above their understanding than to define his Nature by Spirit Incorporeall and then confesse their definition to be unintelligible or if they give him such a title it is not Dogmatically with intention to make the Divine Nature understood but Piously to honour him with attributes of significations as remote as they can from the grossenesse of Bodies Visible Then for the way by which they think these Invisible Agents wrought their effects that is to say what immediate causes they used in bringing things to passe men that know not what it is that we call causing that is almost all men have no other rule to guesse by but by observing and remembring what they have seen to precede the like effect at some other time or times before without seeing between the antecedent and subsequent Event any dependance or connexion at all And therefore from the like things past they expect the like things to come and hope for good or evill luck superstitiously from things that have no part at all in the causing of it As the Athenians did for their war at Lepanto demand another Phormio The Pompeian faction for their warre in Afrique another Scipio and others have done in divers other occasions since In like manner they attribute their fortune to a stander by to a lucky or unlucky place to words spoken especially if the name of God be amongst them as Charming and Conjuring the Leiturgy of Witches insomuch as to believe they have power to turn a stone into bread bread into a man or any thing into any thing Thirdly for the worship which naturally men exhibite to Powers invisible it can be no other but such expressions of their reverence as they would use towards men Gifts Petitions Thanks Submission of Body Considerate Addresses sober Behaviour premeditated Words Swearing that is assuring one another of their promises by invoking them Beyond that reason suggesteth nothing but leaves them either to rest there or for further ceremonies to rely on those they believe to be wiser than themselves Lastly concerning how these Invisible Powers declare to men the things which shall hereafter come to passe especially concerning their good or evill fortune in generall or good or ill successe in any particular undertaking men are naturally at a stand save that using to conjecture of the time to come by the time past they are very apt not onely to take casuall things after one or two encounters for Prognostiques of the like encounter ever after but also to believe the like Prognostiques from other men of whom they have once conceived a good opinion And in these foure things Opinion of Ghosts Ignorance of second causes Devotion towards what men fear and Taking of things Casuall for Prognostiques consisteth the Naturall seed of Religion which by reason of the different Fancies Judgements and Passions of severall men hath grown up into ceremonies so different that those which are used by one man are for the most part ridiculous to another For these seeds have received culture from two sorts of men One sort have been they that have nourished and ordered them according to their own invention The other have done it by Gods commandement and direction but both sorts have done it with a purpose to make those men that relyed on them the more apt to Obedience Lawes Peace Charity and civill Society So that the Religion of the former sort is a part of humane Politiques and teacheth part of the duty which Earthly Kings require of their Subjects And the Religion of the later sort is Divine Politiques and containeth Precepts to those that have yeelded themselves subjects in the Kingdome of God Of the former sort were all the founders of Common-wealths and the Law-givers of the Gentiles Of the later sort were Abraham Moses and our Blessed Saviour by whom have been derived unto us the Lawes of the Kingdome of God And for that part of Religion which consisteth in opinions concerning the nature of Powers Invisible there is almost nothing that has a name that has not been esteemed amongst the Gentiles in one place or another a God or Divell or by their Poets feigned to be inanimated inhabited or possessed by some Spirit or other The unformed matter of the World was a God by the name of Chaos The Heaven the Ocean the Planets the Fire the Earth the Winds were so many Gods Men Women a Bird a Crocodile a Calf a Dogge a Snake an Onion a Leeke Deâ—…fied Besides that they filled almost all places with spirits called Daemons the plains with Pan and Panises or Satyres the Woods with Fawnes and Nymphs the Sea with Tritons and other Nymphs every River and Fountayn with a Ghost of his name and with Nymphs every house with its Lares or Familiars every man with his Genius Hell with Ghosts and spirituall Officers as Charon Cerberus and the Furies and in the night time all places with Larvae Lemures Ghosts of men deceased and a whole kingdome of Fayries and Bugbears They have also ascribed Divinity and built Temples to meer Accidenâ—…s and Qualities such as are Time Night Day Peace Concord Love Contention Vertue Honour Health Rust Fever and the like which when they prayed for or against they prayed to as if there were Ghosts of those names hanging over their heads and letting fall or withholding that Good or Evill for or against which they prayed They invoked also their own Wit by the name of Muses their own Ignorance by the name of Fortune their own Lust by the name of Cupid their own Rage by the name Furies their own privy members by the name of Priapus and attributed their pollutions to â—…ncubi and Succubae insomuch as there was nothing which a Poet could introduce as a person in his Poem which they did not make either a God or a Divel The same authors of the Religion of the Gentiles observing the second ground for Religion which is mens Ignorance of causes and thereby their aptnesse to attribute their fortune to causes on which there was no dependance at all apparent took occasion to obtrude on their ignorance in stead of second causes a kind of second and ministeriall Gods ascribing the cause of Foecundity to Venus the cause of Arts to Apolla of Subtilty and Craft to Mercury of Tempests and stormes to Aeolus and of other effects to other Gods insomuch as there was amongst the Heathen almost as great variety of Gods as of businesse And to the Worship which naturally men conceived fit to bee used towards their Gods namely Oblations Prayers Thanks and the rest formerly named the same Legislators of the Gentiles have added their Images both in Picture and Sculpture that the more ignorant sort that is to say the most part or generality of the people thinking the Gods for whose representation they were made were really included and as it were housed within them might so much the more stand in feare of them And endowed them
ought to attribute to him Existence For no man can have the will to honour that which he thinks not to have any Beeing Secondly that those Philosophers who sayd the World or the Soule of the World was God spake unworthily of him and denyed his Existence For by God is understood the cause of the World and to say the World is God is to say there is no cause of it that is no God Thirdly to say the World was not Created but Eternall seeing that which is Eternall has no cause is to deny there is a God Fourthly that they who attributing as they think Ease to God take from him the care of Man-kind take from him his Honour for it takes away mens love and fear of him which is the root of Honour Fifthly in those things that signifie Greatnesse and Power to say he is Finite is not to Honour him For it is not a signe of the Will to Honour God to attribute to him lesse than we can and Finite is lesse than we can because to Finite it is easie to adde more Therefore to attribute Figure to him is not Honour for all Figure is Finite Nor to say we conceive and imagine or have an Idea of him in our mind for whatsoever we conceive is Finite Nor to attribute to him Parts or Totality which are the Attributes onely of things Finite Nor to say he is in this or that Place for whatsoever is in Place is bounded and Finite Nor that he is Moved or Resteth for both these Attributes ascribe to him Place Nor that there be more Gods than one because it implies them all Finite for there cannot be more than one Infinite Nor to ascribe to him unlesse Metaphorically meaning not the Passion but the Effect Passions that partake of Griefe as Repentance Anger Mercy or of Want as Appetite Hope Desire or of any Passive faculty For Passion is Power limited by somewhat else And therefore when we ascribe to God a Will it is not to be understood as that of Man for a Rationall Appetite but as the Power by which he effecteth every thing Likewise when we attribute to him Sight and other acts of Sense as also Knowledge and Understanding which in us is nothing else but a tumult of the mind raised by externall things that presse the organicall parts of mans body For there is no such thing in God and being things that depend on naturall causes cannot be attributed to him Hee that will attribute to God nothing but what is warranted by naturall Reason must either use such Negative Attributes as Infinite Eternall Incomprehensible or Superlatives as Most High most Great and the like or Indefinite as Good Just Holy Creator and in such sense as if he meant not to declare what he is for that were to circumscribe him within the limits of our Fancy but how much wee admire him and how ready we would be to obey him which is a signe of Humility and of a Will to honour him as much as we can For there is but one Name to signifie our Conception of his Nature and that is I AM and but one Name of his Relation to us and that is God in which is contained Father King and Lord. Concerning the actions of Divine Worship it is a most generall Precept of Reason that they be signes of the Intention to Honour God such as are First Prayers For not the Carvers when they made Images were thought to make them Gods but the People that Prayed to them Secondly Thanksgiving which differeth from Prayer in Divine Worship no otherwise than that Prayers precede and Thanks succeed the benefit the end both of the one and the other being to acknowledge God for Author of all benefits as well past as future Thirdly Gifts that is to say Sacrifices and Oblations if they be of the best are signes of Honour for they are Thanksgivings Fourthly Not to swear by any but God is naturally a signe of Honour for it is a confession that God onely knoweth the heart and that no mans wit or strength can protect a man against Gods vengeance on the perjured Fifthly it is a part of Rationall Worship to speak Considerately of God for it argues a Fear of him and Fear is a confession of his Power Hence followeth That the name of God is not to be used rashly and to no purpose for that is as much as in Vain And it is to no purpose unlesse it be by way of Oath and by order of the Common-wealth to make Judgements certain or between Common-wealths to avoyd Warre And that disputing of Gods nature is contrary to his Honour For it is supposed that in this naturall Kingdome of God there is no other way to know any thing but by naturall Reason that is from the Principles of naturall Science which are so farre from teaching us any thing of Gods nature as they cannot teach us our own nature nor the nature of the smallest creature living And therefore when men out of the Principlès of naturall Reason dispute of the Attributes of God they but dishonour him For in the Attributes which we give to God we are not to consider the signification of Philosophicall Truth but the signification of Pious Intention to do him the greatest Honour we are able From the want of which consideration have proceeded the volumes of disputation about the Nature of God that tend not to his Honour but to the honour of our own wits and learning and are nothing else but inconsiderate and vain abuses of his Sacred Name Sixthly in Prayers Thanksgiving Offerings and Sacrifices it is a Dictate of naturall Reason that they be every one in his kind the best and most significant of Honour As for example that Prayers and Thanksgiving be made in Words and Phrases not sudden nor light nor Plebeian but beautifull and well composed For else we do not God as much honour as we can And therefore the Heathens did absurdly to worship Images for Gods But their doing it in Verse and with Musick both of Voyce and Instruments was reasonable Also that the Beasts they offered in sacrifice and the Gifts they offered and their actions in Worshipping were full of submission and commemorative of benefits received was according to reason as proceeding from an intention to honour him Seventhly Reason directeth not onely to worship God in Secret but also and especially in Publique and in the sight of men For without that that which in honour is most acceptable the procuring others to honour him is lost Lastly Obedience to his Lawes that is in this case to the Lawes of Nature is the greatest worship of all For as Obedience is more acceptable to God than Sacrifice so also to set light by his Commandements is the greatest of all contumelies And these are the Lawes of that Divine Worship which naturall Reason dictateth to private men But seeing a Common-wealth is but one Person it ought also to exhibite
the Falling Sicknesse or that spoke any thing which they for want of understanding thought absurd As also of an Unclean person in a notorious degree they used to say he had an Unclean Spirit of a Dumbe man that he had a Dumbe Devill and of Iohn Baptist Math. 11. 18. for the singularity of his fasting that he had a Devill and of our Saviour because he said hee that keepeth his sayings should not see Death in aeternum Now we know thou hast a Devill Abraham is dead and the Prophets are dead And again because he said Iohn 7. 20. They went about to kill him the people answered Thou hast a Devill who goeth about to kill thee Whereby it is manifest that the Jewes had the same opinions concerning Phantasmes namely that they were not Phantasmes that is Idols of the braine but things reall and independent on the Fancy Which doctrine if it be not true why may some say did not our Saviour contradict it and teach the contrary nay why does he use on diverse occasions such forms of speech as seem to confirm it To this I answer that first where Christ saith A spirit hath not flesh and bone though hee shew that there be Spirits yet hee denies not that they are Bodies And where St. Paul saies We shall rise spirituall Bodies he acknowledgeth the nature of Spirits but that they are Bodily Spirits which is not difficult to understand For Air and many other things are Bodies though not Flesh and Bone or any other grosse body to bee discerned by the eye But when our Saviour speaketh to the Devill and commandeth him to go out of a man if by the Devill be meant a Disease as Phrenesy or Lunacy or a corporeal Spirit is not the speech improper can Diseases heare or can there be a corporeall Spirit in a Body of Flesh and Bone full already of vitall and animall Spirits Are there not therefore Spirits that neither have Bodies nor are meer Imaginations To the first I answer that the addressing of our Saviours command to the Madnesse or Lunacy he cureth is no more improper than was his rebuking of the Fever or of the Wind and Sea for neither do these hear Or than was the command of God to the Light to the Firmament to the Sunne and Starres when he commanded them to bee for they could not heare before they had a beeing But those speeches are not improper because they signifie the power of Gods Word no more therefore is it improper to command Madnesse or Lunacy under the appellation of Devils by which they were then commonly understood to depart out of a mans body To the second concerning their being Incorporeall I have not yet observed any place of Scripture from whence it can be gathered that any man was ever possessed with any other Corporeall Spirit but that of his owne by which his body is naturally moved Our Saviour immediately after the Holy Ghost descended upon him in the form of a Dove is said by St. Matthew Chapt. 4. 1. to have been led up by the Spirit into the Wildernesse and the same is recited Luke 4. 1. in these words Iesus being full of the Holy Ghost was led in the Spirit into the Wildernesse Whereby it is evident that by Spirit there is meant the Holy Ghost This cannot be interpreted for a Possession For Christ and the Holy Ghost are but one and the same substance which is no possession of one substance or body by another And whereas in the verses following he is said to have been taken up by the Devill into the Holy City and set upon a pinnacle of the Temple shall we conclude thence that hee was possessed of the Devill or carryed thither by violence And again carryed thence by the Devill into an exceeding high mountain who shewed him thence all the Kingdomes of the world Wherein wee are not to beleeve he was either possessed or forced by the Devill nor that any Mountaine is high enough according to the literall sense to shew him one whole Hemisphere What then can be the meaning of this place other than that he went of himself into the Wildernesse and that this carrying of him up and down from the Wildernesse to the City and from thence into a Mountain was a Vision Conformable whereunto is also the phrase of St. Luke that hee was led into the Wildernesse not by but in the Spirit whereas concerning His being Taken up into the Mountaine and unto the Pinnacle of the Temple hee speaketh as St. Matthew doth Which suiteth with the nature of a Vision Again where St. Luke sayes of Judas Iscariot that Satan entred into him and thereupon that he went and communed with the Chief Priests and Captaines how he might betray Christ unto them it may be answered that by the Entring of Satan that is the Enemy into him is meant the hostile and traiterours intention of selling his Lord and Master For as by the Holy Ghost is frequently in Scripture understood the Graces and good Inclinations given by the Holy Ghost so by the Entring of Satan may bee understood the wicked Cogitations and Designes of the Adversaries of Christ and his Disciples For as it is hard to say that the Devill was entred into Judas before he had any such hostile designe so it is impertinent to say he was first Christs Enemy in his heart and that the Devill entred into him afterwards Therefore the Entring of Satan and his Wicked Purpose was one and the same thing But if there be no Immateriall Spirit nor any Possession of mens bodies by any Spirit Corporeall it may again be asked why our Saviour and his Apostles did not teach the People so and in such cleer words as they might no more doubt thereof But such questions as these are more curious than necessary for a Christian mans Salvation Men may as well aske why Christ that could have given to all men Faith Piety and all manner of morall Vertues gave it to some onely and not to all and why he left the search of naturall Causes and Sciences to the naturall Reason and Industry of men and did not reveal it to all or any man supernaturally and many other such questions Of which neverthelesse there may be alledged probable and pious reasons For as God when he brought the Israelites into the Land of Promise did not secure them therein by subduing all the Nations round about them but left many of them as thornes in their sides to awaken from time to time their Piety and Industry so our Saviour in conducting us toward his heavenly Kingdome did not destroy all the difficulties of Naturall Questions but left them to exercise our Industry and Reason the Scope of his preaching being onely to shew us this plain and direct way to Salvation namely the beleef of this Article that he was the Christ the Son of the living God sent into the world to sacrifice himselfe for our Sins and
Redemption Church the Lords house Ecclesia properly what Acts 19. 39. In what sense the Church is one Person Church defined A Christian Common-wealth and a Church all one The Soveraign Rights of Abraham Abraham had the sole power of ordering the Religion of his own people No pretence of Private Spirit against the Religion of Abraham Abraham sole Judge and Interpreter of what God spake The authority of Moses whereon grounded John 5. 31. Moses was under God Soveraign of the Jews all his own time though Aaron had the Priesthood All spirits were subordinate to the spirit of Moses After Moses the Soveraignty was in the High Priest Of the Soveraign power between the time of Joshua and of Saul Of the Rights of the Kings of Israel The practice of Supremacy in Religion was not in the time of the Kings according to the Right thereof 2 Chro. 19. 2. After the Captivity the Iews â—…ad no setled Common-wealth Three parts of the Office of Christ. His Office as a Redeemer Christs Kingdome not of this woâ—…ld The End of Christs comming was to renew the Covenant of the Kingdome of God and to perswade the Elect to imbrace it which was the second part of his Office The preaching of Christ not contrary to the then law of the Iews nor of Caesar. The third part of his Office was to be King under his Father of the Elect. Christs authority in the Kingdome of God subordinate to that of his Father One and the same God is the Person represented by Moses and by Christ. Of the Holy Spirit that fel on the Apostles Of the Trinity The Power Ecclesiasticall is but the power to teach An argument thereof the Power of Christ himself From the name of Regeneration From the compariâ—…on of it with Fishing Leaven Seed Fâ—…om the nature of 〈◊〉 2 Cor. 1. 24. From the Authority Christ hath lâ—…st to Civill Princes What Christians may do to avoid persecution Of Martyrs Argument from the points of their Commission To Preach And Teach To Baptize And to Forgive and Retain Sinnes Mat. 18. 15 16 17. Of Excommunication The use of Excommunication without Civill Power Acts 9. 2. Of no effect upon an Apostate But upon the faithfull only For what fault lyeth Excommunication Ofpersons liaable to Excommunication 1 Sam. 8. Of the Interpreter of the Scriptures before Civil Soveraigns became Christians Of the Power to make Scripture Law Of the Ten Commandements Of the Iudiciall and Leviticall Law The Second Law * 1 Kings 14 26. The Old Testament when made Canonicall The New Testament began to be Canonicall under Christian Soveraigns Of the Power of Councells to make the Scriptures Law John 3. 36. John 3. 18. Of the Right of constituting Ecclesiasticall Officers in the time of the Apostles Matthias made Apostle by the Congregation Paul and Barnabas made Apostles by the Church of Antioch What Offices in the Church are Magisteriall Ordination of Teachers Ministers of the Church what And how chosen Of Ecclesiasticall Revenue under the Law of Moses In our Saviours time and after Mat. 10. 9 10. * Acts 4. 34. The Ministers of the Gospel lived on the Benevolence of their flocks 1 Cor. 9. 13. That the Civill Soveraign being a Christian hath the Right of appointing Pastors The Pastor all Authority of Soveraigns only is de Jure Divino that of other Pastors is Jure Civili Christian Kings have Power to execute all manner of Pastoral function * John 4. 2. * 1 Cor. 1. 14 16. * 1 Câ—…r 1. 17. The Civill Soveraigne if a Christian is head of the Church in his own Dominions Cardinal Bellarmines Books De Summo Pontifice considered The first book The second Book The third Book * Dan. 9. 27. The fourth Book Texts for the Infaâ—…ibility of the Popes Judgement in points of Faith Texts for the same in point of Manners The question of Superiority between the Pope and other Bishops Of the Popes â—…mporall Power The difficulty of obeying God and Man both at once Is none to them that distinguish between what is and what is not Necessary to Salvation All that is Necessary to Salvation is contained in Faith and Obedience What Obedience is Necessary And to what Laws In the Faith of a Christian who is the Person beleeved The causes of Christian Faith Faith comes by Hearing The onely Necessary Article of Christian Faith Proved from the Scope of the Evangelists From the Sermons of the Apostles From the Easinesse of the Doctrine From formall â—…ud cleer texts From that it is the Foundation of all other Articles 2 Pet. 3. v. 7 10 12. In what sense other Articles may be called Nâ—…cessary That Faith and Obedience are both of them Necessary to Salvation What each of them contributes thereunto Obedience to God and to the Civill Soveraign not inconsistent whether Christian Or Infidel The Kingdom of Darknesse what * Eph. 6. 12. * Mat. 12. 26. * Mat. 9. 34. * Eph. 2. 2. * Joh. 16. 11. The Church not yet fully â—…reed of Darknesse Four Causes of Spirituall Darknesse Errors from misinterpreting the Scriptures concerning the Kingdome of God As that the Kingdome of God is the present Church And that the Pope is his Vicar generall And that the Pastors are the Clergy Error from mistaking Consecration for Conjuration Incantation in the Ceremonies of Baptisme And in Marriage in Visitation of the Sick and in Consecration of Places Errors from mistaking Eternall Life and Everlasting Death As the Doctrine of Purgatory and Exorcismes and Invocation of Saints The Texts alledged for the Doctrines aforementioned have been answered before Answer to the text on which Beza inferreth that the Kingdome of Christ began at the Resurrection Explication of the Place in Mark 9. 1. Abuse of some other texts in defence of the Power of the Pope The manner of Consecrations in the Scripture was without Exorcisms The immortality of mans Soule not proved by Scripture to be of Nature but of Grace Eternall Torments what Answer of the Texts alledged for Purgatory Places of the New Testament for Purgatory answered Baptisme for the Dead how understood The Originall of Daemonclogy What were the Daemons of the Ancients How that Doctrine was spread How far received by the Jews John 8. 52. Why our Saviour controlled it not The Scriptures doe not teach that Spirits are Incorporeall The Power of Casting out Devills not the same it was in the Primitive Church Another relique of Gentilisme Worshipping of Images left in the Church not brought into it Answer to certain seeming texts for Images What is Worship Distinction between Divine and Civill Worship An Image what Phantasmes Fictions Materiall Images Idolatry what Scandalous worship of Images Answer 〈◊〉 the Argument from the Cherubins and Brazen Serpent * Exod. 32. 2. * Gen. 31. 30. Painting of Fancies no Idolatry but abusing them to Religious Worship is How Idolatry was left in the Church Canonizing of Saints The name of Pontifex Procession of Images Wax Candles and Torches lighted What Philosophy is Prudence no part of Philosophy No false Doctrine is part of Philosophy No more is Revelation supernaturall Nor learning taken upon credit of Authors Of the Beginnings and Progresse of Philosophy Of the Schools of Philosophy amongst the Athenians Of the Schools of the Jews The Schoole of the Graecians unprofitable The Schools of the Jews unprofitable University what it is Errors brought into Religion from Aristotles Metaphysiques Errors concerning Abstract Essences Nunc-stans One Body in many places and many Bodies in one place at once Absurdities in naturall Philosopy as Gravity the Cause of Heavinesse Quantity put into Body already made Powring in of Soules Ubiquity of Apparition Will the Cause of Willing Ignorance an occult Cause One makes the things incongruent another the Incongruity Private Appetite the rule of Publique good And that lawfull Marriage is Unchastity And that all Government but Popular is Tyranny That not Men but Law governs Laws over the Conscience Private Interpretation of Law Language of Schoole-Divines Errors from Tradition Suppression of Reason He that receiveth Benefit by a Fact is presumed to be the Author That the â—…hurch Militant is the Kingdome of God was first taught by the Church of Rome And maintained also by the Presbytery Infallibility Subjection of Bishops Exemptions of the Clergy The names of Saceâ—…dotes and Sacriâ—… The Sacramentation of Marriage The single life of Priests Auricular Confession Canonization of Saints and declaring of Martyrs Transubstantiation Pennance Absolution Purgatory Indulgences Externall works Daemonology and Exorcism School-Divinity The Authors of spirituall Darknesse who they be Comparison of the Papacy with the Kingdome of Fayries
summs of all the bills of expence into one sum and not regarding how each bill is summed up by those that give them in account nor what it is he payes for he advantages himself no more than if he allowed the account in grosse trusting to every of the accountants skill and honesty so also in Reasoning of all other things he that takes up conclusions on the trust of Authors and doth not fetch them from the first Items in every Reckoning which are the significations of names settled by definitions loses his labour and does not know any thing but onely beleeveth When a man reckons without the use of words which may be done in particular things as when upon the sight of any one thing wee conjecture what was likely to have preceded or is likely to follow upon it if that which he thought likely to follow followes not or that which he thought likely to have preceded it hath not preceded it this is called ERROR to which even the most prudent men are subject But when we Reason in Words of generall signification and fall upon a generall inference which is false though it be commonly called Error it is indeed an ABSURDITY or senslesse Speech For Error is but a deception in presuming that somewhat is past or to come of which though it were not past or not to come yet there was no impossibility discoverable But when we make a generall assertion unlesse it be a true one the possibility of it is unconceivable And words whereby we conceive nothing but the sound are those we call Absurd Insignificant and Non-sense And therefore if a man should talk to me of a round Quadrangle or accidents of Bread in Cheese or Immateriall Substances or of A free Subject A free-will or any Free but free from being hindred by opposition I should not say he were in an Errour but that his words were without meaning that is to say Absurd I have said before in the second chapter that a Man did excell all other Animals in this faculty that when he conceived any thing whatsoever he was apt to enquire the consequences of it and what effects he could do with it And now I adde this other degree of the same excellence that he can by words reduce the consequences he findes to generall Rules called Theoremes or Aphorismes that is he can Reason or reckon not onely in number but in all other things whereof one may be added unto or substracted from another But this privedge is allayed by another and that is by the priviledge of Absurdity to which no living creature is subject but man onely And of men those are of all most subject to it that professe Philosophy For it is most true that Cicero sayth of them somewhere that there can be nothing so absurd but may be found in the books of Philosophers And the reason is manifest For there is not one of them that begins his ratiocination from the Definitions or Explications of the names they are to use which is a method that hath been used onely in Geometry whose Conclusions have thereby been made indisputable The first cause of Absurd conclusions I ascribe to the want of Method in that they begin not their Ratiocination from Definitions that is from settled significations of their words as if they could cast account without knowing the value of the numerall words one two and three And whereas all bodies enter into account upon divers considerations which I have mentioned in the precedent chapter these considerations being diversly named divers absurdities proceed from the confusion and unfit connexion of their names into assertions And therefore The second cause of Absurd assertions I ascribe to the giving of names of bodies to accidents or of accidents to bodies As they do that say Faith is infused or inspired when nothing can be powred or breathed into any thing but body and that extension is body that phantasmes are spirits c. The third I ascribe to the giving of the names of the accidents of bodies without us to the accidents of our own bodies as they do that say the colour is in the body the sound is in the ayre c. The fourth to the giving of the names of bodies to names or speeches as they do that say that there be things universall that a living creature is Genus or a generall thing c. The fifth to the giving of the names of accidents to names and speeches as they do that say the nature of a thing is its definition a mans command is his will and the like The sixth to the use of Metaphors Tropes and other Rhetoricall figures in stead of words proper For though it be lawfull to say for example in common speech the way goeth or leadeth hither or thither The Proverb sayes this or that whereas wayes cannot go nor Proverbs speak yet in reckoning and seeking of truth such speeches are not to be admitted The seventh to names that signifie nothing but are taken up and learned by rote from the Schooles as hypostatical transubstantiate consubstantiate eternal-Now and the like canting of Schoolemen To him that can avoyd these things it is not easie to fall into any absurdity unlesse it be by the length of an account wherein he may perhaps forget what went before For all men by nature reason alike and well when they have good principles For who is so stupid as both to mistake in Geometry and also to persist in it when another detects his error to him By this it appears that Reason is not as Sense and Memory borne with us nor gotten by Experience onely as Prudence is but attayned by Industry first in apt imposing of Names and secondly by getting a good and orderly Method in proceeding from the Elements which are Names to Assertions made by Connexion of one of them to another and so to Syllogismes which are the Connexions of one Assertion to another till we come to a knowledge of all the Consequences of names appertaining to the subject in hand and that is it men call SCIENCE And whereas Sense and Memory are but knowledge of Fact which is a thing past and irrevocable Science is the knowledge of Consequences and dependance of one fact upon another by which out of that we can presently do we know how to do something else when we will or the like another time Because when we see how any thing comes about upon what causes and by what manner when the like causes come into our power wee see how to make it produce the like effects Children therefore are not endued with Reason at all till they have attained the use of Speech but are called Reasonable Creatures for the possibility apparent of having the use of Reason in time to come And the most part of men though they have the use of Reasoning a little way as in numbring to some degree yet it serves them to little
Idea of him in their mind answerable to his nature For as a man that is born blind hearing men talk of warming themselves by the fire and being brought to warm himself by the same may easily conceive and assure himselfe there is somewhat there which men call Fire and is the cause of the heat he feeles but cannot imagine what it is like nor have an Idea of it in his mind such as they have that see it so also by the visible things of this world and their admirable order a man may conceive there is a cause of them which men call God and yet not have an Idea or Image of him in his mind And they that make little or no enquiry into the naturall causes of things yet from the feare that proceeds from the ignorance it selfe of what it is that hath the power to do them much good or harm are enclined to suppose and feign unto themselves severall kinds of Powers Invisible and to stand in awe of their own imaginations and in time of distresse to invoke them as also in the time of an expected good successe to give them thanks making the creatures of their own fancy their Gods By which means it hath come to passe that from the innumerable variety of Fancy men have created in the world innumerable sorts of Gods And this Feare of things invisible is the naturall Seed of that which every one in himself calleth Religion and in them that worship or feare that Power otherwise than they do Superstition And this seed of Religion having been observed by many some of those that have observed it have been enclined thereby to nourish dresse and forme it into Lawes and to adde to it of their own invention any opinion of the causes of future events by which they thought they should best be able to govern others and make unto themselves the greatest use of their Powers CHAP. XII OF RELIGION SEeing there are no signes nor fruit of Religion but in Man onely there is no cause to doubt but that the seed of Religion is also onely in Man and consisteth in some peculiar quality or at least in some eminent degree therof not to be found in other Living creatures And first it is peculiar to the nature of Man to be inquisitive into the Causes of the Events they see some more some lesse but all men so much as to be curious in the search of the causes of their own good and evill fortune Secondly upon the sight of any thing that hath a Beginning to think also it had a cause which determined the same to begin then when it did rather than sooner or later Thirdly whereas there is no other Felicity of Beasts but the enjoying of their quotidian Food Ease and Lusts as having little or no foresight of the time to come for want of observation and memory of the order consequence and dependance of the things they see Man observeth how one Event hath been produced by another and remembreth in them Antecedence and Consequence And when he cannot assure himselfe of the true causes of things for the causes of good and evill fortune for the most part are invisible he supposes causes of them either such as his own fancy suggesteth or trusteth to the Authority of other men such as he thinks to be his friends and wiser than himselfe The two first make Anxiety For being assured that there be causes of all things that have arrived hitherto or shall arrive hereafter it is impossible for a man who continually endeavoureth to secure himselfe against the evill he feares and procure the good he desireth not to be in a perpetuall solicitude of the time to come So that every man especially those that are over provident are in an estate like to that of Prometheus For as Prometheus which interpreted is The prudent man was bound to the hill Caucasus a place of large prospect where an Eagle feeding on his liver devoured in the day as much as was repayred in the night So that man which looks too far before him in the care of future time hath his heart all the day long gnawed on by feare of death poverty or other calamity and has no repose nor pause of his anxiety but in sleep This perpetuall feare alwayes accompanying mankind in the ignorance of causes as it were in the Dark must needs have for object something And therefore when there is nothing to be seen there is nothing to accuse either of their good or evill fortune but some Power or Agent Invisible In which sense perhaps it was that some of the old Poets said that the Gods were at first created by humane Feare which spoken of the Gods that is to say of the many Gods of the Gentiles is very true But the acknowledging of one God Eternall Infinite and Omnipotent may more easily be derived from the desire men have to know the causes of naturall bodies and their severall vertues and operations than from the feare of what was to be fall them in time to come For he that from any effect hee seeth come to passe should reason to the next and immediate cause thereof and from thence to the cause of that cause and plonge himselfe profoundly in the pursuit of causes shall at last come to this that there must be as even the Heathen Philosophers confessed one First Mover that is a First and an Eternall cause of all things which is that which men mean by the name of God And all this without thought of their fortune the solicitude whereof both enclines to fear and hinders them from the search of the causes of other things and thereby gives occasion of feigning of as many Gods as there be men that feigne them And for the matter or substance of the Invisible Agents so fancyed they could not by naturall cogitation fall upon any other conceipt but that it was the same with that of the Soule of man and that the Soule of man was of the same substance with that which appeareth in a Dream to one that sleepeth or in a Looking-glasse to one that is awake which men not knowing that such apparitions are nothing else but creatures of the Fancy think to be reall and externall Substances and therefore call them Ghosts as the Latines called them Imagines and Umbrae and thought them Spirits that is thin aëreall bodies and those Invisible Agents which they feared to bee like them save that they appear and vanish when they please But the opinion that such Spirits were Incorporeall or Immateriall could never enter into the mind of any man by nature because though men may put together words of contradictory signification as Spirit and Incorporeall yet they can never have the imagination of any thing answering to them And therefore men that by their own meditation arrive to the acknowledgement of one Infinite Omnipotent and Eternall God choose rather to confesse he is Incomprehensible and
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
fault that Jonathan had committed in eating a honey-comb contrary to the oath taken by the people And Iosh. 18. 10. God divided the land of Canaan amongst the Israelite by the lots that Ioshua did cast before the Lord in Shiloh In the same manner it seemeth to be that God discovered Ioshua 7. 16 c. the crime of Achan And these are the wayes whereby God declared his Will in the Old Testament All which ways he used also in the New Testament To the Virgin Mary by a Vision of an Angel To Ioseph in a Dream again to Paul in the way to Damascus in a Vision of our Saviour and to Peter in the Vision of a sheet let down from heaven with divers sorts of flesh of clean and unclean beasts and in prison by Vision of an Angel And to all the Apostles and Writers of the New Testament by the graces of his Spirit and to the Apostles again at the choosing of Matthias in the place of Judas Iscariot by lot Seeing then all Prophecy supposeth Vision or Dream which two when they be naturall are the same or some especiall gift of God so rarely observed in mankind as to be admired where observed And seeing as well such gifts as the most extraordinary Dreams and Visions may proceed from God not onely by his supernaturall and immediate but also by his naturall operation and by mediation of second causes there is need of Reason and Judgment to discern between naturall and supernaturall Gifts and between naturall and supernaturall Visions or Dreams And consequently men had need to be very circumspect aud wary in obeying the voice of man that pretending himself to be a Prophet requires us to obey God in that way which he in Gods name telleth us to be the way to happinesse For he that pretends to teach men the way of so great felicity pretends to govern them that is to say to rule and reign over them which is a thing that all men naturally desire and is therefore worthy to be suspected of Ambition and Imposture and consequently ought to be examined and tryed by every man before hee yeeld them obedience unlesse he have yeelded it them already in the institution of a Common-wealth as when the Prophet is the Civill Soveraign or by the Civil Soveraign Authorized And if this examination of Prophets and Spirits were not allowed to every one of the people it had been to no purpose to set out the marks by which every man might be able to distinguish between those whom they ought and those whom they ought not to follow Seeing therefore such marks are set out Deut. 13. 1 c. to know a Prophet by and 1 Iohn 4. 1. c. to know a Spirit by and seeing there is so much Prophecying in the Old Testament and so much Preaching in the New Testament against Prophets and so much greater a number ordinarily of false Prophets then of true every one is to beware of obeying their directions at their own perill And first that there were many more false then true Prophets appears by this that when Ahab 1 Kings 12. consulted four hundred Prophets they were all false Impostors but onely one Michaiah And a little before the time of the Captivity the Prophets were generally lyars The Prophets saith the Lord by Ieremy cha 14. verse 14. prophecy Lies in my name I sent them not neither have I commanded them nor spake unto them they prophecy to you a false Vision a thing of naught and the deceit of their heart In so much as God commanded the People by the mouth of the Prophet Iâ—…remiah chap. 23. 16. not to obey them Thus saith the Lord of Hosts hearken not unto the words of the Prophets that prophecy to you They make you vain they speak a Vision of their own heart and not out of the mouth of the Lord. Seeing then there was in the time of the Old Testament such quarrells amongst the Visionary Prophets one contesting with another and asking When departed the Spirit from me to go to thee as between Michaiah and the rest of the four hundred and such giving of the Lye to one another as in Ierem. 14. 14. and such controversies in the New Testament at this day amongst the Spirituall Prophets Every man then was and now is bound to make use of his Naturall Reason to apply to all Prophecy those Rules which God hath given us to discern the true from the false Of which Rules in the Old Testament one was conformable doctrine to that which Moses the Soveraign Prophet had taught them and the other the miraculous power of foretelling what God would bring to passe as I have already shewn out of Deut. 13. 1. c. And in the New Testament there was but one onely mark and that was the preaching of this Doctrine That Iesus is the Christ that is the King of the Jews promised in the Old Testament Whosoever denyed that Article he was a false Prophet whatsoever miracles he might seem to work and he that taught it was a true Prophet For St. Iohn 1 Epist. 4. 2 c. speaking expressely of the means to examine Spirits whether they be of God or not after he had told them that there would arise false Prophets saith thus Hereby know ye the Spirit of God Every Spirit that confesseth that Iesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God that is is approved and allowed as a Prophet of God not that he is a godly man or one of the Elect for this that he confesseth professeth or preacheth Jesus to be the Christ but for that he is a Prophet avowed For God sometimes speaketh by Prophets whose persons he hath not accepted as he did by Baalam and as he foretold Saul of his death by the Witch of Endor Again in the next verse Every Spirit that confesseth not that Iesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of Christ. And this is the Spirit of Antichrist So that the Rule is perfect on both sides that he is a true Prophet which preacheth the Messiah already come in the person of Jesus and he a false one that denyeth him come and looketh for him in some future Impostor that shall take upon him that honour falsely whom the Apostle there properly calleth Antichrist Every man therefore ought to consider who is the Soveraign Prophet that is to say who it is that is Gods Vicegerent on Earth and hath next under God the Authority of Governing Christian men and to observe for a Rule that Doctrine which in the name of God hee hath commanded to bee taught and thereby to examine and try out the truth of those Doctrines which pretended Prophets with miracle or without shall at any time advance and if they find it contrary to that Rule to doe as they did that came to Moses and complained that there were some that Propecyed in the Campe whose Authority so to doe they doubted of and leave to the
at his comming again gloriously to reign over his Elect and to save them from their Enemies eternally To which the opinion of Possession by Spirits or Phantasmes are no impediment in the way though it be to some an occasion of going out of the way and to follow their own Inventions If wee require of the Scripture an account of all questions which may be raised to trouble us in the performance of Gods commands we may as well complaine of Moses for not having set downe the time of the creation of such Spirits as well as of the Creation of the Earth and Sea and of Men and Beasts To conclude I find in Scripture that there be Angels and Spirits good and evill but not that they are Incorporeall as are the Apparitions men see in the Dark or in a Dream or Vision which the Latines call Spectra and took for Daemons And I find that there are Spirits Corporeall though subtile and Invisible but not that any mans body was possessed or inhabited by them And that the Bodies of the Saints shall be such namely Spirituall Bodies as St. Paul calls them Neverthelesse the contrary Doctrine namely that there be Incorporeall Spirits hath hitherto so prevailed in the Church that the use of Exorcisme that is to say of ejection of Devills by Conjuration is thereupon built and though rarely and faintly practised is not yet totally given over That there were many Daemoniaques in the Primitive Church and few Mad-men and other such singular diseases whereas in these times we hear of and see many Mad-men and few Daemoniaques proceeds not from the change of Nature but of Names But how it comes to passe that whereas heretofore the Apostles and after them for a time the Pastors of the Church did cure those singular Diseases which now they are not seen to doe as likewise why it is not in the power of every true Beleever now to doe all that the Faithfull did then that is to say as we read Mark 16. 17. In Christs name to cast out Devills to speak with new Tongues to take up Serpents to drink deadly Poison without harm taking and to cure the Sick by the laying on of their hands and all this without other words but in the Name of Iesus is another question And it is probable that those extraordinary gifts were given to the Church for no longer a time than men trusted wholly to Christ and looked for their felicity onely in his Kingdome to come and consequently that when they sought Authority and Riches and trusted to their own Subtilty for a Kingdome of this world these supernaturall gifts of God were again taken from them Another relique of Gentilisme is the Worship of Images neither instituted by Moses in the Old nor by Christ in the New Testament nor yet brought in from the Gentiles but left amongst them after they had given their names to Christ. Before our Saviour preached it was the generall Religion of the Gentiles to worship for Gods those Apparences that remain in the Brain from the impression of externall Bodies upon the organs of their Senses which are commonly called Ideas Idols Phantasmes Conceits as being Representations of those externall Bodies which cause them and have nothing in them of reality no more than there is in the things that seem to stand before us in a Dream And this is the reason why St. Paul says Wee know that an Idol is Nothing Not that he thought that an Image of Metall Stone or Wood was nothing but that the thing which they honored or feared in the Image and held for a God was a meer Figment without place habitation motion or existence but in the motions of the Brain And the worship of these with Divine Honour is that which is in the Scripture called Idolatry and Rebellion against God For God being King of the Jews and his Lieutenant being first Moses and afterward the High Priest if the people had been permitted to worship and pray to Images which are Representations of their own Fancies they had had no farther dependence on the true God of whom their can be no similitude nor on his prime Ministers Moses and the High Priests but every man had governed himself according to his own appetite to the utter eversion of the Common-wealth and their own destruction for want of Union And therefore the first Law of God was They should not take for Gods ALIENOS DEOS that is the Gods of other nations but that onely true God who vouchsafed to commune with Moses and by him to give them laws and directions for their peace and for their salvation from their enemies And the second was that they should not make to themselves any Image to Worship of their own Invention For it is the same deposing of a King to submit to another King whether he be set up by a neighbour nation or by our selves The places of Scripture pretended to countenance the setting up of Images to worship them or to set them up at all in the places where God is worshipped are First two Examples one of the Cherubins over the Ark of God the other of the Brazen Serpent Secondly some texts whereby we are commanded to worship certain Creatures for their relation to God as to worship his Footstool And lastly some other texts by which is authorized a religious honoring of Holy things But before I examine the force of those places to prove that which is pretended I must first explain what is to be understood by Worshipping and what by Images and Idols I have already shewn in the 20 Chapter of this Discourse that to Honor is to value highly the Power of any person and that such value is measured by our comparing him with others But because there is nothing to be compared with God in Power we Honor him not but Dishonour him by any Value lesse than Infinite And thus Honor is properly of its own nature secret and internall in the heart But the inward thoughts of men which appeare outwardly in their words and actions are the signes of our Honoring and these goe by the name of WORSHIP in Latine CULTUS Therefore to Pray to to Swear by to Obey to bee Diligent and Officious in Serving in summe all words and actions that betoken Fear to Offend or Desire to Please is Worship whether those words and actions be sincere or feigned and because they appear as signes of Honoring are ordinarily also called Honor. The Worship we exhibite to those we esteem to be but men as to Kings and men in Authority is Civill Worship But the worship we exhibite to that which we think to bee God whatsoever the words ceremonies gestures or other actions be is Divine VVorship To fall prostrate before a King in him that thinks him but a Man is but Civill Worship And he that but putteth off his hat in the Church for this cause that he thinketh it the House of
use in common life in which they govern themselves some better some worse according to their differences of experience quicknesse of memory and inclinations to severall ends but specially according to good or evill fortune and the errors of one another For as for Science or certain rules of their actions they are so farre from it that they know not what it is Geometry they have thought Conjuring But for other Sciences they who have not been taught the beginnings and some progresse in them that they may see how they be acquired and generated are in this point like children that having no thought of generation are made believe by the women that their brothers and sisters are not born but found in the garden But yet they that have no Science are in better and nobler condition with their naturall Prudence than men that by mis-reasoning or by trusting them that reason wrong fall upon false and absurd generall rules For ignorance of causes and of rules does not set men so farre out of their way as relying on false rules and taking for causes of what they aspire to those that are not so but rather causes of the contrary To conclude The Light of humane minds is Perspicuous Words but by exact definitions first snuffed and purged from ambiguity Reason is the pace Encrease of Science the way and the Benefit of man-kind the end And on the contrary Metaphors and senslesse and ambiguous words are like ignes fâ—…i and reasoning upon them is wandering amongst innumerable absurdities and their end contentention and sedition or contempt As much Experience is Prudence so is much Science Sapience For though wee usually have one name of Wisedome for them both yet the Latines did alwayes distinguish between Prudentia and Sapientia ascribing the former to Experience the later to Science But to make their difference appeare more cleerly let us suppose one man endued with an excellent naturall use and dexterity in handling his armes and another to have added to that dexterity an acquired Science of where he can offend or be offended by his adversarie in every possible posture or guard The ability of the former would be to the ability of the later as Prudence to Sapience both usefull but the later infallible But they that trusting onely to the authority of books follow the blind blindly are like him that trusting to the false rules of a master of Fence ventures praesumptuously upon an adversary that either kills or disgraces him The signes of Science are some certain and infallible some uncertain Certain when he that pretendeth the Science of any thing can teach the same that is to say demonstrate the truth thereof perspicuously to another Uncertain when onely some particular events answer to his pretence and upon many occasions prove so as he sayes they must Signes of prudence are all uncertain because to observe by experience and remember all circumstances that may alter the successe is impossible But in any businesse whereof a man has not infallible Science to proceed by to forsake his own naturall judgement and be guided by generall sentences read in Authors and subject to many exceptions is a signe of folly and generally scorned by the name of Pedantry And even of those men themselves that in Councells of the Common-wealth love to shew their reading of Politiques and History very few do it in their domestique affaires where their particular interest is concerned having Prudence enough for their private affaires but in publique they study more the reputation of their owne wit than the successe of anothers businesse CHAP. VI. Of the Interiour Beginnings of Voluntary Motions commonly called the PASSIONS And the Speeches by which they are expressed THere be in Animals two sorts of Motions peculiar to them One called Vitall begun in generation and continued without interruption through their whole life such as are the course of the Bloud the Pulse the Breathing the Concoâ—…ion Nutrition Excretion to which Motions there needs no help of Imagination The other is Animall motion otherwise called Voluntary motion as to go to speak to move any of our limbes in such manner as is first fancied in our minds That Sense is Motion in the organs and interiour parts of mans body caused by the action of the things we See Heare And that Fancy is but the Reliques of the same Motion remaining after Sense has been already sayd in the first and second Chapters And because going speaking and the like Voluntary motions depend alwayes upon a precedent thought of whither which way and what it is evident that the Imagination is the first internall beginning of all Voluntary Motion And although unstudied men doe not conceive any motion at all to be there where the thing moved is invisible or the space it is moved in is for the shortnesse of it insensible yet that doth not hinder but that such Motions are For let a space be never so little that which is moved over a greater space whereof that little one is part must first be moved over that These small beginnings of Motion within the body of Man before they appear in walking speaking striking and other visible actions are commonly called ENDEAVOUR This Endeavour when it is toward something which causes it is called APPETITE or DESIRE the later being the generall name and the other often-times restrayned to signifie the Desire of Food namely Hunger and Thirst. And when the Endeavour is fromward something it is generally called AVERSION These words Appetite and Aversion we have from the Latines and they both of them signifie the motions one of approaching the other of retiring So also do the Greek words for the same which are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For Nature it selfe does often presse upon men those truths which afterwards when they look for somewhat beyond Nature they stumble at For the Schooles find in meere Appetite to go or move no actuall Motion at all but because some Motion they must acknowledge they call it Metaphoricall Motion which is but an absurd speech for though Words may be called metaphoricall Bodies and Motions cannot That which men Desire they are also sayd to LOVE and to HATE those things for which they have Aversion So that Desire and Love are the same thing save that by Desire we alwayes signifie the Absence of the Object by Love most commonly the Presence of the same So also by Aversion we signifie the Absence and by Hate the Presence of the Object Of Appetites and Aversions some are born with men as Appetite of food Appetite of excretion and exoneration which may also and more properly be called Aversions from somewhat they feele in their Bodies and some other Appetites not many The rest which are Appetites of particular things proceed from Experience and triall of their effects upon themselves or other men For of things wee know not at
very diligently in all times Afterwards men made use of the same word metaphorically for the knowledge of their own secret facts and secret thoughts and therefore it is Rhetorically said that the Conscience is a thousand witnesses And last of all men vehemently in love with their own new opinions though never so absurd and obstinately bent to maintain them gave those their opinions also that reverenced name of Conscience as if they would have it seem unlawfull to change or speak against them and so pretend to know they are true when they know at most but that they think so When a mans Discourse beginneth not at Definitions it beginneth either at some other contemplation of his own and then it is still called Opinion Or it beginneth at some saying of another of whose ability to know the truth and of whose honesty in not deceiving he doubteth not and then the Discourse is not so much concerning the Thing as the Person And the Resolution is called BELEEFE and FAITH Faith in the man Beleefe both of the man and of the truth of what he sayes So that in Beleefe are two opinions one of the saying of the man the other of his vertue To have faith in or trust 〈◊〉 or beleeve a man signifie the same thing namely an opinion of the veracity of the man But to beleeve what is said signifieth onely an opinion of the truth of the saying But wee are to observe that this Phrase I beleeve in as also the Latine Credo in and the Greek 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are never used but in the writings of Divines In stead of them in other writings are put I beleeve him I trust him I have faith in him I rely on him and in Latin Credo illi fido illi and in Greek 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and that this singularity of the Ecclesiastique use of the word hath raised many disputes about the right object of the Christian Faith But by Beleeving in as it is in the Creed is meant not trust in the Person but Confession and acknowledgement of the Doctrine For not onely Christians but all manner of men do so believe in God as to hold all for truth they heare him say whether they understand it or not which is all the Faith and trust can possibly be had in any person whatsoever But they do not all believe the Doctrine of the Creed From whence we may inferre that when wee believe any saying whatsoever it be to be true from arguments taken not from the thing it selfe or from the principles of naturall Reason but from the Authority and good opinion wee have of him that hath sayd it then is the speaker or person we believe in or trust in and whose word we take the object of our Faith and the Honour done in Believing is done to him onely And consequently when wee Believe that the Scriptures are the word of God having no immediate revelation from God himselfe our Beleefe Faith and Trust is in the Church whose word we take and acquiesce therein And they that believe that which a Prophet relates unto them in the name of God take the word of the Prophet do honour to him and in him trust and believe touching the truth of what he relateth whether he be a true or a false Prophet And so it is also with all other History For if I should not believe all that is written by Historians of the glorious acts of Alexander or Caesar I do not think the Ghost of Alexander or Caesar had any just cause to be offended or any body else but the Historian If Livy say the Gods made once a Cow speak and we believe it not wee distrust not God therein but Livy So that it is evident that whatsoever we believe upon no other reason then what is drawn from authority of men onely and their writings whether they be sent from God or not is Faith in men onely CHAP. VIII Of the VERTUES commonly called INTELLECTUALL and their contrary DEFECTS VERTUE generally in all sorts of subjects is somewhat that is valued for eminence and consisteth in comparison For if all things were equally in all men nothing would be prized And by Vertues INTELLECTUALL are alwayes understood such abilityes of the mind as men praise value and desire should be in themselves and go commonly under the name of a good witte though the same word Witte be used also to distinguish one certain ability from the rest These Vertues are of two sorts Naturall and Acquired By Naturall I mean not that which a man hath from his Birth for that is nothing else but Sense wherein men differ so little one from another and from brute Beasts as it is not to be reckoned amongst Vertues But I mean that Witte which is gotten by Use onely and Experience without Method Culture or Instruction This NATURALL WITTE consisteth principally in two things Celerity of Imagining that is swift succession of one thought to another and steddy direction to some approved end On the Contrary a slow Imagination maketh that Defect or fault of the mind which is commonly called DULNESSE Stupidity and sometimes by other names that signifie slownesse of motion or difficulty to be moved And this difference of quicknesse is caused by the difference of mens passions that love and dislike some one thing some another and therefore some mens thoughts run one way some another and are held to and observe differently the things that passe through their imagination And whereas in this succession of mens thoughts there is nothing to observe in the things they think on but either in what they be like one another or in what they be unlike or what they serve for or how they serve to such a purpose Those that observe their similitudes in case they be such as are but rarely observed by others are sayd to have a Good Wit by which in this occasion is meant a Good Fancy But they that observe their differences and dissimilitudes which is called Distinguishing and Discerning and Judging between thing and thing in case such discerning be not easie are said to have a good Judgement and particularly in matter of conversation and businesse wherein times places and persons are to be discerned this Vertue is called DISCRETION The former that is Fancy without the help of Judgement is not commended as a Vertue but the later which is Judgement and Discretion is commended for it selfe without the help of Fancy Besides the Discretion of times places and persons necessary to a good Fancy there is required also an often application of his thoughts to their End that is to say to some use to be made of them This done he that hath this Vertue will be easily fitted with similitudes that will please not onely by illustration of his discourse and adorning it with new and apt metaphors but also by the rarity of their invention But without Steddinesse and
a diversity of Nature rising from their diversity of Affections not unlike to that we see in stones brought together for building of an Aedifice For as that stone which by the asperity and irregularity of Figure takes more room from others than it selfe fills and for the hardnesse cannot be easily made plain and thereby hindereth the building is by the builders cast away as unprofitable and troublesome so also a man that by asperity of Nature will strive to retain those things which to himselfe are superfluous and to others necessary and for the stubbornness of his Passions cannot be corrected is to be left or cast out of Society as combersome thereunto For seeing every man not onely by Right but also by necessity of Nature is supposed to endeavour all he can to obtain that which is necessary for his conservation He that shall oppose himselfe against it for things superfluous is guilty of the warre that thereupon is to follow and therefore doth that which is contrary to the fundamentall Law of Nature which commandeth to seek Peace The observers of this Law may be called SOCIABLE the Latines call them Commodi The contrary Stubborn Insociable Froward Intractable A sixth Law of Nature is this That upon caution of the Future time a man ought to pardon the offences past of them that repenting desire it For PARDON is nothing but granting of Peace which though granted to them that persevere in their hostility be not Peace but Feare yet not granted to them that give caution of the Future time is signe of an aversion to Peace and therefore contrary to the Law of Nature A seventh is That in Revenges that is retribution of Evil for Evil Men look not at the greatnesse of the evill past but the greatnesse of the good to follow Whereby we are forbidden to inflict punishment with any other designe than for correction of the offender or direction of others For this Law is consequent to the next before it that commandeth Pardon upon security of the Future time Besides Revenge without respect to the Example and profit to come is a triumph or glorying in the hurt of another tending to no end for the End is alwayes somewhat to Come and glorying to no end is vain-glory and contrary to reason and to hurt without reason tendeth to the introduction of Warre which is against the Law of Nature and is commonly stiled by the name of Cruelty And because all signes of hatred or contempt provoke to fight insomuch as most men choose rather to hazard their life than not to be revenged we may in the eighth place for a Law of Nature set down this Precept That no man by deed word countenance or gesture declare Hatred or Contempt of another The breach of which Law is commonly called Contumely The question who is the better man has no place in the condition of meer Nature where as has been shewn before all men are equall The inequallity that now is has bin introduced by the Lawes civill I know that Aristotle in the first booke of his Politiques for a foundation of his doctrine maketh men by Nature some more worthy to Command meaning the wiser sort such as he thought himselfe to be for his Philosophy others to Serve meaning those that had strong bodies but were not Philosophers as he as if Master and Servant were not introduced by consent of men but by difference of Wit which is not only against reason but also against experience For there are very few so foolish that had not rather governe themselves than be governed by others Nor when the wise in their own conceiâ—… contend by force with them who distrust their owne wisdome do they alwaies or often or almost at any time get the Victory If Nature therefore have made men equall that equalitie is to be acknowledged or if Nature have made men unequall yet because men that think themselves equall will not enter into conditions of Peace but upon Equall termes such equalitie must be admitted And therefore for the ninth law of Nature I put this ' That every man acknowledge other for his Equall by Nature The breach of this Precept is Pride On this law dependeth another That at the entrance into conditions of Peace no man require to reserve to himselfe any Right which he is not content should be reserved to every one of the rest As it is necessary for all men that seek peace to lay down certaine Rights of Nature that is to say not to have libertie to do all they list so is it necessarie for mans life to retaine some as right to governe their owne bodies enjoy aire water motion waies to go from place to place and all things else without which a man cannot live or not live well If in this case at the making of Peace men require for themselves that which they would not have to be granted to others they do contrary to the precedent law that commandeth the acknowledgment of naturall equalitie and therefore also against the law of Nature The observers of this law are those we call Modest and the breakers Arrogant men The Greeks call the violation of this law 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is a desire of more than their share Also if a man be trusted to judge between man and man it is a precept of the Law of Nature that he deale Equally between them For without that the Controversies of men cannot be determined but by Warre He therefore that is partiall in judgment doth what in him lies to deterre men from the use of Judges and Arbitrators and consequently against the fundamentall Lawe of Nature is the cause of Warre The observance of this law from the equall distribution to each man of that which in reason belongeth to him is called EQUITY and as I have sayd before distributive Justice the violation Acception of persons 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And from this followeth another law That such things as cannot be divided be enjoyed in Common if it can be and if the quantity of the thing permit without Stint otherwise Proportionably to the number of them that have Right For otherwise the distribution is Unequall and contrary to Equitie But some things there be that can neither be divided nor enjoyed in common Then The Law of Nature which prescribeth Equity requireth That the Entire Right or else making the use alternate the First Possession be determined by Lot For equall distribution is of the Law of Nature and other means of equall distribution cannot be imagined Of Lots there be two sorts Arbitrary and Naturall Arbitrary is that which is agreed on by the Competitors Naturall is either Primogeniture which the Greek calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifies Given by Lot or First Seisure And therefore those things which cannot be enjoyed in common nor divided ought to be adjudged to the First Possessor and in some cases to the First-Borne
as acquired by Lot It is also a Law of Nature That all men that mediate Peace be allowed safe Conduct For the Law that commandeth Peace as the End commandeth Intercession as the Means and to Intercession the Means is safe Conduct And because though men be never so willing to observe these Lawes there may neverthelesse arise questions concerning a mans action First whether it were done or not done Secondly if done whether against the Law or not against the Law the former whereof is called a question Of Fact the later a question Of Right therefore unlesse the parties to the question Covenant mutually to stand to the sentence of another they are as farre from Peace as ever This other to whose Sentence they submit is called an ARBITRATOR And therefore it is of the Law of Nature That they that are at controversie submit their Right to the judgement of an Arbitrator And seeing every man is presumed to do all things in order to his own benefit no man is a fit Arbitrator in his own cause and if he were never so fit yet Equity allowing to each party equall benefit if one be admitted to be Judge the other is to be admitted also so the controversie that is the cause of War remains against the Law of Nature For the same reason no man in any Cause ought to be received for Arbitrator to whom greater profit or honour or pleasure apparently ariseth out of the victory of one party than of the other for hee hath taken though an unavoydable bribe yet a bribe and no man can be obliged to trust him And thus also the controversie and the condition of War remaineth contrary to the Law of Nature And in a controversie of Fact the Judge being to give no more credit to one than to the other if there be no other Arguments must give credit to a third or to a third and fourth or more For else the question is undecided and left to force contrary to the Law of Nature These are the Lawes of Nature dictating Peace for a means of the conservation of men in multitudes and which onely concern the doctrine of Civill Society There be other things tending to the destruction of particular men as Drunkenness and all other parts of Intemperance which may therefore also be reckoned amongst those things which the Law of Nature hath forbidden but are not necessary to be mentioned nor are pertinent enough to this place And though this may seem too subtile a deduction of the Lawes of Nature to be taken notice of by all men whereof the most part are too busie in getting food and the rest too negligent to understand yet to leave all men unexcusable they have been contracted into one easie sum intelligible even to the meanest capacity and that is Do not that to another which thou wouldest not have done to thy selfe which sheweth him that he has no more to do in learning the Lawes of Nature but when weighing the actions of other men with his own they seem too heavy to put them into the other part of the ballance and his own into their place that his own passions and selfe-love may adde nothing to the weight and then there is none of these Lawes of Nature that will not appear unto him very reasonable The Lawes of Nature oblige in foro interno that is to say they bind to a desire they should take place but in foro externo that is to the putting them in act not alwayes For he that should be modest and tractable and performe all he promises in such time and place where no man els should do so should but make himselfe a prey to others and procure his own certain ruine contrary to the ground of all Lawes of Nature which tend to Natures preservation And again he that having sufficient Security that others shall observe tâ—…e same Lawes towards him observes them not himselfe seeketh not Peace but War consequently the destruction of his Nature by Violence And whatsoever Lawes bind in foro interno may be broken not onely by a fact contrary to the Law but also by a fact according to it in case a man think it contrary For though his Action in this case be according to the Law yet his Purpose was against the Law which where the Obligation is in foro interno is a breach The Lawes of Nature are Immutable and Eternall For Injustice Ingratitude Arrogance Pride Iniquity Acception of persons and the rest can never be made lawfull For it can never be that Warre shall preserve life and Peace destroy it The sames Lawes because they oblige onely to a desire and endeavour I mean an unfeigned and constant endeavour are easie to be observed For in that they require nothing but endeavour he that endeavoureth their performance fulfilleth them and he that fulfilleth the Law is Just. And the Science of them is the true and onely Moral Philosophy For Morall Philosophy is nothing else but the Science of what is Good and Evill in the conversation and Society of man-kind Good and Evill are names that signifie our Appetites and Aversions which in different tempers customes and doctrines of men are different And divers men differ not onely in their Judgement on the senses of what is pleasant and unpleasant to the tast smell hearing touch and sight but also of what is conformable or disagreeable to Reason in the actions of common life Nay the same man in divers times differs from himselfe and one time praiseth that is calleth Good what another time he dispraiseth and calleth Evil From whence arise Disputes Controversies and at last War And therefore so long a man is in the condition of meer Nature which is a condition of War as private Appetite is the measure of Good and Evill And consequently all men agree on this that Peace is Good and therefore also the way or means of Peace which as I have shewed before are Justice Gratitude Modesty Equity Mercy the rest of the Laws of Nature are good that is to say Morall Vertues and their contrarie Vices Evill Now the science of Vertue and Vice is Morall Philosophie and therfore the true Doctrine of the Lawes of Nature is the true Morall Philosophie But the Writers of Morall Philosophie though they acknowledge the same Vertues and Vices Yet not seeing wherein consisted their Goodnesse nor that they come to be praised as the meanes of peaceable sociable and comfortable living place them in a mediocrity of passions as if not the Cause but the Degree of daring made Fortitude or not the Cause but the Quantity of a gift made Liberality These dictates of Reason men use to call by the name of Lawes but improperly for they are but Conclusions or Theoremes concerning what conduceth to the conservation and defence of themselves wheras Law properly is the word of him that by right hath command over others But
in the sight of God justified by the Command for of such command every Subject is the Author The variety of Bodies Politique is almost infinite for they are not onely distinguished by the severall affaires for which they are constituted wherein there is an unspeakable diversitie but also by the times places and numbers subject to many limitations And as to their affaires some are ordained for Government As first the Government of a Province may be committed to an Assembly of men wherein all resolutions shall depend on the Votes of the major part and then this Assembly is a Body Politique and their power limited by Commission This word Province signifies a charge or care of businesse which he whose businesse it is committeth to another man to be administred for and under him and therefore when in one Common-wealth there be divers Countries that have their Lawes distinct one from another or are farre distant in place the Administration of the Government being committed to divers persons those Countries where the Soveraign is not resident but governs by Commission are called Provinces But of the government of a Province by an Assembly residing in the Province it selfe there be few examples The Romans who had the Soveraignty of many Provinces yet governed them alwaies by Presidents and Praetors and not by Assemblies as they governed the City of Rome and Territories adjacent In like manner when there were Colonies sent from England to Plant Virginia and Sommer-Ilands though the government of them here were committed to Assemblies in London yet did those Assemblies never commit the Government under them to any Assembly there but did to each Plantation send one Governour For though every man where he can be present by Nature desires to participate of government yet where they cannot be present they are by Nature also enclined to commit the Government of their common Interest rather to a Monarchicall then a Popular form of Government which is also evident in those men that have great private estates who when they are unwilling to take the paines of administring the buâ—…inesse that belongs to them choose rather to trust one Servant then an Assembly either of their friends or servants But howsoever it be in fact yet we may suppose the Government of a Province or Colony committed to an Assembly and when it is that which in this place I have to say is this that whatsoever debt is by that Assembly contracted or whatsoever unlawfull Act is decreed is the Act onely of those that assented and not of any that dissented or were absent for the reasons before alledged Also that an Assembly residing out of the bounds of that Colony whereof they have the government cannot execute any power over the persons or goods of any of the Colonie to seize on them for debt or other duty in any place without the Colony it selfe as having no Jurisdiction nor Authoritie elsewhere but are left to the remedie which the Law of the place alloweth them And though the Assembly have right to impose a Mulct upon any of their members that shall break the Lawes they make yet out of the Colonie it selfe they have no right to execute the same And that which is said here of the Rights of an Assembly for the government of a Province or a Colony is appliable also to an Assembly for the Government of a Town an University or a College or a Church or for any other Government over the persons of men And generally in all Bodies Politique if any particular member conceive himself Injuried by the Body it self the Cognisance of his cause belongeth to the Soveraign and those the Soveraign hath ordained for Judges in such causes or shall ordaine for that particular cause and not to the Body it self For the whole Body is in this case his fellow subject which in a Soveraign Assembly is otherwise for there if the Soveraign be not Judge though in his own cause there can be no Judge at all In a Bodie Politique for the well ordering of forraigne Traffique the most commodious Representative is an Assembly of all the members that is to say such a one as every one that adventureth his mony may be present at all the Deliberations and Resolutions of the Body if they will themselves For proof whereof we are to consider the end for which men that are Merchants and may buy and sell export and import their Merchandise according to their own discretions doe neverthelesse bind themselves up in one Corporation It is true there be few Merchants that with the Merchandise they buy at home can fraight a Ship to export it or with that they buy abroad to bring it home and have therefore need to joyn together in one Society where every man may either participate of the gaine according to the proportion of his adventure or take his own and sell what he transports or imports at such prices as he thinks fit But this is no Body Politique there being no Common Representative to oblige them to any other Law than that which is common to all other subjects The End of their Incorporating is to make their gaine the greater which is done two wayes by sole buying and sole selling both at home and abroad So that to grant to a Company of Merchants to be a Corporation or Body Politique is to grant them a double Monopoly whereof one is to be sole buyers another to be sole sellers For when there is a Company incorporate for any particular forraign Country they only export the Commodities vendible in that Country which is sole buying at home and sole selling abroad For at home there is but one buyer and abroad but one that selleth both which is gainfull to the Merchant because thereby they buy at home at lower and sell abroad at higher rates And abroad there is but one buyer of forraign Merchandise and but one that sels them at home both which againe are gainfull to the adventurers Of this double Monopoly one part is disadvantageous to the people at home the other to forraigners For at home by their sole exportation they set what price they please on the husbandry and handy works of the people and by the sole importation what price they please on all forraign commodities the people have need of both which are ill for the people On the contrary by the sole selling of the native commodities abroad and sole buying the forraign commodities upon the place they raise the price of those and abate the price of these to the disadvantage of the forraigner For where but one selleth the Merchandise is the dearer and where but one buyeth the cheaper Such Corporations therefore are no other then Monopolies though they would be very profitable for a Common-wealth if being bound up into one body in forraigne Markets they were at liberty at home every man to buy and sell at what price he could The end then of these Bodies of Merchants being
not a Common benefit to the whole Body which have in this case no common stock but what is deducted out of the particular adventures for building buying victualling and manning of Ships but the particular gaine of every adventurer it is reason that every one be acquainted with the employment of his own that is that every one be of the Assembly that shall have the power to order the same and be acquainted with their accounts And therefore the Representative of such a Body must be an Assembly where every member of the Body may be present at the consultations if he will If a Body Politique of Merchants contract a debt to a stranger by the act of their Representative Assembly every Member is lyable by himself for the whole For a stranger can take no notice of their private Lawes but considereth them as so many particular men obliged every one to the whole payment till payment made by one dischargeth all the rest But if the debt be to one of the Company the creditor is debter for the whole to himself and cannot therefore demand his debt but only from the common stock if there be any If the Common-wealth impose a Tax upon the Body it is understood to be layd upon every Member proportionably to his particular adventure in the Company For there is in this case no other common stock but what is made of their particular adventures If a Mulct be layd upon the Body for some unlawfull act they only are lyable by whose votes the act was decreed or by whose assistance it was executed for in none of the rest is there any other crime but being of the Body which if a crime because the Body was ordeyned by the authority of the Common-wealth is not his If one of the Members be indebted to the Body he may 〈◊〉 sued by the Body but his goods cannot be taken nor his person imprisoned by the authority of the Body but only by Authority of the Common-wealth for if they can doe it by their own Authority they can by their own Authority give judgement that the debt is due which is as much as to be Judge in their own Cause Those Bodies made for the government of Men or of Traffique be either perpetuall or for a time prescribed by writing But there be Bodies also whose times are limited and that only by the nature of their businesse For example if a Soveraign Monarch or a Soveraign Assembly shall think fit to give command to the towns and other severall parts of their territory to send to him their Deputies to enforme him of the condition and necessities of the Subjects or to advise with him for the making of good Lawes or for any other cause as with one Person representing the whole Country such Deputies having a place and time of meeting assigned them are there and at that time a Body Politique representing every Subject of that Dominion but it is onely for such matters as shall be propounded unto them by that Man or Assembly that by the Soveraign Authority sent for them and when it shall be declared that nothing more shall be propounded nor debated by them the Body is dissolved For if they were the absolute Representative of the people then were it the Soveraign Assembly and so there would be two Soveraign Assemblies or two Soveraigns over the same people which cannot consist with their Peace And therefore where there is once a Soveraignty there can be no absolute Representation of the people but by it And for the limits of how farre such a Body shall represent the whole People they are set forth in the Writing by which they were sent for For the People cannot choose their Deputies to other intent than is in the Writing directed to them from their Soveraign expressed Private Bodies Regular and Lawfull are those that are constituted without Letters or other written Authority saving the Lawes common to all other Subjects And because they be united in one Person Representative they are held for Regular such as are all Families in which the Father or Master ordereth the whole Family For he obligeth his Children and Servants as farre as the Law permitteth though not further because none of them are bound to obedience in those actions which the Law hath forbidden to be done In all other actions during the time they are under domestique government they are subject to their Fathers and Masters as to their immediate Soveraigns For the Father and Master being before the Institution of Common-wealth absolute Soveraigns in their own Families they lose afterward no more of their Authority than the Law of the Common-wealth taketh from them Private Bodies Regular but Unlawfull are those that unite themselves into one person Representative without any publique Authority at all such as are the Corporations of Beggars Theeves and Gipsies the better to order their trade of begging and stealing and the Corporations of men that by Authority from any forraign Person unite themselves in anothers Dominion for the easier propagation of Doctrines and for making a party against the Power of the Common-wealth Irregular Systemes in their nature but Leagues or sometimes meer concourse of people without union to any particular designe not by obligation of one to another but proceeding onely from a similitude of wills and inclinations become Lawfull or Unlawfull according to the lawfulnesse or unlawfulnesse of every particular mans designe therein And his designe is to be understood by the occasion The Leagues of Subjects because Leagues are commonly made for mutuall defence are in a Common wealth which is no more than a League of all the Subjects together for the most part unnecessary and savour of unlawfull designe and are for that cause Unlawfull and go commonly by the name of Factions or Conspiracies For a League being a connexion of men by Covenants if there be no power given to any one Man or Assembly as in the condition of meer Nature to compell them to performance is so long onely valid as there ariseth no just cause of distrust and therefore Leagues between Common-wealths over whom there is no humane Power established to keep them all in awe are not onely lawfull but also profitable for the time they last But Leagues of the Subjects of one and the same Common-wealth where every one may obtain his right by means of the Soveraign Power are unnecessary to the maintaining of Peace and Justice and in case the designe of them be evill or Unknown to the Common-wealth unlawfull For all uniting of strength by private men is if for evill intent unjust if for intent unknown dangerous to the Publique and unjustly concealed If the Soveraign Power be in a great Assembly and a number of men part of the Assembly without authority consult a part to contrive the guidance of the rest This is a Faction or Conspiracy unlawfull as being a fraudulent seducing of the Assembly for their particular
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
enemy of the Common-wealth that banished him as being no more a Member of the same But if he be withall deprived of his Lands or Goods then the Punishment lyeth not in the Exile but is to be reckoned amongst Punishments Pecuniary All Punishments of Innocent subjects be they great or little are against the Law of Nature For Punishment is only for Transgression of the Law and therefore there can be no Punishment of the Innocent It is therefore a violation First of that Law of Nature which forbiddeth all men in their Revenges to look at any thing but some future good For there can arrive no good to the Common-wealth by Punishing the Innocent Secondly of that which forbiddeth Ingratitude For seeing all Soveraign Power is originally given by the consent of every one of the Subjects to the end they should as long as they are obedient be protected thereby the Punishment of the Innocent is a rendring of Evill for Good And thirdly of the Law that commandeth Equity that is to say an equall distribution of Justice which in Punishing the Innocent is not observed But the Infliction of what evill soever on an Innocent man that is not a Subject if it be for the benefit of the Common-wealth and without violation of any former Covenant is no breach of the Law of Nature For all men that are not Subjects are either Enemies or else they have ceased from being so by some precedent covenants But against Enemies whom the Common-wealth judgeth capable to do them hurt it is lawfull by the originall Right of Nature to make warre wherein the Sword Judgeth not nor doth the Victor make distinction of Nocent and Innocent as to the time past nor has other respect of mercy than as it conduceth to the good of his own People And upon this ground it is that also in Subjects who deliberatly deny the Authority of the Common-wealth established the vengeance is lawfully extended not onely to the Fathers but also to the third and fourth generation not yet in being and consequently innocent of the fact for which they are afflicted because the nature of this offence consisteth in the renouncing of subjection which is a relapse into the condition of warre commonly called Rebellion and they that so offend suffer not as Subjects but as Enemies For Rebellion is but warre renewed REWARD is either of Gift or by Contract When by Contract it is called Salary and Wages which is benefit due for service performed or promised When of Gift it is benefit proceeding from the grace of them that bestow it to encourage or enable men to do them service And therefore when the Soveraign of a Common wealth appointeth a Salary to any publique Office he that receiveth it is bound in Justice to performe his office otherwise he is bound onely in honour to acknowledgement and an endeavour of requitall For though men have no lawfull remedy when they be commanded to quit their private businesse to serve the publique without Reward or Salary yet they are not bound thereto by the Law of Nature nor by the Institution of the Common-wealth unlesse the service cannot otherwise be done because it is supposed the Soveraign may make use of all their means insomuch as the most common Souldier may demand the wages of his warrefare as a debt The benefit which a Soveraign bestoweth on a Subject for fear of some power and ability he hath to do hurt to the Common-wealth are not properly Rewards for they are not Salaryes because there is in this case no contract supposed every man being obliged already not to do the Common-wealth disservice nor are they Graces because they be extorted by fear which ought not to be incident to the Soveraign Power but are rather Sacrifices which the Soveraign considered in his naturall person and not in the person of the Common-wealth makes for the appeasing the discontent of him he thinks more potent than himselfe and encourage not to obedience but on the contrary to the continuance and increasing of further extortion And whereas some Salaries are certain and proceed from the publique Treasure and others uncertain and casuall proceeding from the execution of the Office for which the Salary is ordained the later is in some cases hurtfull to the Common-wealth as in the case of Judicature For where the benefit of the Judges and Ministers of a Court of Justice ariseth for the multitude of Causes that are brought to their cognisance there must needs follow two Inconveniences One is the nourishing of sutes for the more sutes the greater benefit and another that depends on that which is contention about Jurisdiction each Court drawing to it selfe as many Causes as it can But in offices of Execution there are not those Inconveniences because their employment cannot be encreased by any endeavour of their own And thus much shall suffice for the nature of Punishment and Reward which are as it were the Nerves and Tendons that move the limbes and joynts of a Common-wealth Hitherto I have set forth the nature of Man whose Pride and other Passions have compelled him to submit himselfe to Government together with the great power of his Governour whom I compared to Leviathan taking that comparison out of the two last verses of the one and fortieth of Job where God having set forth the great power of Leviathan calleth him King of the Proud There is nothing saith he on earth to be compared with him He is made so as not to be afraid Hee seeth every high thing below him and is King of all the children of pride But because he is mortall and subject to decay as all other Earthly creatures are and because there is that in heaven though not on earth that he should stand in fear of and whose Lawes he ought to obey I shall in the next following Chapters speak of his Diseases and the causes of his Mortality and of what Lawes of Nature he is bound to obey CHAP. XXIX Of those things that Weaken or tend to the DISSOLUTION of a Common-wealth THough nothing can be immortall which mortals make yet if men had the use of reason they pretend to their Common-wealths might be secured at least from perishing by internall diseases For by the nature of their Institution they are designed to live as long as Man-kind or as the Lawes of Nature or as Justice it selfe which gives them life Therefore when they come to be dissolved not by externall violence but intestine disorder the fault is not in men as they are the Matter but as they are the Makers and orderers of them For men as they become at last weary of irregular justling and hewing one another and desire with all their hearts to conforme themselves into one firme and lasting edifice so for want both of the art of making fit Lawes to square their actions by and also of humility and patience to suffer the rude and combersome points of
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
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
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
equally applicable to any difficulty whatsoever For the meaning of Eternity they will not have it to be an Endlesse Succession of Time for then they should not be able to render a reason how Gods Will and Praeordaining of things to come should not be before his Praescience of the same as the Efficient Cause before the Effect or Agent before the Action nor of many other their bold opinions concerning the Incomprehensible Nature of God But they will teach us that Eternity is the Standing still of the Present Time a Nunc-stans as the Schools call it which neither they nor any else understand no more than they would a Hic-stans for an Infinite greatnesse of Place And whereas men divide a Body in their thought by numbring parts of it and in numbring those parts number also the parts of the Place it filled it cannot be but in making many parts wee make also many places of those parts whereby there cannot bee conceived in the mind of any man more or fewer parts than there are places for yet they will have us beleeve that by the Almighty power of God one body may be at one and the same time in many places and many bodies at one and the same time in one place as if it were an acknowledgment of the Divine Power to say that which is is not or that which has been has not been And these are but a small part of the Incongruities they are forced to from their disputing Philosophically in stead of admiring and adoring of the Divine and Incomprehensible Nature whose Attributes cannot signifie what he is but ought to signifie our desire to honour him with the best Appellations we can think on But they that venture to reason of his Nature from these Attributes of Honour losing their understanding in the very first attempt fall from one Inconvenience into another without end and without number in the same manner as when a man ignorant of the Ceremonies of Court comming into the presence of a greater Person than he is used to speak to and stumbling at his entrance to save himselfe from falling le ts slip his Cloake to recover his Cloake le ts fall his Hat and with one disorder after another discovers his astonishment and rusticity Then for Physiques that is the knowledge of the subordinate and secundary causes of naturall events they render none at all but empty words If you desire to know why some kind of bodies sink naturally downwards toward the Earth and others goe naturally from it The Schools will tell you out of Aristotle that the bodies that sink downwards are Heavy and that this Heavinesse is it that causes them to descend But if you ask what they mean by Heavinesse they will define it to bee an endeavour to goe to the center of the Earth so that the cause why things sink downward is an Endeavour to be below which is as much as to say that bodies descend or ascend because they doe Or they will tell you the center of the Earth is the place of Rest and Conservation for Heavy things and therefore they endeavour to be there As if Stones and Metalls had a desire or could discern the place they would bee at as Man does or loved Rest as Man does not or that a peece of Glasse were lesse safe in the Window than falling into the Street If we would know why the same Body seems greater without adding to it one time than another they say when it seems lesse it is Condensed when greater Rarefied What is that Condensed and Rarefied Condensed is when there is in the very same Matter lesse Quantity than before and Rarefied when more As if there could be Matter that had not some determined Quantity when Quantity is nothing else but the Determination of Matter that is to say of Body by which we say one Body is greater or lesser than another by thus or thus much Or as if a Body were made without any Quantity at all and that afterwards more or lesse were put into it according as it is intended the Body should be more or lesse Dense For the cause of the Soule of Man they say Creatur Infundendo and Creando Infunditur that is It is Created by Powring it in and Powred in by Creation For the Cause of Sense an ubiquity of Species that is of the Shews or Apparitions of objects which when they be Apparitions to the Eye is Sight when to the Eare Hearing to the Palate Tast to the Nostrill Smelling and to the rest of the Body Feeling For cause of the Will to doe any particular action which is called Volitio they assign the Faculty that is to say the Capacity in generall that men have to will sometimes one thing sometimes another which is called Voluntas making the Power the cause of the Act As if one should assign for cause of the good or evill Acts of men their Ability to doe them And in many occasions they put for cause of Naturall events their own Ignorance but disguised in other words As when they say Fortune is the cause of things contingent that is of things whereof they know no cause And as when they attribute many Effects to occult qualities that is qualities not known to them and therefore also as they thinke to no Man else And to Sympathy Antipathy Antiperistasis Specificall Qualities and other like Termes which signifie neither the Agent that produceth them nor the Operation by which they are produced If such Metaphysiques and Physiques as this be not Vain Philosophy there was never any nor needed St. Paul to give us warning to avoid it And for their Morall and Civill Philosophy it hath the same or greater absurdities If a man doe an action of Injustice that is to say an action contrary to the Law God they say is the prime cause of the Law and also the prime cause of that and all other Actions but no cause at all of the Injustice which is the Inconformity of the Action to the Law This is Vain Philosophy A man might as well say that one man maketh both a streight line and a crooked and another maketh their Incongruity And such is the Philosophy of all men that resolve of their Conclusions before they know their Premises pretending to comprehend that which is Incomprehensible and of Attributes of Honour to make Attributes of Nature as this distinction was made to maintain the Doctrine of Free-Will that is of a Will of man not subject to the Will of God Aristotle and other Heathen Philosophers define Good and Evill by the Appetite of men and well enough as long as we consider them governed every one by his own Law For in the condition of men that have no other Law but their own Appetites there can be no generall Rule of Good and Evill Actions But in a Common-wealth this measure is false Not the Appetite of Private men but
Reason and â—…loquence though not perhaps in the Naturall Sciences yet in the Morall may stand very well together For wheresoever there is place for adorning and preferring of Errour there is much more place for adorning and preferring of Truth if they have it to adorn Nor is there any repugnancy between fearing the Laws and not fearing a publique Enemy nor between abstaining from Injury and pardoning it in others There is therefore no such Inconsistence of Humane Nature with Civill Duties as some think I have known cleernesse of Judgment and largenesse of Fancy strength of Reason and gracefull Elocution a Courage for the Warre and a Fear for the Laws and all eminently in one man and that was my most noble and honored friend Mr. Sidney Godolphin who hating no man nor hated of any was unfortunately slain in the beginning of the late Civill warre in the Publique quarrell by an undiscerned and an undiscerning hand To the Laws of Nature declared in the 15. Chapter I would have this added That every man is bound by Nature as much as in him lieth to protect in Warre the Authority by which he is himself protected in time of Peace For he that pretendeth a Right of Nature to preserve his owne body cannot pretend a Right of Nature to destroy him by whose strength he is preserved It is a manifest contradiction of himselfe And though this Law may bee drawn by consequence from some of those that are there already mentioned yet the Times require to have it inculcated and remembred And because I find by divers English Books lately printed that the Civill warres have not yet sufficiently taught men in what point of time it is that a Subject becomes obliged to the Conquerour nor what is Conquest nor how it comes about that it obliges men to obey his Laws Therefore for farther satisfaction of men therein I say the point of time wherein a man becomes subject to a Conquerour is that point wherein having liberty to submit to him he consenteth either by expresse words or by other sufficient sign to be his Subject When it is that a man hath the liberty to submit I have shewed before in the end of the 21. Chapter namely that for him that hath no obligation to his former Soveraign but that of an ordinary Subject it is then when the means of his life is within the Guards and Garrisons of the Enemy for it is then that he hath no longer Protection from him but is protected by the adverse party for his Contribution Seeing therefore such contribution is every where as a thing inevitable notwithstanding it be an assistance to the Enemy esteemed lawfull a totall Submission which is but an assistance to the Enemy cannot be esteemed unlawful Besides if a man consider that they who submit assist the Enemy but with part of their estates whereas they that refuse assist him with the whole there is no reason to call their Submission or Composition an Assistance but rather a Detriment to the Enemy But if a man besides the obligation of a Subject hath taken upon him a new obligation of a Souldier then he hath not the liberty to submit to a new Power as long as the old one keeps the field and giveth him means of subsistence either in his Armies or Garrisons for in this case he cannot complain of want of Protection and means to live as a Souldier But when that also failes a Souldier also may seek his Protection wheresoever he has most hope to have it and may lawfully submit himself to his new Master And so much for the Time when he may do it lawfully if hee will If therefore he doe it he is undoubtedly bound to be a true Subject For a Contract lawfully made cannot lawfully be broken By this also a man may understand when it is that men may be said to be Conquered and in what the nature of Conquest and the Right of a Conquerour consisteth For this Submission is it implyeth them all Conquest is not the Victory it self but the Acquisition by Victory of a Right over the persons of men He therefore that is slain is Overcome but not Conquered He that is taken and put into prison or chaines is not Conquered though Overcome for he is still an Enemy and may save himself if hee can But he that upon promise of Obedience hath his Life and Liberty allowed him is then Conquered and a Subject and not before The Romanes used to say that their Generall had Pacified such a Province that is to say in English Conquerea it and that the Countrey was Pacified by Victory when the people of it had promised Imperata facere that is To doe what the Romane People commanded them this was to be Conquered But this promise may be either expresse or tacite Expresse by Promise Tacite by other signes As for example a man that hath not been called to make such an expresse Promise because he is one whose power perhaps is not considerable yet if he live under their Protection openly hee is understood to submit himselfe to the Government But if he live there secretly he is lyable to any thing that may bee done to a Spie and Enemy of the State I say not hee does any Injustice for acts of open Hostility bear not that name but that he may be justly put to death Likewise if a man when his Country is conquered be out of it he is not Conquered nor Subject but if at his return he submit to the Government he is bound to obey it So that Conquest to define it is the Acquiring of the Right of Soveraignty by Victory Which Right is acquired in the peoples Submission by which they contract with the Victor promising Obedience for Life and Liberty In the 29. Chapter I have set down for one of the causes of the Dissolutions of Common-wealths their Imperfect Generation consisting in the want of an Absolute and Arbitrary Legislative Power for want whereof the Civill Soveraign is fain to handle the Sword of Justice unconstantly and as if it were too hot for him to hold One reason whereof which I have not there mentioned is this That they will all of them justifie the War by which their Power was at first gotten and whereon as they think their Right dependeth and not on the Possession As if for example the Right of the Kings of England did depend on the goodnesse of the cause of William the Conquerour and upon their lineall and directest Descent from him by which means there would perhaps be no tie of the Subjects obedience to their Soveraign at this day in all the world wherein whilest they needlessely think to justifie themselves they justifie all the successefull Rebellions that Ambition shall at any time raise against them and their Successors Therefore I put down for one of the most effectuall seeds of the Death of any State that the Conquerors require not onely a Submission of mens actions to them