to demand CHAP. XXXIX Of the signification in Scripture of the word CHURCH THe word Church Ecclesia signifieth in the Books of Holy Scripture divers things Sometimes though not often it is taken for Gods House that is to say for a Temple wherein Christians assemble to perform holy duties publiquely as 1 Cor. 14. ver 34. Let your women keep silence in the Churches but this is Metaphorically put for the Congregation there assembled and hath been since used for the Edifice it self to distinguish between the Temples of Christians and Idolaters The Temple of Jerusalem was Gods house and the House of Prayer and so is any Edifice dedicated by Christians to the worship of Christ Christs house and therefore the Greek Fathers call it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Lords house and thence in our language it came to be called Kyrke and Church Church when not taken for a House signifieth the same that Ecclesia signified in the Grecian Common-wealths that is to say a Congregation or an Assembly of Citizens called forth to hear the Magistrate speak unto them and which in the Common-wealth of Rome was called Concio as he that spake was called Ecclesiastes and Concionator And when they were called forth by lawfull Authority it was Ecclesia legitima a Lawfull Church 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But when they were excited by tumultuous and seditious clamor then it was a confused Church 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is taken also sometimes for the men that have right to be of the Congregation though not actually assembled that is to say for the whole multitude of Christian men how far soever they be dispersed as Act. 8. 3. where it is said that Saul made havock of the Church And in this sense is Christ said to be Head of the Church And sometimes for a certain part of Christians as Col. 4. 15. Salute the Church that is in his house Sometimes also for the Elect onely as Ephes. 5. 27. A Glorious Church without spot or wrinkle holy and without blemâ—…sh which is meant of the Church triumphant or Church to come Sometimes for a Congregation assembled of professors of Christianity whether their profession be true or counterfeit as it is understood Mat. 18. 17. where it is said Tell it to the Church and if hee neglect to hear the Church let him be to thee as a Gentile or Publican And in this last sense only it is that the Church can be taken for one Person that is to say that it can be said to have power to will to pronounce to command to be obeyed to make laws or to doe any other action whatsoever For without authority from a lawfull Congregation whatsoever act be done in a concourse of people it is the particular act of every one of those that were present and gave their aid to the performance of it and not the act of them all in grosse as of one body much lesse the act
and delivered by God himselfe to Moses and by Moses made known to the people Before that time there was no written Law of God who as yet having not chosen any people to bee his peculiar Kingdome had given no Law to men but the Law of Nature that is to say the Precepts of Naturall Reason written in every mans own heart Of these two Tables the first containeth the law of Soveraignty 1. That they should not obey nor honour the Gods of other Nations in these words Non-habebis Deos alienos coram me that is Thou shalt not have for Gods the Gods that other Nations worship but onely me whereby they were forbidden to obey or honor as their King and Governour any other God than him that spake unto them then by Moses and afterwards by the High Priest 2. That they should not make any Image to represent him that is to say they were not to choose to themselves neither in heaven nor in earth any Representative of their own fancying but obey Moses and Aaron whom he had appointed to that office 3. That they should not take the Name of God in vain that is they should not speak rashly of their King nor dispute his Right nor the commissions of Moses and Aaron his Lieutenants 4. That they should every Seventh day abstain from their ordinary labour and employ that time in doing him Publique Honor. The second Table containeth the Duty of one man towards another as To honor Parents Not to kill Not to Commit Adultery Not to steale Not to corrupt Iudgment by false witnesse and finally Not so much as to designe in their heart the doing of any injury one to another The question now is Who it was that gave to these written Tables the obligatory force of Lawes There is no doubt but they were made Laws by God himselfe But because a Law obliges not nor is Law to any but to them that acknowledge it to be the act of the Soveraign how could the people of Israel that were forbidden to approach the Mountain to hear what God said to Moses be obliged to obedience to all those laws which Moses propounded to them Some of them were indeed the Laws of Nature as all the Second Table and therefore to be acknowledged for Gods Laws not to the Israelites alone but to all people But of those that were peculiar to the Israelites as those of the first Table the question remains saving that they had obliged themselves presently after the propounding of them to obey Moses in these words Exod. 20. 19. Speak thou to us and we will hear thee but let not God speak to us lest we dye It was therefore onely Moses then and after him the High Priest whom by Moses God declared should administer this his peculiar Kingdome that had on Earth the power to make this short Scripture of the Decalogue to bee Law in the Common-wealth of Israel But Moses and Aaron and the succeeding High Priests were the Civill Soveraigns Therefore hitherto the Canonizing or making of the Scripture Law belonged to the Civill Soveraigne The Judiciall Law that is to say the Laws that God prescribed to the Magistrates of Israel for the rule of their administration of Justice and of the Sentences or Judgments they should pronounce in Pleas between man and man and the Leviticall Law that is to say the rule that God prescribed touching the Rites and Ceremonies of the Priests and Levites were all delivered to them by Moses onely and therefore also became Lawes by vertue of the same promise of obedience to Moses Whether these laws were then written or not written but dictated to the People by Moses after his forty dayes being with God in the Mount by word of mouth is not expressed in the Text but they were all positive Laws and equivalent to holy Scripture and made Canonicall by Moses the Civill Soveraign After the Israelites were come into the Plains of Moab over against Jericho and ready to enter into the land of Promise Moses to the former Laws added divers others which therefore are called Deuteronomy that is Second Laws And are as it is written Deut. 29. 1. The words of a Covenant which the Lord commanded Moses to make with the Children of Israel besides the Covenant which he made with them in Horeb. For having explained those former Laws in the beginning of the Book of Deuteronomy he addeth others that begin at the 12. Cha. and continue to the end of the 26. of the same Book This Law Deut. 27. 1. they were commanded to write upon great stones playstered over at their passing over Jordan This Law also was written by Moses himself in a Book and delivered into the hands of the Priests and to the Elders of Israel Deut. 31. 9. and commanded ve 26. to be put in the side of the Arke for in the Ark it selfe was nothing but the Ten Commandements This was the Law which Moses Deuteronomy 17. 18. commanded the Kings of Israel should keep a copie of And this is the Law which having been long time lost was found again in the Temple in the time of Josiah and by his authority received for the Law of God But both Moses at the writing and Josiah at the recovery thereof had both of them the Civill Soveraignty Hitherto therefore the Power of making Scripture Canonicall was in the Civill Soveraign Besides this Book of the Law there was no other Book from the time of Moses till after the Captivity received amongst the Jews for the Law of God For the Prophets except a few lived in the time of the Captivity it selfe and the rest lived but a little before it and were so far from having their Prophecies generally received for Laws as that their persons were persecuted partly by false Prophets and partly by the Kings which were seduced by them And this Book it self which was confirmed by Josiah for the Law of God and with it all the History of the Works of God was lost in the Captivity and sack of the City of Jerusalem as appears by that of 2 Esdras 14. 21. Thy Law is burnt therefore no man knoweth the things that are done of thee or the works that shall begin And before the Captivity between the time when the Law was lost which is not mentioned in the Scripture but may probably be thought to be the time of Rehoboam when Shishak King of Egypt took the spoile of the Temple and the time of Josiah when it was found againe they had no written Word of God but ruled according to their own discretion or by the direction of such as each of them esteemed Prophets From hence we may inferre that the Scriptures of the Old Testament which we have at this day were not Canonicall nor a Law unto the Jews till the renovation of their Covenant with God at their return from the Captivity and restauration of their Common-wealth under Esdras But from that time
for the Churches Salvation because he hath commanded her to follow the Popes directions But this Reason is invalid unlesse he shew when and where Christ commanded that or took at all any notice of a Pope Nay granting whatsoever was given to S. Peter was given to the Pope yet seeing there is in the Scripture no command to any man to obey St. Peter no man can bee just that obeyeth him when his commands are contrary to those of his lawfull Soveraign Lastly it hath not been declared by the Church nor by the Pope himselfe that he is the Civill Soveraign of all the Christians in the world and therefore all Christians are not bound to acknowledge his Jurisdiction in point of Manners For the Civill Soveraignty and supreme Judicature in controversies of Manners are the same thing And the Makers of Civill Laws are not onely Declarers but also Makers of the justice and injustice of actions there being nothing in mens Manners that makes them righteous or unrighteous but their conformity with the Law of the Soveraign And therefore when the Pope challengeth Supremacy in controversies of Manners hee teacheth men to disobey the Civill Soveraign which is an erroneous Doctrine contrary to the many precepts of our Saviour and his Apostles delivered to us in the Scripture To prove the Pope has Power to make Laws he alledgeth many places as first Deut. 17. 12. The man that will doe presumptuously and will not he arken unto the Priest that standeth to Minister there before the Lord thy God or unto the Iudge even that man shall die and thou shalt put away the evill from Israel For answer whereunto we are to remember that the High Priest next and immediately under God was the Civill Soveraign and all Judges were to be constituted by him The words alledged sound therefore thus The man that will presume to disobey the Civill Soveraign for the time being or any of his Officers in the execution of their places that man shall die c. which is cleerly for the Civill Soveraignty against the Universall power of the Pope Secondly he alledgeth that of Matth. 16. Whatsoever yee shall bind c. and interpreteth it for such binding as is attributed Matth. 23. 4. to the Scribes and Pharisees They bind heavy burthens and grievous to be born and lay them on mens shoulders by which is meant he sayes Making of Laws and concludes thence that the Pope can make Laws But this also maketh onely for the Legislative power of Civill Soveraigns For the Scribes and Pharisees sat in Moses Chaire but Moses next under God was Soveraign of the People of Israel and therefore our Saviour commanded them to doe all that they should say but not all that they should do That is to obey their Laws but not follow their Example The third place is Iohn 21. 16. Feed my sheep which is not a Power to make Laws but a command to Teach Making Laws belongs to the Lord of the Family who by his owne discretion chooseth his Chaplain as also a Schoolmaster to Teach his children The fourth place Iohn 20. 21. is against him The words are As my Father sent me so send I you But our Saviour was sent to Redeeem by his Death such as should Beleeve and by his own and his Apostles preaching to prepare them for their entrance into his Kingdome which he himself saith is not of this world and hath taught us to pray for the coming of it hereafter though hee refused Acts 1. 6 7. to tell his Apostles when it should come and in which when it comes the twelve Apostles shall sit on twelve Thrones every one perhaps as high as that of St. Peter to judge the twelve tribes of Israel Seeing then God the Father sent not our Saviour to make Laws in this present world wee may conclude from the Text that neither did our Saviour send S. Peter to make Laws here but to perswade men to expect his second comming with a stedfast faith and in the mean time if Subjects to obey their Princes and if Princes both to beleeve it themselves and to do their best to make their Subjects doe the same which is the Office of a Bishop Therefore this place maketh most strongly for the joining of the Ecclesiasticall Supremacy to the Civill Soveraignty contrary to that which Cardinall Bellarmine alledgeth it for The fift place is Acts 15. 28. It hath seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things that yee abstain from meats offered to Idoles and from bloud and from things strangled and from fornication Here hee notes the word Laying of burdens for the Legislative Power But who is there that reading this Text can say this stile of the Apostles may not as properly be used in giving Counsell as in making Laws The stile of a Law is VVe command But VVe think good is the ordinary stile of them that but give Advice and they lay a Burthen that give Advice though it bee conditionall that is if they to whom they give it will attain their ends And such is the Burthen of abstaining from things strangled and from bloud not absolute but in case they will not erre I have shewn before chap. 25. that Law is distinguished from Counsell in this that the reason of a Law is taken from the designe and benefit of him that prescribeth it but the reason of a Counsell from the designe and benefit of him to whom the Counsell is given But here the Apostles aime onely at the benefit of the converted Gentiles namely their Salvation not at their own benefit for having done their endeavour they shall have their reward whether they be obeyed or not And therefore the Acts of this Councell were not Laws but Counsells The sixt place is that of Rom. 13. Let every Soul be subject to the Higher Powers for there is no Power but of God which is meant he saith not onely of Secular but also of Ecclesiasticall Princes To which I answer first that there are no Ecclesiasticall Princes but those that are also Civill Soveraignes and their Principalities exceed not the compasse of their Civill Soveraignty without those bounds though they may be received for Doctors they cannot be acknowledged for Princes For if the Apostle had meant we should be subject both to our own Princes and also to the Pope he had taught us a doctrine which Christ himself hath told us is impossible namely to serve two Masters And though the Apostle say in another place I write these things being absent lest being present I should use sharpnesse according to the Power which the Lord hath given me it is not that he challenged a Power either to put to death imprison banish whip or fine any of them which are Punishments but onely to Excommunicate which without the Civill Power is no more but a leaving of their company and having no more to doe with them than
end to bee able to produce as far as matter and humane force permit such Effects as â—…umane life requireth So the Geometrician from the Construction of Figures findeth out many Properties thereof and from the Properties new Ways of their Construction by Reasoning to the end to be able to measure Land and Water and for infinite other uses So the Astronomer from the Rising Setting and Moving of the Sun and Starres in divers parts of the Heavens findeth out the Causes of Day and Night and of the different Seasons of the Year whereby he keepeth an account of Time And the like of other Sciences By which Definition it is evident that we are not to account as any part thereof that originall knowledge called Experience in which consisteth Prudence Because it is not attained by Reasoning but found as well in Brute Beasts as in Man and is but a Memory of successions of events in times past wherein the omission of every little circumstance altering the effect frustrateth the expectation of the most Prudent whereas nothing is produced by Reasoning aright but generall eternall and immutable Truth Nor are we therefore to give that name to any false Conclusions For he that Reasoneth aright in words he understandeth can never conclude an Error Nor to that which any man knows by supernaturall Revelation because it is not acquired by Reasoning Nor that which is gotten by Reasoning from the Authority of Books because it is not by Reasoning from the Cause to the Effect nor from the Effect to the Cause and is not Knowledg but Faith The faculty of Reasoning being consequent to the use of Speech it was not possible but that there should have been some generall Truthes found out by Reasoning as ancient almost as Language it selfe The Savages of America are not without some good Morall Sentences also they have a little Arithmetick to adde and divide in Numbers not too great but they are not therefore Philosophers For as there were Plants of Corn and Wine in small quantity dispersed in the Fields and Woods before men knew their vertue or made use of them for their nourishment or planted them apart in Fields and Vineyards in which time they fed on Akorns and drank Water so also there have been divers true generall and profitable Speculations from the beginning as being the naturall plants of humane Reason But they were at first but few in number men lived upon grosse Experience there was no Method that is to say no Sowing nor Planting of Knowledge by it self apart from the Weeds and common Plants of Errour and Conjecture And the cause of it being the want of leasure from procuring the necessities of life and defending themselves against their neighbors it was impossible till the erecting of great Common-wealths it should be otherwise Leasure is the mother of Philosophy and Common-wealth the mother of Peace and Leasure Where first were great and flourishing Cities there was first the study of Philosophy The Gymnosophists of India the Magi of Persia and the Priests of Chaldaea and Egypt are counted the most ancient Philosophers and those Countreys were the most ancient of Kingdomes Philosophy was not risen to the Graecians and other people of the West whose Common-wealths no greater perhaps then Lucca or Geneva had never Peace but when their fears of one another were equall nor the Leasure to observe any thing but one another At length when Warre had united many of these Graecian lesser Cities into fewer and greater then began Seven men of severall parts of Greece to get the reputation of being Wise some of them for Morall and Politique Sentences and others for the learning of the Chaldaeans and Egyptians which was Astronomy and Geometry But we hear not yet of any Schools of Philosophy After the Athenians by the overthrow of the Persian Armies had gotten the Dominion of the Sea and thereby of all the Islands and Maritime Cities of the Archipelago as well of Asia as Europe and were grown wealthy they that had no employment neither at home nor abroad had little else to employ themselves in but either as St. Luke says Acts 17. 21. in telling and hearing news or in discoursing of Philosophy publiquely to the youth of the City Every Master took some place for that purpose Plato in certain publique Walks called Academia from one Acâ—…demus Aristotle in the Walk of the Temple of Pan called Lycaeum others in the Stoa or covered Walk wherein the Merchants Goods were brought to land others in other places where they spent the time of their Leasure in teaching or in disputing of their Opinions and some in any place where they could get the youth of the City together to hear them talk And this was it which Carneades also did at Rome when he was Ambassadour which caused Cato to advise the Senate to dispatch him quickly for feare of corrupting the manners of the young men that delighted to hear him speak as they thought fine things From this it was that the place where any of them taught and disputed was called Schola which in their Tongue signifieth Leasure and their Disputations Diatribae that is to say Passing of the time Also the Philosophers themselves had the name of their Sects some of them from these their Schools For they that followed 〈◊〉 Doctrine were called Academiques The followers of Aristotle Peripatetiques from the Walk hee taught in and those that Zeno taught Stoiques from the Stoa as if we should denominate men from More-fields from Pauls-Church and from the Exchange because they meet there often to prate and loyter Neverthelesse men were so much taken with this custome that in time it spread it selfe over all Europe and the best part of Afrique so as there were Schools publiquely erected and maintained for Lectures and Disputations almost in every Common-wealth There were also Schools anciently both before and after the time of our Saviour amongst the Iews but they were Schools of their Law For though they were called Synagogues that is to say Congregations of the People yet in as much as the Law was every Sabbath day read expounded and disputed in them they differed not in nature but in name onely from Publique Schools and were not onely in Jerusalem but in every City of the Gentiles where the Jews inhabited There was such a Schoole at Damascus whereinto Paul entred to persecute There were others at Antioch Iconium and Thessalonica whereinto he entred to dispute And such was the Synagogue of the Libertines Cyrenâ—…ans Alexandrians Cilicians and those of Asia that is to say the Schoole of Libertines and of Iewes that were strangers in Ierusalem And of this Schoole they were that disputed Act. 6. 9. with Saint Steven But what has been the Utility of those Schools what Science is there at this day acquired by their Readings and Disputings That wee have of Geometry which is the Mother of all Naturall Science wee are not indebted for
it to the Schools Plato that was the best Philosopher of the Greeks forbad entrance into his Schoole to all that were not already in some measure Geometricians There were many that studied that Science to the great advantage of mankind but there is no mention of their Schools nor was there any Sect of Geometricians nor did they then passe under the name of Philosophers The naturall Philosophy of those Schools was rather a Dream than Science and set forth in senselesse and insignificant Language which cannot be avoided by those that will teach Philosophy without having first attained great knowledge in Geometry For Nature worketh by Motion the Wayes and Degrees whereof cannot be known without the knowledge of the Proportions and Properties of Lines and Figures Their Morall Philosophy is but a description of their own Passions For the rule of Manners without Civill Government is the Law of Nature and in it the Law Civill that determineth what is Honest and Dishonest what is Iust and Vnjust and generally what is Good and Evill whereas they make the Rules of Good and Bad by their own Liking and Disliking By which means in so great diversity of taste there is nothing generally agreed on but every one doth as far as he dares whatsoever seemeth good in his owne eyes to the subversion of Common-wealth Their Loigque which should bee the Method of Reasoning is nothing else but Captions of Words and Inventions how to puzzle such as should goe about to pose them To conclude there is nothing so absurd that the old Philosophers as Cicero saith who was one of them have not some of them maintained And I beleeve that scarce any thing can be more absurdly said in naturall Philosophy than that which now is called Aristotles Metaphysiques nor more repugnant to Government than much of that hee hath said in his Politiques nor more ignorantly than a great part of his Ethiques The Schoole of the Jews was originally a Schoole of the Law of Moses who commanded Deut. 31. 10. that at the end of every seventh year at the Feast of the Tabernacles it should be read to all the people that they might hear and learn it Therefore the reading of the Law which was in use after the Captivity every Sabbath day ought to have had no other end but the acquainting of the people with the Commandements which they were to obey and to expound unto them the writings of the Prophets But it is manifest by the many reprehensions of them by our Saviour that they corrupted the Text of the Law with their false Commentaries and vain Traditions and so little understood the Prophets that they did neither acknowledge Christ nor the works he did of which the Prophets prophecyed So that by their Lectures and Disputations in their Synagogues they turned the Doctrine of their Law into a Phantasticall kind of Philosophy concerning the incomprehensible nature of God and of Spirits which they compounded of the Vain Philosophy and Theology of the Graecians mingled with their own fancies drawn from the obscurer places of the Scripture and which might most easily bee wrested to their purpose and from the Fabulous Traditions of their Ancestors That which is now called an Vniversity is a Joyning together and an Incorporation under one Government of many Publique Schools in one and the same Town or City In which the principall Schools were ordained for the three Professions that is to say of the Romane Religion of the Romane Law and of the Art of Medicine And for the study of Philosophy it hath no otherwise place then as a handmaid to the Romane Religion And since the Authority of Aristotle is onely current there that study is not properly Philosophy the nature whereof dependeth not on Authors but Aristotelity And for Geometry till of very late times it had no place at all as being subservient to nothing but rigide Truth And if any man by the ingenuity of his owne nature had attained to any degree of perfection therein hee was commonly thought a Magician and his Art Diabolicall Now to descend to the particular Tenets of Vain Philosophy derived to the Universities and thence into the Church partly from Aristotle partly from Blindnesse of understanding I shall first consider their Principles There is a certain Philosophia prima on which all other Philosophy ought to depend and consisteth principally in right limiting of the significations of such Appellations or Names as are of all others the most Universall Which Limitations serve to avoid ambiguity and aequivocation in Reasoning and are commonly called Definitions such as are the Definitions of Body Time Place Matter Forme Essence Subject Substance Accident Power Act Finite Infinite Quantity Quality Motion Action Passion and divers others necessary to the explaining of a mans Conceptions concerning the Nature and Generation of Bodies The Explication that is the setling of the meaning of which and the like Terms is commonly in the Schools called Metaphysiques as being a part of the Philosophy of Aristotle which hath that for title but it is in another sense for there it signifieth as much as Books written or placed after his naturall Philosophy But the Schools take them for Books of supernaturall Philosophy for the word Metaphysiques will bear both these senses And indeed that which is there written is for the most part so far from the possibility of being understood and so repugnant to naturall Reason that whosoever thinketh there is any thing to bee understood by it must needs think it supernaturall From these Metaphysiques which are mingled with the Scripture to make Schoole Divinity wee are told there be in the world certaine Essences separated from Bodies which they call Abstract Essences and Substantiall Formes For the Interpreting of which Iargon there is need of somewhat more than ordinary attention in this place Also I ask pardon of those that are not used to this kind of Discourse for applying my selfe to those that are The World I mean not the Earth onely that denominates the Lovers of it Worldly men but the Vniverse that is the whole masse of all things that are is Corporeall that is to say Body and hath the dimensions of Magnitude namely Length Bredth and Depth also every part of Body is likewise Body and hath the like dimeâ—…ions and consequently every part of the Universe is Body and that which is not Body is no part of the Universe And because the Universe is All that which is no part of it is Nothing and consequently no where Nor does it follow from hence that Spirits are nothing for they have dimensions and are therefore really Bodies though that name in common Speech be given to such Bodies onely as are visible or palpable that is that have some degree of Opacity But for Spirits they call them Incorporeall which is a name of more honour and may therefore with more piety bee attributed to God himselfe in whom wee consider not what
for the future but also an Approbation of all their actions past when there is scarce a Common-wealth in the world whose beginnings can in conscience be justified And because the name of Tyranny signifieth nothing more nor lesse than the name of Soveraignty be it in one or many men saving that they that use the former word are understood to bee angry with them they call Tyrants I think the toleration of a professed hatred of Tyranny is a Toleration of hatred to Common-wealth in generall and another evill seed not differing much from the former For to the Justification of the Cause of a Conqueror the Reproach of the Cause of the Conquered is for the most part necessary but neither of them necessary for the Obligation of the Conquered And thus much I have thought fit to say upon the Review of the first and second part of this Discourse In the 35. Chapter I have sufficiently declared out of the Scripture that in the Common-wealth of the Jewes God himselfe was made the Soveraign by Pact with the People who were therefore called his Peculiar People to distinguish them from the rest of the world over whom God reigned not by their Consent but by his own Power And that in this Kingdome Moses was Gods Lieutenant on Earth and that it was he that told them what Laws God appointed them to be ruled by But I have omitted to set down who were the Officers appointed to doe Execution especially in Capitall Punishments not then thinking it a matter of so necessary consideration as I find it since Wee know that generally in all Common-wealths the Execution of Corporeall Punishments was either put upon the Guards or other Souldiers of the Soveraign Power or given to those in whom want of means contempt of honour and hardnesse of heart concurred to make them sue for such an Office But amongst the Israelites it was a Positive Law of God their Soveraign that he that was convicted of a capitall Crime should be stoned to death by the People and that the Witnesses should cast the first Stone and after the Witnesses then the rest of the People This was a Law that designed who were to be the Executioners but not that any one should throw a Stone at him before Conviction and Sentence where the Congregation was Judge The Witnesses were neverthelesse to be heard before they proceeded to Execution unlesse the Fact were committed in the presence of the Congregation it self or in sight of the lawfull Judges for then there needed no other Witnesses but the Judges themselves Neverthelesse this manner of proceeding being not throughly understood hath given occasion to a dangerous opinion that any man may kill another in some cases by a Right of Zeal as if the Executions done upon Offenders in the Kingdome of God in old time proceeded not from the Soveraign Command but from the Authority of Private Zeal which if we consider the texts that seem to favour it is quite contrary First where the Levites fell upon the People that had made and worshipped the Golden Calfe and slew three thousand of them it was by the Commandement of Moses from the mouth of God as is manifest Exod. 32. 27. And when the Son of a woman of Israel had blasphemed God they that heard it did not kill him but brought him before Moses who put him under custody till God should give Sentence against him as appears Levit. 25. 11 12. Again Numbers 25. 6 7. when Phinehas killed Zimri and Cosbi it was not by right of Private Zeale Their Crime was committed in the sight of the Assembly there needed no Witnesse the Law was known and he the heir apparent to the Soveraignty and which is the principall point the Lawfulnesse of his Act depended wholly upon a subsequent Ratification by Moses whereof he had no cause to doubt And this Presumption of a future Ratification is sometimes necessary to the safety a Common-wealth as in a sudden Rebellion any man that can suppresse it by his own Power in the Countrey where it begins without expresse Law or Commission may lawfully doe it and provide to have it Ratified or Pardoned whilest it is in doing or after it is done Also Numb 35. 30. it is expressely said Whosoever shall kill the Murtherer shall kill him upon the word of Witnesses but Witnesses suppose a formall Judicature and consequently condemn that pretence of Ius Zelotarum The Law of Moses concerning him that enticeth to Idolatry that is to say in the Kingdome of God to a renouncing of his Allegiance Deut. 13. 8. forbids to conceal him and commands the Accuser to cause him to be put to death and to cast the first stone at him but not to kill him before he be Condemned And Deut. 17. ver 4 5 6. the Processe against Idolatry is exactly set down For God there speaketh to the People as Judge and commandeth them when a man is Accused of Idolatry to Enquire diligently of the Fact and finding it true then to Stone him but still the hand of the Witnesse throweth the first stone This is not Private Zeale but Publique Condemnation In like manner when a Father hath a rebellious Son the Law is Deut. 21. 18. that he shall bring him before the Judges of the Town and all the people of the Town shall Stone him Lastly by pretence of these Laws it was that St. Steven was Stoned and not by pretence of Private Zeal for before hee was carried away to Execution he had Pleaded his Cause before the High Priest There is nothing in all this nor in any other part of the Bible to countenance Executions by Private Zeal which being oftentimes but a conjunction of Ignorance and Passion is against both the Justice and Peace of a Common-wealth In the 36. Chapter I have said that it is not declared in what manner God spake supernaturally to Moses Not that he spake not to him sometimes by Dreams and Visions and by a supernaturall Voice as to other Prophets For the manner how he spake unto him from the Mercy-Seat is expressely set down Numbers 7. 89. in these words From that time forward when Moses entred into the Tabernacle of the Congregation to speak with God he heard a Voice which spake unto him from over the Mercy-Seate which is over the Arke of the Testimony from between the Cherubins he spake unto him But it is not declared in what consisted the praeeminence of the manner of Gods speaking to Moses above that of his speaking to other Prophets as to Samuel and to Abraham to whom he also spake by a Voice that is by Vision Unlesse the difference consist in the cleernesse of the Vision For Face to Face and Mouth to Mouth cannot be literally understood of the Infinitenesse and Incomprehensibility of the Divine Nature And as to the whole Doctrine I see not yet but the Principles of it are true and proper and the Ratiocination solid For I ground the Civill Right
â—…im also belongeth the Right of all Judicature and decision of Controversise 9. And of making War and Peace as he shall think best 10. And of choosing all Counsellours and Ministers both of Peace and Warre 11. And of Rewarding and Punishing and that where no former Law hath determined the measure of it arbitrary 12. And of Honour and Order These Rights are indivisible And can by no Grant passe away without direct renouncing of the Soveraign Power The Power and Honour of Subjects vanisheth in the presence of the Power Soveraign Soveraigne Power not so hurtfull as the want of it and the hurt proceeds for the greatest part from not submitting readily to a lesse The different Formes of Common-wealths but three Tyranny and Oligarchy but different names of Monarchy and Aristocracy Subordinate Representatives dangerous Comparison of Monarchy with Soveraign Assemblyes Of the Right of Succession The present Monarch hath Right to dispose of the Succâ—…ssim Succession passeth by expresse Words Or by not controlling a Custome Or by presumption of naturall affecâ—… To dispose of the Succession though to a King of another Nation not unlawfull A Common-wealth by Acquisition Wherein 〈◊〉 from a Common-wealth by Insâ—…on The Rights of Soveraignty the same in both Dominion Paternall how attained Not by Gâ—…neration but by Contract Or Education Or Precedent subjection of one of the Parents to the other The Right of Succession followeth the Rules of the Right of Possession Despoticall Dominion how attained Not by the Victory but by the Consent of the Vanquished Difference between a Family and a Kingdom The Rights of Monarchy from Scripture * Exod. 20. 19. * Exod. 20. 19. * 1 Sam. 8. 11 12 c. * Verse 10. * 1 Kings 3. 9. * 1 Sam. 24. 9. * Coll. 3. 20. * Verse 22. * Math. 23. 2 3. * Tit. 3. 2. * Mat. 21. 2 3. * Gen. 3 5. Soveraign Power ought in all Common-wealths to be absolute Liberty what What it is to be Free Feare and Liberty consistent Liberty and Necessity Consistent Artificiall Bonds or Covenants Liberty of Subjects consisteth in Liberty from covenants Liberty of the Subject consistent with the unlimited power of the Soveraign The Liberty which writers praise is the Liberty of Soveraigns not of Private men Liberty of Subjects how to be measured Subjects have Liberty to defend their own bodies even against them that lawsully invade them Are not bound to hurt themselves Nor to warfare unlesse they voluntarily undertake it The Greatest Liberty of Subjects dependeth on the Silence of the Law In what Cases Subjects are absolved of their obedience to their Soveraign In case of Captivity In case the Soveraign cast off the government from himself and his Heyrs In case of Banishment In case the Soveraign render himself Subject to another The divers sorts of Systemes of People In all Bodies Politique the power of the Representative is Limited By Letters Patents And the Lawes When the Representative is one man his unwarranted Acts are his own onely When it is an Assembly it is the act of them that assented onely When the Representative is one man if he borrow mony or owe it by Contract he is lyable onely the members not When it is an Assembly they onely are liable that have assented If the debt be to one of the Assembly the Body onely is obliged Protestation against the Decrees of Bodies Politique sometimes lawful but against Soveraign Power never Bodies Politique for Government of a Province Colony or Town Bodies Politique for ordering of Trade A Bodie Politique for Counsel to be given to the Soveraign A Regular Private Body Lawfull as a Family Private Bodies Regular but Unlawfull Systemes Irregular such as are Private Leagues Secret Cabals Feuds of private Families Factions for Government * Acts 19. 40. Publique Minister Who. Ministers for the generall Administration For speciall Administration as for Oecoâ—…my For instruction of the People For Judicature For 〈◊〉 Counsellers without other employment then to Advise are not Publique Ministers The Nourishment of a Common-wealth consisteth in the Commodities of Sea and Land And the right Distribution of them All private Estates of land proceed originally from the Arbitrary Distribution of the Soveraign Propriety of a Subject excludes not the Dominion of the Soveraign but onely of another Subject The Publique is not to be dieted The Places and matter of Traffique depend as their Distribution on the Soveraign The Laws of transferring propriety belong also 〈◊〉 the Soveraign Mony the Bloud of a Common-wealth The Conduits and Way of mony to the Publique use The Children of a Common-wealth Colonies Counsell whaâ—… Differences between Command and Counsell Exhortation and Dehortation what Differennceâ—… of fit and unfit Counsellours Civill Law what The Soveraign is Legistator And not Subject to Civill Law Use a Law not by vertue of Time but of the Soveraigns consent The Law of Nature and the Civill Law contain each other Provinciall Lawes are not made by Custome but by the Soveraign Power Some foolish opinions of Lawyers concerning the making of Lawes Sir Edw. Coke upon Lâ—…tleton Lib. 2. Ch. 6. 〈◊〉 97. b. Law made â—…f not also made known is no Law Unwritten Lawes are all of them Lawes of Nature * Prov. 7. 3. Deut. 11. 19. * Deut. 31. 12. Nothing is Law where the Legislator cannot be known Difference between Verifying and Authorising The Law Verifyed by the subordinate Judge By the Publique Registers By Letters Patent and Publique Seale The Interpretation of the Law dependeth on the Soveraign Power All Lawâ—… need Interpretation The Aâ—…thenticall Interpretation of Law is not that of writers The Interpreter of the Law is the Judge giving sentence vivâ voce in every particular case The Sentence of a Judge does not bind him or another Judge to give like Sentence in like Cases ever after The difference between the Letter and Sentence of the Law The abilities required in a Judge Divisions of Law Another Division of Law Divine Positive Law how made known to be Law Gen. 17. 10. Another division of Lawes A Fundamentall Law what Difference between Law and Right And between a Law and a Charter Sinne what A Crime what Where no Civill Law is there is 〈◊〉 Crime Ignorance of the Law of Nature excuseth no man Ignorance of the Civill Law excuseth sometimes Ignorance of the Soveraign excuseth not Ignorance of the Penalty excuseth not Punishments declared before the Fact excuse from greater punishments after it Nothing can be made a Crime by a Law made after the Fact False Principles of Right and Wrong causes of Crime False Teachers mis-interpreting the Law of Nature And false Inferences from true 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Teachers By their Passions Presumption of Riches And FrieÌ„ds Wisedome Hatred Lust Ambition Covetousnesse causes of Crime Fear sometimes cause of Crime as when the danger is neither present nor corporeall Crimes not equall Totall Excuses Excuses against the Author Preseumption of Power aggravateth Evill Teachers Extenuate
Examples of Impunity Extenuate Praemeditation Aggravateth Tacite approbation of the Soveraign Extenuates Comparison of Crimes from their Effects Laesa Majestas Bribery and False testimony Depeculation Counterfeiting Authority Crimes against private men compared Publique Crimes what The definition of Punishment Right to Punish whence derived Private injuries and revenges no Punishments Nor denyall of preferment Nor pain inflicted without publique hearing Nor pain inflicted by Usurped power Nor pain inflicted without respect to to the future good Naturall evill consequences no Punishments Hurt inflicted if lesse than the benefit of transgressing is not Punishment Where the Punishment is annexed to the Law a greater hurt is not Punishment but 〈◊〉 Hurt inflicted for a fact done before the Law no Punishment The Representative of the Common-wealth Unpunishable Hurt to Revolted Subjects is done by right of War not by way of Punishment Punishments Corporall Capitall Ignominy Imprisonment Exile The Punishment of Innocent Subjects is contrary to the Law of Nature But the Harme done to Innocents in War not so Nor that which is done to declared Rebels Reward is either Salary or Grace Benefits bestowed for fear are not Rewards Salaries Certain and Casuall Dissolution of Common-wealths proceedeth from their Imperfect Institution Want of Absolute power Private Judgement of Good and Evill Erroneous conscience Pretence of Inspiration Subjecting the Soveraign Power to Civill Lawes Attributing of absolute Propriâ—…ty to 〈◊〉 Dividing of the Soveraign Power Imitatioâ—… of Neighbour Natiouâ—… Imitation of the Greâ—…ks and Romans Mixt Government Want of Mony Monopolies and abuses of Publicans Popular men Excessive greatnesse of a â—…own multitude of Corporations Liberty of disputing against Soveraign Power Dissolution of the Common-wealth The Procuration of the Good of the People By Instrâ—…ction Lawes Against the duty of a Soveraign to relinquish any Essentiall Right of Soveraignty Or not to seâ—… the people taught the grounds of them Objection of those that say there are no Principles of Reason for absolute Soveraigâ—…ty Objection from the Incapacity of the vulgar Subjects are to be taught not to affect change of Government Nor adhere against the Soveraign to Popular men Nor to Dispute the Soveraign Power And to have dayes set apart to learn their Duty And to Honour their Parents And to avoyd doing of Injury And to do all this sincerely from the heart The use of Uâ—…iversities Equall â—…xes Publique Charity 〈◊〉 of Idlenesse Goâ—… Laweâ—… whâ—…t Such as are Necessary Such as are Perspicuous Punishments Rewards Counsellours Commanders The scope of the following Chapters Psal. 96 1. Psal. 98. 1. Who are subjects in the kingdome of God A Threefold Word of God Reason Revelation Prophâ—…y A twofold Kingdome of God Naturall and Prophetique The Right of Gods Soveraignty is derived from his Omnipotence Sinne not the cause of all Affliction Psal. 72. ver 1 2 3. Job 38. v. 4. Divine Lawes Honour and Worship what Severall signes of Honour Worship Naturall and Arbitrary Worship Commanded and Free Worship Publique and Private The End of Worship Attributes of Divine Honour Actions that are signes of Divine Honour Publique Worship consisteth in Uniformity All Attributes depend on the Lawes Civill Not all Actions Naturall Punishments The Conclusion of the Second Part. The Word of God delivered by Prophets is the mainprinciple of Christian Politiques Yet is not naturall Reason to be renounced What it is to captivate the Understanding How God speaketh to men By what marks Prophets are known 1 Kings 22. 1 Kings 13. Deut. 13. v. 1 2 3 4 5. Mat. 24. 24. Gal. 1. 8. The marks of a Prophet in the old law Miracles and Doctrin conformable to the law Miracles ceasing Prophets cease and the Scripture supplies their place Of the Books of Holy Scripture Their Antiquity The Pentaâ—… not written by Moses Deut. 31. 9. Deut. 31. 26. 2 King 22. 8. 23. 1 2 3. The Book of Joshua written after his time Josh. 4. 9. Josh. 5. 9. Josh. 7. 26. The Booke of Judges and Ruth written long after the Captivity The like of the Bookes of Samuel 2 Sam. 6. 4. The Books of the Kings and the Chronicles Ezra and Nehemiah Esther Job The Psalter The Proverbs Ecclesiastes and the Canticles The Prophets The New Testament Their Scope The question of the Authority of the Scriptures stated Their Authority and Interpretation Body and Spirit how taken in the Scripture The Spirit of God taken in the Scripture sometimes for a Wind or Breath Secondly for extraordinary gifts of the Vnderstanding Thirdly for extraordinary Affections Fourthly for the gift of Prediction by Dreams and Visions Fifâ—…ly for Life Sixtly for a subordination to authority Seventhly for Aeriall Bodies Angel what Inspiration what The Kingdom of God taken by Divines Metaphorically but in the Scriptures properly The originall of the Kingdome of God That the Kingdome of God is properly his Civill Soveraignty over a peculiar people by pact Holy what Sacred what Degrees of Sanctity Sacrament Word what The words spoken by God and concerning God both are called God 's Word in Scripture 1 Tim. 4. 1. The Word of God metaphorically used first for the Decrees and Power of God Secondly for the effect of his Word Acts 1. 4. Luke 24. 49. Thirdly for the words of reason and equity Divers acceptions of the word Prophet Praediction of future contingents not alwaies Prophecy The manner how God hath spoken to the Prophets To the Extraordinary Prophets of the Old Testament he spake by Dreams or Visions To Prophets of perpetuall Calling and Supreme God spake in the Old Testament from the Mercy Seat in a manner not expressed in the Scripture To Prophets of perpetuall Calling but subordinate God spake by the Spirit â—…od sometimes also spake by Lots Every man ought to examine the probability of a pretended Prophets Calling All prophecy but of the Soveraign Prophet is to be examined by every Subject A Miracle is a work that causeth Admiration And must therefore be rare and whereof there is no naturall cause known That which seemeth a Miracle to one man may seem otherwise to another The End of Miracles Exo. 4. 1 c. The definition of a Miracle Exod. 7. 11. Exod. 7. 22. Exod. 8. 7. That men are apt to be deceived by false Miracles Cautions against the Imposture of Miracles The place of Adams Eternity if he had not sinned had been the terrestiall Paradise Gen. 3. 22. Texts concerning the place of Life Eternall for Beleevers Ascension into heaven The place after Judgment of those who were never in the Kingdome of God 〈◊〉 having been in are cast out Tartarus The congregation of Giants Lake of Fire Vtter Darknesse Gehenna and Tophet Of the literall sense of the Scripture concerning Hell Satan Devill not Proper names but Appellatives Torments of Hell Apoc. 20. 13 14. The Joyes of Life Eternall and Salvation the same thing Salvation from Sin and from Misery all one The Place of Eternall Salvation 2 Pet. 2. 5. 2 Pet. 3. 13.
to be without terrour The name of Fulmen Excommunicationis that is the Thunderbolt of Excommunication proceeded from an imagination of the Bishop of Rome which first used it that he was King of Kings as the Heathen made Jupiter King of the Gods and assigned him in their Poems and Pictures a Thunderbolt wherewith to subdue and punish the Giants that should dare to deny his power Which imagination was grounded on two errours one that the Kingdome of Christ is of this world contrary to our Saviours owne words My Kingdome is not of this world the other that hee is Christs Vicar not onely over his owne Subjects but over all the Christians of the World whereof there is no ground in Scripture and the contrary shall bee proved in its due place St. Paul coming to Thessalonica where was a Synagogue of the Jews Acts 17. 2 3. As his manner was went in unto them and three Sabbath dayes reasoned with them out of the Scriptures Opening and alledging that Christ must needs have suffered and râ—…sen again from the dead and that this Iesus whom he preached was the Christ. The Scriptures here mentioned were the Scriptures of the Jews that is the Old Testament The men to whom he was to prove that Jesus was the Christ and risen again from the dead were also Jews and did beleeve already that they were the Word of God Hereupon as it is verse 4. some of them beleeved and as it is in the 5. ver some beleeved not What was the reason when they all beleeved the Scripture that they did not all beleeve alike but that some approved others disapproved the Interpretation of St. Paul that cited them and every one Interpreted them to himself It was this S. Paul came to them without any Legall Commission and in the manner of one that would not Command but Perswade which he must needs do either by Miracles as Moses did to the Israelites in Egypt that they might see his Authority in Gods works or by Reasoning from the already received Scripture that they might see the truth of his doctrine in Gods Word But whosoever perswadeth by reasoning from principles written maketh him to whom hee speaketh Judge both of the meaning of those principles and also of the force of his inferences upon them If these Jews of Thessalonica were not who else was the Judge of what S. Paul alledgâ—…d out of Scripture If S. Paul what needed he to quote any places to prove his doctrine It had been enough to have said I find it so in Scripture that is to say in your Laws of which I am Interpreter as sent by Christ. The Interpreter therefore of the Scripture to whose Interpretation the Jews of Thessalonica were bound to stand could be none every one might beleeve or not beleeve according as the Allegations seemed to himselfe to be agreeable or not agreeable to the meaning of the places alledged And generally in all cases of the world hee that pretendeth any proofe maketh Judge of his proofe him to whom he addresseth his speech And as to the case of the Jews in particular they were bound by expresse words Deut. 17. to receive the determination of all hard questions from the Priests and Judges of Israel for the time being But this is to bee understood of the Jews that were yet unconverted For the conversion of the Gentiles there was no use of alledging the Scriptures which they beleeved not The Apostles therefore laboured by Reason to confute their Idolatry and that done to perswade them to the faith of Christ by their testimony of his Life and Resurrection So that there could not yet bee any controversie concerning the authority to Interpret Scripture seeing no man was obliged during his infidelity to follow any mans Interpretation of any Scripture except his Soveraigns Interpretation of the Laws of his countrey Let us now consider the Conversion it sâ—…lf and see what there was therein that could be cause of such an obligation Men were converted to no other thing then to the Beleef of that which the Apostles preached And the Apostles preached nothing but that Jesus was the Christ that is to say the King that was to save them and reign over them eternally in the world to come and consequently that hee was not dead but risen again from the dead and gone up into Heaven and should come again one day to jâ—…dg the world which also should rise again to be judged and reward every man according to his works None of them preached that himselfe or any other Apostle was such an Interpreter of the Scripture as all that became Christians ought to take their Interpretation for Law For to Interpret the Laws is part of the Administration of a present Kingdome which the Apostles had not They prayed then and all other Pastors ever since Let thy Kingdome come and exhorted their Converts to obey their then Ethnique Princes The New Testament was not yet published in one Body Every of the Evangelists was Interpreter of his own Gospel and every Apostle of his own Epistle And of the Old Testament our Saviour himselfe saith to the Jews Iohn 5. 39. Search the Scriptures for in them yee thinke to have eternall life and they are they that testifie of me If hee had not meant they should Interpret them hee would not have bidden them take thence the proof of his being the Christ he would either have Interpreted them himselfe or referred them to the Interpretation of the Priests When a difficulty arose the Apostles and Elders of the Church assembled themselves together and determined what should bee preached and taught and how they should Interpret the Scriptures to the People but took not from the People the liberty to read and Interpret them to themselves The Apostles sent divers Letters to the Churches and other Writings for their instruction which had been in vain if they had not allowed them to Interpret that is to consider the meaning of them And as it was in the Apostles time it must be till such time as there should be Pastors that could authorise an Interpreter whose Interpretation should generally be stood to But that could not be till Kings were Pastors or Pastors Kings There be two senses wherein a Writing may be said to be Canonicall for Canon signifieth a Rule and a Rule is a Precept by which a man is guided and directed in any action whatsoever Such Precepts though given by a Teacher to his Disciple or a Counsellor to his friend without power to Compell him to observe them are neverthelesse Canons because they are Rules But when they are given by one whom he that receiveth them is bound to obey then are those Canons not onely Rules but Laws The question therefore here is of the Power to make the Scriptures which are the Rules of Christian Faith Laws That part of the Scripture which was first Law was the Ten Commandements written in two Tables of Stone
ordained And therefore in all Common-wealths of the Heathen the Soveraigns have had the name of Pastors of the People because there was no Subject that could lawfully Teach the people but by their permission and authority This Right of the Heathen Kings cannot bee thought taken from them by their conversion to the Faith of Christ who never ordained that Kings for beleeving in him should be deposed that is subjected to any but himself or which is all one be deprived of the power necessary for the conservation of Peace amongst their Subjects and for their defence against foraign Enemies And therefore Christian Kings are still the Supreme Pastors of their people and have power to ordain what Pastors they please to teach the Church that is to teach the People committed to their charge Again let the right of choosing them be as before the conversion of Kings in the Church for so it was in the time of the Apostles themselves as hath been shewn already in this chapter even so also the Right will be in the Civill Soveraign Christian. For in that he is a Christian he allowes the Teaching and in that he is the Soveraign which is as much as to say the Church by Representation the Teachers hee elects are elected by the Church And when an Assembly of Christians choose their Pastor in a Christian Common-wealth it is the Soveraign that electeth him because t is done by his Authority In the same manner as when a Town choose their Maior it is the act of him that hath the Soveraign Power For every act done is the act of him without whose consent it is invalid And therefore whatsoever examples may be drawn out of History concerning the Election of Pastors by the People or by the Clergy they are no arguments against the Right of any Civill Soveraign because they that elected them did it by his Authority Seeing then in every Christian Common-wealth the Civill Soveraign is the Supreme Pastor to whose charge the whole flock of his Subjects is committed and consequently that it is by his authority that all other Pastors are made and have power to teach and performe all other Pastorall offices it followeth also that it is from the Civill Soveraign that all other Pastors derive their right of Teaching Preaching and other functions pertaining to that Office and that they are but his Ministers in the same manner as the Magistrates of Towns Judges in Courts of Justice and Commanders of Armies are all but Ministers of him that is the Magistrate of the whole Common-wealth Judge of all Causes and Commander of the whole Militia which is alwaies the Civill Soveraign And the reason hereof is not because they that Teach but because they that are to Learn are his Subjects For let it be supposed that a Christian King commit the Authority of Ordaining Pastors in his Dominions to another King as divers Christian Kings allow that power to the Pope he doth not thereby constitute a Pastor over himself nor a Soveraign Pastor over his People for that were to deprive himself of the Civill Power which depending on the opinion men have of their Duty to him and the fear they have of Punishment in another world would depend also on the skill and loyalty of Doctors who are no lesse subject not only to Ambition but also to Ignorance than any other sort of men So that where a stranger hath authority to appoint Teachers it is given him by the Soveraign in whose Dominions he teacheth Christian Doctors are our Schoolmasters to Christianity But Kings are Fathers of Families and may receive Schoolmasters for their Subjects from the recommendation of a stranger but not from the command especially when the ill teaching them shall redound to the great and manifest profit of him that recommends them nor can they be obliged to retain them longer than it is for the Publique good the care of which they stand so long charged withall as they retain any other essentiall Right of the Soveraignty If a man therefore should ask a Pastor in the execution of his Office as the chief Priests and Elders of the people Mat. 21. 23. asked our Saviour By what authority dost thou these things and who gave thee this authority he can make no other just Answer but that he doth it by the Authority of the Common-wealth given him by the King or Assembly that representeth it All Pastors except the Supreme execute their charges in the Right that is by the Authority of the Civill Soveraign that is Iure Civili But the King and every other Soveraign executeth his Office of Supreme Pastor by immediate Authority from God that is to say in Gods Right or Iure Divino And therefore none but Kings can put into their Titles a mark of their submission to God onely Dei gratiâ Rex c. Bishops ought to say in the beginning of their Mandates By the favour of the Kings Majesty Bishop of such a Diocesse or as Civill Ministers In his Majesties Name For in saying Divinâ providentiâ which is the same with Dei gratiâ though disguised they deny to have received their authority from the Civill State and sliely slip off the Collar of their Civill Subjection contrary to the unity and defence of the Common-wealth But if every Christian Soveraign be the Supreme Pastor of his own Subjects it seemeth that he hath also the Authority not only to Preach which perhaps no man will deny but also to Baptize and to Administer the Sacrament of the Lords Supper and to Consecrate both Temples and Pastors to Gods service which most men deny partly because they use not to do it and partly because the Administration of Sacraments and Consecration of Persons and Places to holy uses requireth the Imposition of such mens hands as by the like Imposition successively from the time of the Apostles have been ordained to the like Ministery For proof therefore that Christian Kings have power to Baptize and to Consecrate I am to render a reason both why they use not to doe it and how without the ordinary ceremony of Imposition of hands they are made capable of doing it when they will There is no doubt but any King in case he were skilfull in the Sciences might by the same Right of his Office read Lectures of them himself by which he authorizeth others to read them in the Universities Neverthelesse because the care of the summe of the businesse of the Common-wealth taketh up his whole time it were not convenient for him to apply himself in Person to that particular A King may also if he please sit in Judgment to hear and determine all manner of Causes as well as give others authority to doe it in his name but that the charge that lyeth upon him of Command and Government constrain him to bee continually at the Helm and to commit the Ministeriall Offices to others under him In the like manner our Saviour who surely had