King in Parliament And in some places of the world men have the Liberty of many wives in other places such Liberty is not allowed If a Subject have a controversie with his Soveraigne of debt or of right of possession of lands or goods or concerning any service required at his hands or concerning any penalty corporall or pecuniary grounded on a precedent Law he hath the same Liberty to sue for his right as if it were against a Subject and before such Judges as are appointed by the Soveraign For seeing the Soveraign demandeth by force of a former Law and not by vertue of his Power he declareth thereby that he requireth no more than shall appear to be due by that Law The sute therefore is not contrary to the will of the Soveraign and consequently the Subject hath the Liberty to demand the hearing of his Cause and sentence according to that Law But if he demand or take any thing by pretence of his Power there lyeth in that case no action of Law for all that is done by him in Vertue of his Power is done by the Authority of every Subject and consequently he that brings an action against the Soveraign brings it against himselfe If a Monarch or Soveraign Assembly grant a Liberty to all or any of his Subjects which Grant standing he is disabled to provide for their safety the Grant is voyd unlesse he directly renounce or transferre the Soveraignty to another For in that he might openly if it had been his will and in plain termes have renounced or transferred it and did not it is to be understood it was not his will but that the Grant proceeded from ignorance of the repugnancy between such a Liberty and the Soveraign Power and therefore the Soveraignty is still retayned and consequently all those Powers which are necessary to the exercising thereof such as are the Power of Warre and Peace of Judicature of appointing Officers and Councellours of levying Mony and the rest named in the 18th Chapter The Obligation of Subjects to the Soveraign is understood to last as long and no longer than the power lasteth by which he is able to protect them For the right men have by Nature to protect themselves when none else can protect them can by no Covenant be relinquished The Soveraignty is the Soule of the Common-wealth which once departed from the Body the members doe no more receive their motion from it The end of Obedience is Protection which wheresoever a man seeth it either in his own or in anothers sword Nature applyeth his obedience to it and his endeavour to maintaine it And though Soveraignty in the intention of them that make it be immortall yet is it in its own nature not only subject to violent death by forreign war but also through the ignorance and passions of men it hath in it from the very institution many seeds of a naturall mortality by Intestine Discord If a Subject be taken prisoner in war or his person or his means of life be within the Guards of the enemy and hath his life and corporall Libertie given him on condition to be Subject to the Victor he hath Libertie to accept the condition and having accepted it is the subject of him that took him because he had no other way to preserve himself The case is the same if he be deteined on the same termes in a forreign country But if a man be held in prison or bonds or is not trusted with the libertie of his bodie he cannot be understood to be bound by Covenant to subjection and therefore may if he can make his escape by any means whatsoever If a Monarch shall relinquish the Soveraignty both for himself and his heires His Subjects returne to the absolute Libertie of Nature because though Nature may declare who are his Sons and who are the nerest of his Kin yet it dependeth on his own will as hath been said in the precedent chapter who shall be his Heyr If therefore he will have no Heyre there is no Soveraignty nor Subjection The case is the same if he dye without known Kindred and without declaration of his Heyre For then there can no Heire be known and consequently no Subjection be due If the Soveraign Banish his Subject during the Banishment he is not Subject But he that is sent on a message or hath leave to travell is still Subject but it is by Contract between Soveraigns not by vertue of the covenant of Subjection For whosoever entreth into anothers dominion is Subject to all the Laws thereof unlesse he have a privilege by the amity of the Soveraigns or by speciall licence If a Monarch subdued by war render himself Subject to the Victor his Subjects are delivered from their former obligation and become obliged to the Victor But if he be held prisoner or have not the liberty of his own Body he is not understood to have given away the Right of Soveraigntie and therefore his Subjects are obliged to yield obedience to the Magistrates formerly placed governing not in their own name but in his For his Right remaining the question is only of the Administration that is to say of the Magistrates and Officers which if he have not means to name he is supposed to approve those which he himself had formerly appointed CHAP. XXII Of SYSTEMES Subject Politicall and Private HAving spoken of the Generation Forme and Power of a Common-wealth I am in order to speak next of the parts thereof And first of Systemes which resemble the similar parts or Muscles of a Body naturall By SYSTEMES I understand any numbers of men joyned in one Interest or one Businesse Of which some are Regular and some Irregular Regular are those where one Man or Assembly of men is constituted Representative of the whole number All other are Irregular Of Regular some are Absolute and Independent subject to none but their own Representative such are only Common-wealths Of which I have spoken already in the 5. last precedent chapters Others are Dependent that is to say Subordinate to some Soveraign Power to which every one as also their Representative is Subject Of Systemes subordinate some are Politicall and some Private Politicall otherwise Called Bodies Politique and Persons in Law are those which are made by authority from the Soveraign Power of the Common-wealth Private are those which are constituted by Subjects amongst themselves or by authoritie from a stranger For no authority derived from forraign power within the Dominion of another is Publique there but Private And of Private Systemes some are Lawfull some Unlawfull Lawfull are those which are allowed by the Common-wealth all other are Unlawfull Irregular Systemes are those which having no Representative consist only in concourse of People which if not forbidden by the Common-wealth nor made on evill designe such as are conflux of People to markets or shews or any other harmelesse end are Lawfull But when the
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
that word is understood Affliction for Sinne yet the Right of Afflicting is not alwayes derived from mens Sinne but from Gods Power This question Why Evill men often Prosper and Good men suffer Adversity has been much disputed by the Antient and is the same with this of ours by what Right God dispenseth the Prosperities and Adversities of this life and is of that difficulty as it hath shaken the faith not onely of the Vulgar but of Philosophers and which is more of the Saints concerning the Divine Providence How Good saith David is the God of Israel to those that are Upright in Heart and yet my feet were almost gone my treadings had well-nigh slipt for I was grieved at the Wicked when I saw the Ungodly in such Prosperity And Job how earnestly does he expostulate with God for the many Afflictions he suffered notwithstanding his Righteousnesse This question in the case of Job is decided by God himselfe not by arguments derived from Job's Sinne but his own Power For whereas the friends of Job drew their arguments from his Affliction to his Sinne and he defended himselfe by the conscience of his Innocence God himselfe taketh up the matter and having justified the Affliction by arguments drawn from his Power such as this Where wast thou when I layd the foundations of the earth and the like both approved Job's Innocence and reproved the Erroneous doctrine of his friends Conformable to this doctrine is the sentence of our Saviour concerning the man that was born Blind in these words Neither hath this man sinned nor his fathers but that the works of God might be made manifest in him And though it be said That Death entred into the world by sinne by which is meant that if Adam had never sinned he had never dyed that is never suffered any separation of his soule from his body it follows not thence that God could not justly have Afflicted him though he had not Sinned as well as he afflicteth other living creatures that cannot sinne Having spoken of the Right of Gods Soveraignty as grounded onely on Nature we are to consider next what are the Divine Lawes or Dictates of Naturall Reason which Lawes concern either the naturall Duties of one man to another or the Honour naturally due to our Divine Soveraign The first are the same Lawes of Nature of which I have spoken already in the 14. and 15. Chapters of this Treatise namely Equity Justice Mercy Humility and the rest of the Morall Vertues It remaineth therefore that we consider what Praecepts are dictated to men by their Naturall Reason onely without other word of God touching the Honour and Worship of the Divine Majesty Honour consisteth in the inward thought and opinion of the Power and Goodnesse of another and therefore to Honour God is to think as Highly of his Power and Goodnesse as is possible And of that opinion the externall signes appearing in the Words and Actions of men are called Worship which is one part of that which the Latines understand by the word Cultus For Cultus signifieth properly and constantly that labour which a man bestowes on any thing with a purpose to make benefit by it Now those things whereof we make benefit are either subject to us and the profit they yeeld followeth the labour we bestow upon them as a naturall effect or they are not subject to us but answer our labour according to their own Wills In the first sense the labour bestowed on the Earth is called Culture and the education of Children a Culture of their mindes In the second sense where mens wills are to be wrought to our purpose not by Force but by Compleasance it signifieth as much as Courting that is a winning of favour by good offices as by praises by acknowledging their Power and by whatsoever is pleasing to them from whom we look for any benefit And this is properly Worship in which sense Publicola is understood for a Worshipper of the People and Cultus Dei for the Worship of God From internall Honour consisting in the opinion of Power and Goodnesse arise three Passions Love which hath reference to Goodnesse and Hope and Fear that relate to Power And three parts of externall worship Praise Magnifying and Blessing The subject of Praise being Goodnesse the subject of Magnifying and Blessing being Power and the effect thereof Felicity Praise and Magnifying are signified both by Words and Actions By Words when we say a man is Good or Great By Actions when we thank him for his Bounty and obey his Power The opinion of the Happinesse of another can onely be expressed by words There be some signes of Honour both in Attributes and Actions that be Naturally so as amongst Attributes Good Just Liberall and the like and amongst Actions Prayers Thanks and Obedience Others are so by Institution or Custome of men and in some times and places are Honourable in others Dishonourable in others Indifferent such as are the Gestures in Salutation Prayer and Thanksgiving in different times and places differently used The former is Naturall the later Arbitrary Worship And of Arbitrary Worship there bee two differences For sometimes it is a Commanded sometimes Voluntary Worship Commanded when it is such as hee requireth who is Worshipped Free when it is such as the Worshipper thinks fit When it is Commanded not the words or gesture but the obedience is the Worship But when Free the Worship consists in the opinion of the beholders for if to them the words or actions by which we intend honour seem ridiculous and tending to contumely they are no Worship because no signes of Honour and no signes of Honour because a signe is not a signe to him that giveth it but to him to whom it is made that is to the spectator Again there is a Publique and a Private Worship Publique is the Worship that a Common-wealth performeth as one Person Private is that which a Private person exhibiteth Publique in respect of the whole Common-wealth is Free but in respect of Particular men it is not so Private is in secret Free but in the sight of the multitude it is never without some Restraint either from the Lawes or from the Opinion of men which is contrary to the nature of Liberty The End of Worship amongst men is Power For where a man seeth another worshipped he supposeth him powerfull and is the readier to obey him which makes his Power greater But God has no Ends the worship we do him proceeds from our duty and is directed according to our capacity by those rules of Honour that Reason dictateth to be done by the weak to the more potent men in hope of benefit for fear of dammage or in thankfulnesse for good already received from them That we may know what worship of God is taught us by the light of Nature I will begin with his Attributes Where First it is manifest we
Christ all shall bee made alive then all men shall be made to live on Earth for else the comparison were not proper Hereunto seemeth to agree that of the Psalmist Psal. 133. 3. Vpon Zion God commanded the blessing even Life for evermore for Zion is in Jerusalem upon Earth as also that of S. Joh. Rev. 2. 7. To him that overcommeth I will give to eat of the tree of life which is in the midst of the Paradise of God This was the tree of Adams Eternall life but his life was to have been on Earth The same seemeth to be confirmed again by St. Joh. Rev. 21. 2. where he saith I Iohn saw the Holy City New Ierusalem coming down from God out of heaven prepared as a Bride adorned for her husband and again v. 10. to the same effect As if he should say the new Jerusalem the Paradise of God at the coming again of Christ should come down to Gods people from Heaven and not they goe up to it from Earth And this differs nothing from that which the two men in white clothing that is the two Angels said to the Apostles that were looking upon Christ ascending Acts 1. 11. This same Iesus who is taken up from you into Heaven shall so come as you have seen him go up into Heaven Which soundeth as if they had said he should come down to govern them under his Father Eternally here and not take them up to govern them in Heaven and is conformable to the Restauration of the Kingdom of God instituted under Moses which was a Political government of the Jews on Earth Again that saying of our Saviour Mat. 22. 30. that in the Resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are as the Angels of God in heaven is a description of an Eternall Life resembling that which we lost in Adam in the point of Marriage For seeing Adam and Eve if they had not sinned had lived on Earth Eternally in their individuall persons it is manifest they should not continually have procreated their kind For if Immortals should have generated as Mankind doth now the Earth in a small time would not have been able to afford them place to stand on The Jews that asked our Saviour the question whose wife the woman that had married many brothers should be in the resurrection knew not what were the consequences of Life Eternall and therefore our Saviour puts them in mind of this consequence of Immortality that there shal be no Generation and consequētly no marriage no more then there is marriage or generatiō among the Angels The comparison between that Eternall life which Adam lost and our Saviour by his Victory over death hath recovered holdeth also in this that as Adam lost Eternall Life by his sin and yet lived after it for a time so the faithful Christian hath recovered Eternal Life by Christs passion though he die a natural death and remaine dead for a time namely till the Resurrection For as Death is reckoned from the Condemnation of Adam not from the Execution so Life is reckoned from the Absolution not from the Resurrection of them that are elected in Christ. That the place wherein men are to live Eternally after the Resurrection is the Heavens meaning by Heaven those parts of the world which are the most remote from Earth as where the stars are or above the stars in another Higher Heaven called Coelum Empyreum whereof there is no mention in Scripture nor ground in Reason is not easily to be drawn from any text that I can find By the Kingdome of Heaven is meant the Kingdom of the King that dwelleth in Heaven and his Kingdome was the people of Israel whom he ruled by the Prophets his Lieutenants first Moses and after him Eleazar and the Soveraign Priests till in the days of Samuel they rebelled and would have a mortall man for their King after the manner of other Nations And when our Saviour Christ by the preaching of his Ministers shall have perswaded the Jews to return and called the Gentiles to his obedience then shall there be a new Kingdom of Heaven because our King shall then be God whose throne is Heaven without any necessity evident in the Scripture that man shall ascend to his happinesse any higher than Gods footstool the Earth On the contrary we find written Ioh. 3. 13. that no man hath ascended into Heaven but he that came down from Heaven even the Son of man that is in Heaven Where I observe by the way that these words are not as those which go immediately before the words of our Saviour but of St. John himself for Christ was then not in Heaven but upon the Earth The like is said of David Acts 2. 34. where St. Peter to prove the Ascension of Christ using the words of the Psalmist Psal. 16. 10. Thou wilt not leave my soule in Hell not suffer thine Holy one to see corruption saith they were spoken not of David but of Christ and to prove it addeth this Reason For David is not ascended into Heaven But to this a man may easily answer and say that though their bodies were not to ascend till the generall day of Judgment yet their souls were in Heaven as soon as they were departed from their bodies which also seemeth to be confirmed by the words of our Saviour Luke 20. 37 38. who proving the Resurrection out of the words of Moses saith thus That the dead are raised even Moses shewed at the bush when he calleth the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Iacob For he is not a God of the Dead but of the Living for they all live to him But if these words be to be understood only of the Immortality of the Soul they prove not at all that which our Saviour intended to prove which was the Resurrection of the Body that is to say the Immortality of the Man Therefore our Saviour meaneth that those Patriarchs were Immortall not by a property consequent to the essence and nature of mankind but by the will of God that was pleased of his mere grace to bestow Eternall life upon the faithfull And though at that time the Patriarchs and many other faithfull men were dead yet as it is in the text they lived to God that is they were written in the Book of Life with them that were absolved of their sinnes and ordained to Life eternall at the Resurrection That the Soul of man is in its own nature Eternall and a living Creature inpedendent on the body or that any meer man is Immortall otherwise than by the Resurrection in the last day except Enos and Elias is a doctrine nor apparent in Scripture The whole 14. Chapter of Iob which is the speech not of his friends but of himselfe is a complaint of this Mortality of Nature and yet no contradiction of the Immortality at the Resurrection There is hope of a tree saith hee verse 7.
every Living Creature And likewise of Man God made him of the dust of the earth and breathed in his face the breath of Life factus est Homo in animam viventem that is and Man was made a Living Creature And after Noah came out of the Arke God saith hee will no more smite omnem animam viventem that is every Living Creature And Deut. 12. 23. Eate not the Bloud for the Bloud is the Soule that is the Life From which places if by Soule were meant a Substance Incorporeall with an existence separated from the Body it might as well be inferred of any other living Creature as of Man But that the Souls of the Faithfull are not of theirown Nature but by Gods speciall Grace to remaine in their Bodies from the Resurrection to all Eternity I have already I think sufficiently proved out of the Scriptures in the 38. Chapter And for the places of the New Testament where it is said that any man shall be cast Body and Soul into Hell fire it is no more than Body and Life that is to say they shall be cast alive into the perpetuall fire of Gehenna This window it is that gives entrance to the Dark Doctrine first of Eternall Torments and afterwards of Purgatory and consequently of the walking abroad especially in places Consecrated Solitary or Dark of the Ghosts of men deceased and thereby to the pretences of Exorcisme and Conjuration of Phantasmes as also of Invocation of men dead and to the Doctrine of Indulgences that is to say of exemption for a time or for ever from the fire of Purgatory wherein these Incorporeall Substances are pretended by burning to be cleansed and made fit for Heaven For men being generally possessed before the time of our Saviour by contagion of the Daemonology of the Greeks of an opinion that the Souls of men were substances distinct from their Bodies and therefore that when the Body was dead the Soulâ—… of every man whether godly or wicked must subsist somewhere by vertue of its own nature without acknowledging therein any supernaturall gift of Gods the Doctors of the Church doubted a long time what was the place which they were to abide in till they should be re-united to their Bodies in the Resurrection supposing for a while they lay under the Altars but afterward the Church of Rome found it more profitable to build for them this place of Purgatory which by some other Churches in this later age has been demolished Let us now consider what texts of Scripture seem most to confirm these three generall Errors I have here touched As for those which Cardinall Bellarmine hath alledged for the present Kingdome of God administred by the Pope than which there are none that make a better shew of proof I have already answered them and made it evident that the Kingdome of God instituted by Moses ended in the election of Saul After which time the Priest of his own authority never deposed any King That which the High Priest did to Athaliah was not done in his owne right but in the right of the young King Joash her Son But Solomon in his own right deposed the High Priest Abiathar and set up another in his place The most difficult place to answer of all those that can be brought to prove the Kingdome of God by Christ is already in this world is alledged not by Bellarmine nor any other of the Church of Rome but by Beza that will have it to begin from the Resurrection of Christ. But whether hee intend thereby to entitle the Presbytery to the Supreme Power Ecclesiasticall in the Common-wealth of Geneva and consequently to every Presbytery in every other Common-wealth or to Princes and other Civill Soveraigns I doe not know For the Presbytery hath challenged the power to Excomunicate their owne Kings and to bee the Supreme Moderators in Religion in the places where they have that form of Church government no lesse then the Pope callengeth it universally The words are Marke 9. 1. Verily I say unto you that there be some of them that stand here which shall not tast of death till they have seene the Kingdome of God come with power Which words if taken grammatically make it certaine that either some of those men that stood by Christ at that time are yet alive or else that the Kingdome of God must be now in this present world And then there is another place more difficult For when the Apostles after our Saviours Resurrection and immediately before his Ascension asked our Saviour saying Acts 1. 6. Wilt thou at this time restore again the Kingdome to Israel he answered them It is not for you to know the times and the seasons which the Father hath put in his own power But ye shall receive power by the comming of the Holy Ghost upon you and yee shall be my Martyrs witnesses both in Ierusalem in all Iudaea and in Samaria and unto the uttermost part of the Earth Which is as much as to say My Kingdome is not yet come nor shall you foreknow when it shall come for it shall come as a theefe in the night But I will send you the Holy Ghost and by him you shall have power to beare witnesse to all the world by your preaching of my Resurrection and the workes I have done and the doctrine I have taught that they may beleeve in me and expect eternall life at my comming againe How does this agree with the comming of Christs Kingdome at the Resurrection And that which St. Paul saies 1 Thessal 1. 9 10. That they turned from Idols to serve the living and true God and to waite for his Sonne from Heaven Where to waite for his Sonne from Heaven is to wait for his comming to be King in power which were not necessary if his Kingdome had beene then present Againe if the Kingdome of God began as Beza on that place Mark 9. 1. would have it at the Resurrection what reason is there for Christians ever since the Resurrection to say in their prayers Let thy Kingdome Come It is therefore manifest that the words of St. Mark are not so to be interpreted There be some of them that stand here saith our Saviour that shall not tast of death till they have seen the Kingdome of God come in power If then this Kingdome were to come at the Resurrection of Christ why is it said some of them rather than all For they all lived till after Christ was risen But they that require an exact interpretation of this text let them interpret first the like words of our Saviour to St. Peter concerning St. John chap. 21. 22. If I will that he tarry till I come what is that to thee upon which was grounded a report that hee should not dye Neverthelesse the truth of that report was neither confirmed as well grounded nor refuted as ill grounded on those words but left as a saying not understood
The same difficulty is also in the place of St. Marke And if it be lawfull to conjecture at their meaning by that which immediately followes both here and in St. Luke where the same is againe repeated it is not unprobable to say they have relation to the Transfiguration which is described in the verses immediately following where it is said that After six dayes Iesus taketh with him Peter and Iames and Iohn not all but some of his Disciples and leadeth them up into an high mountaine apart by themselves and was transfigured before them And his rayment became shining exceeding white as snow so as no Fuller on earth can white them And there appeared unto them Elias with Moses and they were talking with Iesus c. So that they saw Christ in Glory and Majestie as he is to come insomuch as They were sore afraid And thus the promise of our Saviour was accomplished by way of Vision For it was a Vision as may probably bee inferred out of St. Luke that reciteth the same story ch 9. ve 28. and saith that Peter and they that were with him were heavy with sleep But most certainly out of Matth. 17. 9. where the same is again related for our Saviour charged theÌ„ saying Tell no man the Vision untill the Son of man be Risen from the dead Howsoever it be yet there can from thence be taken no argument to prove that the Kingdome of God taketh beginning till the day of Judgement As for some other texts to prove the Popes Power over civill Soveraignes besides those of Bellarmine as that the two Swords that Christ and his Apostles had amongst them were the Spirituall and the Temporall Sword which they say St. Peter had given him by Christ And that of the two Luminaries the greater signifies the Pope and the lesser the King One might as well inferre out of the first verse of the Bible that by Heaven is meant the Pope and by Earth the King Which is not arguing from Scripture but a wanton insulting over Princes that came in fashion after the time the Popes were growne so secure of their greatnesse as to contemne all Christian Kings and Treading on the necks of Emperours to mocke both them and the Scripture in the words of the 91. Psalm Thou shalt Tread upon the Lion and the Adder the young Lion and the Dragon thou shalt Trample under thy feet As for the rites of Consecration though they depend for the most part upon the discretion and judgement of the governors of the Church and not upon the Scriptures yet those governors are obliged to such direction as the nature of the action it selfe requireth as that the ceremonies words and gestures be both decent and significant or at least conformable to the action When Moses consecrated the Tabernacle the Altar and the Vessels belonging to them Exod. 40. he anointed them with the Oyle which God had commanded to bee made for that purpose and they were holy There was nothing Exorcized to drive away Phantasmes The same Moses the civill Soveraigne of Israel when he consecrated Aaron the High Priest and his Sons did wash them with Water not Exorcized water put their Garments upon them and anointed them with Oyle and they were sanctified to minister unto the Lord in the Priests office which was a simple and decent cleansing and adorning them before hee presented them to God to be his servants When King Solomon the civill Soveraigne of Israel consecrated the Temple hee had built 2 Kings 8. he stood before all the â—…ongregation of Israel and having blessed them he gave thankes to God for putting into the heart of his father to build it and for giving to himselfe the grace to accomplish the same and then prayed unto him first to accept that House though it were not sutable to his infinite Greatnesse and to hear the prayers of his Servants that should pray therein or if they were absent towards it and lastly he offered a sacrifice of Peace-offering and the House was dedicated Here was no Procession the King stood still in his first place no Exorcised Water no Asperges me nor other impertinent application of words spoken upon another occasion but a decent and rationall speech and such as in making to God a present of his new built House was most conformable to the occasion We read not that St. John did Exorcize the Water of Jordan nor Philip the Water of the river wherein he baptized the Eunuch nor that any Pastor in the time of the Apostles did take his spittle and put it to the nose of the person to be Baptized and say In odorem suavitatis that is for a sweet savour unto the Lord wherein neither the Ceremony of Spittle for the uncleannesse nor the application of that Scripture for the levity can by any authority of man be justified To prove that the Soule separated from the Body liveth eternally not onely the Soules of the Elect by especiall grace and restauration of the Eternall Life which Adam lost by Sinne and our Saviour restored by the Sacrifice of himself to the Faithfull but also the Soules of Reprobates as a property naturally consequent to the essence of mankind without other grace of God but that which is universally given to all mankind there are divers places which at the first sight seem sufficiently to serve the turn but such as when I compare them with that which I have before Chapter 38. alledged out of the 14 of Iob seem to mee much more subject to a divers interpretation than the words of Iob. And first there are the words of Solomon Ecclesiastes 12. 7. Then shall the Dust return to Dust as it was and the Spirit shall return to God that gave it Which may bear well enough if there be no other text directly against it this interpretation that God onely knows but Man not what becomes of a mans spirit when he expireth and the same Solomon in the same Book Chap. 3. ver 20 21. delivereth the same sentence in the sense I have given it His words are All goe man and beast to the same place all are of the dust and all turn to dust again who knoweth that the spirit of Man goeth upward and that the spirit of the Beast goeth downward to the earth That is none knows but God Nor is it an unusuall phrase to say of things we understand not God Knows what and God Knows where That of Gen. 5. 24. Enoch walked with God and he was not for God took him which is expounded Heb. 13. 5. He was translated that he should not die and was not found because God had translated him For before his Translation he had this testimony 〈◊〉 he pleased God making as much for the Immortality of the Body as of the Soule proveth that this his translation was peculiar to them that please God not common to them with the wicked and depending on Grace not on Nature But
l. 36. for were r. where p. 166. l. 18. for benefit r. benefits p. 200. l. 48. dele also l. 49. for delivered r. deliver p. 203. l. 35. for other r. higher p. 204. l. 15. for and left r. if left l. 39. for write r. writt p. 206. l. 19. for of the r. over the. p. 234. l. 1. for but of r. but by mediation of l. 15. dele and. l. 38. for putting r. pulling p. 262. l. 19. for tisme r. Baptisme p. 268. l. 48. for that the r. that p. 271. l. 1. for observe r. obey l. 4. for contrary the r. contrary to the. p. 272. l. 36. for our Saviours of life r. of our Saviours life p. 275. l. 18. for if shall r. if he shall l. 30. for haven r. heaven l. 45. for of Church r. of the Church p. 276. l. 38. dele inter l. 46. dele are p. 285. l. 11. for he had r. he hath p. 287. l. 10. dele of p. 298. l. 36. for to ay r. to Lay. p. 361. l. 36. for him r. them THE INTRODUCTION NATURE the Art whereby God hath made and governes the World is by the Art of man as in many other things so in this also imitated that it can make an Artificial Animal For seeing life is but a motion of Limbs the begining whereof is in some principall part within why may we not say that all Automata Engines that move themselves by springs and wheeles as doth a watch have an artificiall life For what is the Heart but a Spring and the Nerves but so many Strâ—…gs and the â—…oynts but so many Wheeles giving motion to the whole Body such as was intended by the Artificer Art goes yet further imitating that Rationall and most excellent worke of Nature Maâ—… For by Art is created that great LEVIATHAN called a COMMON-WEALTH or STATE in latine CIVITAS which is but an Artificiall Man though of greater stature and strength than the Naturall for whose protection and defence it was intended and in which the Soveraignty is an Artificiall Soul as giving life and motion to the whole body The Magistrates and other Officers of Judicature and Execution artificiall Joynts Reward and Punishment by which fastned to the seate of the Soveraignty every joynt and member is moved to performe his duty are the Nerves that do the same in the Body Naturall The Wealth and Riches of all the particular members are the Strength Salus Populi the peoples safety its Businesse Counsellors by whom all things needfull for it to know are suggested unto it are the Memory Equity and Lawes an artificiall Reason and Will Concord Health Sedition Sicknesse and Civill war Death Lastly the Paâ—…ts and Covenants by which the parts of this Body Politique were at first made set together and united resemble that Fiat or the Let us make man pronounced by God in the Creation To describe the Nature of this Artificiall man I will consider First the Matter thereof and the Artificer both which is Man Secondly How and by what Covenants it is made what are the Rights and just Power or Authority of a Soveraigne and what it is that preserveth and dissolveth it Thirdly what is a Christian Common-wealth Lastly what is the Kingdome of Darkness Concerning the first there is a saying much usurped of late That Wisedome is acquired not by reading of Books but of Men. Consequently whereunto those persons that for the most part can give no other proof of being wise take great delight to shew what they think they have read in men by uncharitable censures of one another behind their backs But there is another saying not of late understood by which they might learn truly to read one another if they would take the pains and that is Nosâ—…e teipsum Read thy self which was not meant as it is now used to countenance either the barbarous state of men in power towards their inferiors or to encourage men of low degree to a sawcie behaviour towards their betters But to teach us that for the similitude of the thoughts and Passions of one man to the thoughts and Passions of another whosoever looketh into himself and considereth what he doth when he does think opine reason hope feare c and upon what grounds he shall thereby read and know what are the thoughts and Passions of all other men upon the like occasions I say the similitude of Passions which are the same in all men desire feare hope not the similitude of the objects of the Passions which are the things desired feared hoped c for these the constitution individuall and particular education do so vary and they are so easie to be kept from our knowledge that the characters of mans heart blotted and confounded as they are with dissembling lying counterfeiting and erroneous doctrines are legible onely to 〈◊〉 that 〈◊〉 hearts And though by mens actions wee do discover their designe sometimes yet to do it without comparing them with our own and distinguishing all circumstances by which the case may come to be altered is to decypher without a key and be for the most paâ—… deceived by too much trust or by too much diffidence as he that reads is himself a good or evil man But let one man read another by his actions never so perfectly it serves him onely with his acquaintance which are but few He that is to govern a whole Nation must read in himself not this or that particular man but Man-kind which though it be hard to do harder than to learn any Language or Science yet when I shall have set down my own reading orderly and perspicuously the pains left anoâ—…her will be onely to consider if he also find not the same in himself For this kind of Doctrine admitteth no other Demonstration OF MAN CHAP. I. Of SENSE COncerning the Thoughts of man I will consider them first Singly and afterwards in Trayne or dependance upon one another Singly they are every one a Representation or Apparence of some quality or other Accident of a body without us which is commonly called an Object Which Object worketh on the Eyes Eares and other parts of mans body and by diversity of working produceth diversity of Apparences The Originall of them all is that which we call SENSE For there is no conception in a mans mind which hath not at first totally or by parts been begotten upon the organs of Sense The rest are derived from that originall To know the naturall cause of Sense is not very necessary to the business now in hand and I have else-where written of the same at large Nevertheless to fill each part of my present method I will briefly deliver the same in this place The cause of Sense is the Externall Body or Object which presseth the organ proper to each Sense either immediatly as in the Tast and Touch or mediately as in Seeing Hearing and Smelling which pressure by the mediation of Nerves and other strings and membranes of the body continued
inwards to the Brain and Heart causeth there a resistance or counter-pressure or endeavour of the heart to deliver it self which endeavour because Outward seemeth to be some matter without And this seeming or fancy is that which men call Sense and consisteth as to the Eye in a Light or Colour figured To the Eare in a Sound To the Nostrill in an Odour To the Tongue and Palat in a Savour And to the rest of the body in Heat Cold Hardnesse Softnesse and such other qualities as we discern by Feeling All which qualities called Sensible are in the object that causeth them but so many several motions of the matter by which it presseth our organs diversly Neither in us that are pressed are they any thing else but divers motions for motion produceth nothing but motion But their apparence to us is Fancy the same waking that dreaming And as pressing rubbing or striking the Eye makes us fancy a light and pressing the Eare produceth a dinne so do the bodies also we see or hear produce the same by their strong though unobserved action For if those Colours and Sounds were in the Bodies or Objects that cause them they could not bee severed from them as by glasses and in Ecchoes by reflection wee see they are where we know the thing we see is in one place the apparence in another And though at some certain distance the reall and very object seem invâ—…sted with â—…he fancy it begâ—…ts iâ—… us Yet still the object is one thing the image or fancy is another So that Sense in all cases is nothing els but originall fancy caused as I have said by the pressure that is by the motion of externall things upon our Eyes Eares and other organs thereunto ordained But the Philosophy-schooles through all the Universities of Christendome grounded upon certain Texts of Aristotle teach another doctrine and say For the cause of Vision that the thing seen sendeth forth on every side a visible species in English a viâ—…ble 〈◊〉 apparition or aspect or a being seen the receiving whereof into the Eye is Seeing And for the cause of Hearing that the thing heard sendeth forth an Aâ—…dible species that is 〈◊〉 Audible aspeâ—…t or Audible being seen which entring at the Eare maketh Hearing Nay for the caâ—…se of Understanding also they say the thing Understood sendeth forth intelligible species that is an intelligible being seen which comming into the Understanding makes us Understand I say not this as disapproving the use of Universities but because I am to speak hereafter of their office in a Common-wealth I must let you see on all occasions by the way what things would be amended in them amongst which the frequency of insignificant Speech is one CHAP. II. Of IMAGINATION THat when a thing lies still unlesse somewhat els stirre it it will lye still for ever is a truth that no man doubts of But that when a thing is in motion it will eternally be in motion unless somewhat els stay it though the reason be the same namely that nothing can change it selfe is not so easily assented to For men measure not onely other men but all other things by themselves and because they find themselves subject after motion to pain and lassitude think every thing els growes weary of motion and seeks repose of its own accord little considering whether it be not some other motion wherein that desire of rest they find in themselves consisteth From hence it is that the Schooles say Heavy bodies fall downwards out of an appetite to rest and to conserve their nature in that place which is most proper for them ascribing appetite and Knowledge of what is good for their conservation which is more than man has to things inanimate absurdly When a Body is once in motion it moveth unless something els hinder it eternally and whatsoever hindreth it cannot in an instant but in time and by degrees quite extinguish it And as wee see in the water though the wind cease the waves give not over rowling for a long time after so also it happeneth in that motion which is made in the internall parts of a man then when he Sees Dreams c. For after the object is removed or the eye shut wee still retain an image of the thing seen though more obscure than when we see it And this is it the Latines call Imagination from the image made in seeing and apply the same though improperly to all the other senses But the Greeks call it Fancy which signifies apparence and is as proper to one sense as to another IMAGINATION therefore is nothing but decaying sense and is found in men and many other living Creatures aswell sleeping as waking The decay of Sense in men waking is not the decay of the motion made in sense but an obscuring of it in such manner as the light of the Sun obscureth the light of the Starres which staâ—…s do no less exercise their vertue by which they are visible in the day than in the night But because amongst many stroaks which our eyes eares and other organs receive from externall bodies the predominant onely is sensible therefore the light of the Sun being predominant we are not affected with the action of the starrs And any object being removed from our eyes though the impression it made in us remain yet other objects more present succeeding and working on us the Imagination of the past is obscured and made weak as the voyce of a man is in the noyse of the day From whence it followeth that the longer the time is after the sight or Sense of any object the weaker is the Imagination For the continuall change of mans body destroyes in time the parts which in sense were moved So that distance of time and of place hath one and the same effect in us For as at a great distance of place that which wee look at appears dimme and without distinction of the smaller parts and as Voyces grow weak and inarticulate so also after great distance of time our imagination of the Past is weak and wee lose for example of Cities wee have seen many particular Streets and of Actions many particular Circumstances This decaying sense when wee would express the thing it self I mean fancy it selfe wee call Imagination as I said before But when we would express the decay and signifie that the Sense is fading old and past it is called Memory So that Imagination and Memory are but one thing which for divers considerations â—…ath divers names Much memory or memory of many things is called Experience Againe Imagination being only of those things which have been formerly perceived by Sense either all at once or by parts at severall times The former which is the imagining the whole object as it was presented to the sense is simple Imagination as when one imagineth a man or horse which he hath seen before The other is Compounded as when from the sight of a man at one
is composed put together and made one signifie nothing at all For example if it be a false affirmation to say a quadrangle is round the word round quadrangle signifies nothing but is a meere sound So likewise if it be false to say that vertue can be powred or blown up and down the words In-Poâ—…red vertue In-blown vertue are as absurd and insignificant as a round quadrangle And therefore you shall hardly meet with a senslesse and insignificant word that is not made up of some Latin or Greek names A Frenchman seldome hears our Saviour called by the name of Parole but by the name of Verbe often yet Verbe and Parole differ no more but that one is Latin the other French When a man upon the hearing of any Speech hath those thoughts which the words of that Speech and their connexion were ordained and constituted to signifie Then he is said to understand it Understanding being nothing else but conception caused by Speech And therefore if Speech be peculiar to man as for ought I know it is then is Understanding peculiar to him also And therefore of absurd and false affirmations in case they be universall there can be no Understanding though many think they understand then when they do but repeat the words softly or con them in their mind What kinds of Speeches signifie the Appetites Aversions and Passions of mans mind and of their use and abuse I shall speak when I have spoken of the Passions The names of such things as affect us that is which please and displease us because all men be not alike affected with the same thing nor the same man at all times are in the common discourses of men of inconstant signification For seeing all names are imposed to signifie our conceptions and all our affections are but conceptions when we conceive the same things differently we can hardly avoyd different naming of them For though the nature of that we conceive be the same yet the diversity of our reception of it in respect of different constitutions of body and prejudices of opinion gives every thing a tincture of our different passions And therefore in reasoning a man must take heed of words which besides the signification of what we imagine of their nature have a signification also of the nature disposition and interest of the speaker such as are the names of Vertues and Vices For one man calleth Wisdome what another calleth feare and one cruelty what another justice one prodigality what another magnanimity and one gravity what another stupidicy c. And therefore such names can never be true grounds of any ratiocination No more can Metaphors and Tropes of speech but these are less dangerous because they profess theiâ—… inconstancy which the other do not CHAP. V. Of REASON and SCIENCE WHen a man Reasoneth hee does nothing else but conceive a summe totall from Addition of parcels or conceive a Remainder from Substraction of one summe from another which if it be done by Words is conceiving of the consequence of the names of all the parts to the name of the whole or from the names of the whole and one part to the name of the other part And though in some things as in numbers besides Adding and Substracting men name other operations as Multiplying and Dividing yet they are the same for Multiplication is but Adding together of things equall and Division but Substracting of one thing as often as we can These operations are not incident to Numbers onely but to all manner of things that can be added together and taken one out of another For as Arithmeticians teach to adde and substract in numbers so the Geometricians teach the same in lines figures solid and superficiall angles proportions times degrees of swiftnesse force power and the like The Logicians teach the same in Consequences of words adding together two Names to make an Affirmation and two Affirmations to make a Syllogisme and many Syllogismes to make a Demonstration and from the summe or Conclusion of a Syllogisme they substract one Proposition to finde the other Writers of Politiques adde together Pactions to find mens duties and Lawyers Lawes and facts to find what is right and wrong in the actions of private men In summe in what matter soever there is place for addition and substraction there also is place for Reason and where these have no place there Reason has nothing at all to do Out of all which we may define that is to say determine what that is which is meant by this word Reason when wee reckon it amongst the Faculties of the mind For REASON in this sense is nothing but Reckoning that is Adding and Substracting of the Consequences of generall names agreed upon for the marking and signifying of our thoughts I say marking them when we reckon by our selves and signifying when we demonstrate or approve our reckonings to other men And as in Arithmetique unpractised men must and Professors themselves may often erre and cast up false so also in any other subject of Reasoning the ablest most attentive and most practised men may deceive themselves and inferre false Conclusions Not but that Reason it selfe is alwayes Right Reason as well as Arithmetique is a certain and infallible Art But no one mans Reason nor the Reason of any one number of men makes the certaintie no more than an account is therefore well cast up because a great many men have unanimously approved it And therfore as when there is a controversy in an account the parties must by their own accord set up for right Reason the Reason of some Arbitrator or Judge to whose sentence they will both stand or their controversie must either come to blowes or be undecided for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature so is it also in all debates of what kind soever And when men that think themselves wiser than all others clamor and demand right Reason for judge yet seek no more but that things should be determined by no other mens reason but their own it is as intolerable in the society of men as it is in play after ttump is turned to use for trump on every occasion that suite whereof they have most in their hand For they do nothing els that will have every of their passions as it comes to bear sway in them to be taken for right Reason and that in their own controversies bewraying their want of right Reason by the claym they lay to it The Use and End of Reason is not the finding of the summe and truth of one or a few consequences remote from the first definitions and settled significations of names but to begin at these and proceed from one consequence to another For there can be no certainty of the last Conclusion without a certainty of all those Affirmations and Negations on which it was grounded and inferred As when a master of a family in taking an account casteth up the
and extravagant Passion proceedeth from the evill constitution of the organs of the Body or harme done them and sometimes the hurt and indisposition of the Organs is caused by the vehemence or long continuance of the Passion But in both cases the Madnesse is of one and the same nature The Passion whose violence or continuance maketh Madnesse is either great vaine-Glory which is commonly called Pride and selfe-conceipt or great Dejection of mind Pride subjecteth a man to Anger the excesse whereof is the Madnesse called RAGE and FURY And thus it comes to passe that excessive desire of Revenge when it becomes habituall hurteth the organs and becomes Rage That excessive love with jealousie becomes also Rage Excessive opinion of a mans own selfe for divine inspiration for wisdome learning forme and the like becomes Distraction and Giddinesse The same joyned with Envy Rage Vehement opinion of the truth of any thing contradicted by others Rage Dejection subjects a man to causelesse fears which is a Madnesse commonly called MELANCHOLY apparent also in divers manners as in haunting of solitudes and graves in superstitious behaviour and in fearing some one some another particular thing In summe all Passions that produce strange and unusuall behaviour are called by the generall name of Madnesse But of the severall kinds of Madnesse he that would take the paines might enrowle a legion And if the Excesses be madnesse there is no doubt but the Passions themselves when they tend to Evill are degrees of the same For example Though the effect of folly in them that are possessed of an opinion of being inspired be not visible alwayes in one man by any very extravagant action that proceedeth from such Passion yet when many of them conspire together the Rage of the whole multitude is visible enough For what argument of Madnesse can there be greater than to clamour strike and throw stones at our best friends Yet this is somewhat lesse than such a multitude will do For they will clamour fight against and destroy those by whom all their life-time before they have been protected and secured from injury And if this be Madnesse in the multitude it is the same in every particular man For as in the middest of the sea though a man perceive no sound of that part of the water next him yet he is well assured that part contributes as much to the Roaring of the Sea as any other part of the same quantity so also though wee perceive no great unquietnesse in one or two men yet we may be well assured that their singular Passions are parts of the Seditious roaring of a troubled Nation And if there were nothing else that bewrayed their madnesse yet that very arrogating such inspiration to themselves is argument enough If some man in Bedlam should entertaine you with sober discourse and you desire in taking leave to know what he were that you might another time requite his civility and he should tell you he were God the Father I think you need expect no extravagant action for argument of his Madnesse This opinion of Inspiration called commonly Private Spirit begins very often from some lucky finding of an Errour generally held by others and not knowing or not remembring by what conduct of reason they came to so singular a truth as they think it though it be many times an untruth they light on they presently admire themselves as being in the speciall grace of God Almighty who hath â—…evealed the same to them supernaturally by his Spirit Again that Madnesse is nothing else but too much appearing Passion may be gathered out of the effects of Wine which are the same with those of the evill disposition of the organs For the variety of behaviour in men that have drunk too much is the same with that of Mad-men some of them Raging others Loving others Laughing all extravagantly but according to their severall domineering Passions For the effect of the wine does but remove Dissimulation and take from them the sight of the deformity of their Passions For I believe the most sober men when they walk alone without care and employment of the mind would be unwilling the vanity and Extravagance of their thoughts at that time should be publiquely seen which is a confession that Passions unguided are for the most part meere Madnesse The opinions of the world both in antient and later ages concerning the cause of madnesse have been two Some deriving them from the Passions some from Daemons or Spirits either good or bad which they thought might enter into a man possesse him and move his organs in such strange and uncouth manner as mad-men use to do The former sort therefore called such men Mad-men but the Later called them sometimes Daemoniacks that is possessed with spirits sometimes Energumeni that is agitated or moved with spirits and now in Italy they are called not onely Pazzi Mad-men but also Spiritati men possest There was once a great conflux of people in Abdera a City of the Greeks at the acting of the Tragedy of Andromeda upon an extream hot day whereupon a great many of the spectators falling into Fevers had this accident from the heat and from the Tragedy together that they did nothing but pronounce Iambiques with the names of Perseus and Andromeda which together with the Fever was cured by the comming on of Winter And this madnesse was thought to proceed from the Passion imprinted by the Tragedy Likewise there raigned a fit of madnesse in another Graecian City which seized onely the young Maidens and caused many of them to hang themselves This was by most then thought an act of the Divel But one that suspected that contempt of life in them might proceed from some Passion of the mind and supposing they did not contemne also their honour gave counsell to the Magistrates to strip such as so hang'd themselves and let them hang out naked This the story sayes cured that madnesse But on the other side the same Graecians did often ascribe madnesse to the operation of the Eumenides or Furyes and sometimes of Ceres Phoebus and other Gods so much did men attribute to Phantasmes as to think them aëreal living bodies and generally to call them Spirits And as the Romans in this held the same opinion with the Greeks so also did the Jewes For they called mad-men Prophets or according as they thought the spirits good or bad Daemoniacks and some of them called both Prophets and Daemoniacks mad-men and some called the same man both Daemoniack and mad-man But for the Gentiles 't is no wonder because Diseases and Health Vices and Vertues and many naturall accidents were with them termed and worshipped as Daemons So that a man was to understand by Daemon as well sometimes an Ague as a Divell But for the Jewes to have such opinion is somewhat strange For neither Moses nor Abraham pretended to Prophecy by possession of a Spirit but from the voyce of God or by a
that this kind of Absurdity may rightly be numbred amongst the many sorts of Madnesse and all the time that guided by clear Thoughts of their worldly lust they forbear disputing or writing thus but Lucide Intervals And thus much of the Vertues and Defects Intellectuall CHAP. IX Of the Severall SUBIECTS of KNOWLEDGE THere are of KNOWLEDGE two kinds whereof one is Knowledge of Fact the other Knowledge of the Consequence of one Affirmation to another The former is nothing else but Sense and Memory and is Absolute Knowledge as when we see a Fact doing or remember it done And this is the Knowledge required in a Witnesse The later is called Science and is Conditionall as when we know that If the figure showne be a Circle then any straight line through the Center shall divide it into two equall parts And this is the Knowledge required in a Philosopher that is to say of him that pretends to Reasoning The Register of Knowledge of Fact is called History Whereof there be two sorts one called Naturall History which is the History of such Facts or Effects of Nature as have no Dependance on Mans Will Such as are the Histories of Metalls Plants Animals Regions and the like The other is Civill History which is the History of the Voluntary Actions of men in Common-wealths The Registers of Science are such Books as contain the Demonstrations of Consequences of one Affirmation to another and are commonly called Books of Philosophy whereof the sorts are many according to the diversity of the Matter And may be divided in such manner as I have divided them in the following Table SCIENCE that is Knowledge of Consequences which is called also PHILOSOPHY Consequences from the Accidents of Bodies Naturall which is called NATURALL PHILOSOPHY Consequences from the Accidents common to all Bodies Naturall which are Quantity and Motion Consequences from Quantity and Motion indeterminate which being the Principles or first foundation of Philosophy is called Philosophia Prima PHILOSOPH PRIMA Consequences from Motion and Quantity determined Consequences from Quantity and Motion determined By Figure ..... Mathematiques GEOMETRY ARITHMETI QU By Number .... Mathematiques GEOMETRY ARITHMETI QU Consequences from the Motion and Quantity of Bodies in speciall Consequences from the Motion and Quantity of the great parts of the World as the Earth and Starres Cosmography ASTRONOMY GEOGRAPHY Consequences from the Motion of Speciall kinds and Figures of Body Mechaniques Science of EN NEERS ARCHITECTUR NAVIGATION Doctrine of Weight PHYSIQUES or Consequences froÌ„ Qualities Consequences from the Qualities of Bodyes Transient such as sometimes appear sometimes vanish ............ METEOROLOG Consequences from the Qualities of Bodies Permanent Consequences from the Qualities of the Starres Consequences from the Light of the Starres Out of this and the Motion of the Sunne is made the Science of ...................... SCIOGRAPHY Consequences from the Influence of the Starres ............... ASTROLOGY Consequences of the Qualities from Liquid Bodies that fill the space between the Starres such as are the Ayre or substance aetheriall Consequences from the Qualities of Bodies Terrestriall Consequences from the parts of the Earth that are without Sense Consequences from the Qualities of Minerals as Stones Metalls c. Consequences from the Qualities of Vegetables Consequences from the Qualitiâ—…s of Animals Consequences from the Qualities of Animals in generall Consequences from Vision .... OPTIQUES Consequences from Sounds .... MUSIQUE Consequences from the rest of the Senses Consequences from the Qualities of Men in speciall Consequences from the Passions of Men ............ ETHIQUES Consequences from Speech In Magnifying Vilifying c. POETRY In Perswadiâ—…g RHETHORI QU In Reasoning ... LOGIQUE In Contracting The Science of 〈◊〉 and UNIUST Consequences from the Accidents of Politique Bodies which is called POLITIQUES and CIVILL PHILOSOPHY 1. Of Consequences from the Institution of COMMON-WEALTHS to the Rights and Duties of the Body Politique or Soveraigâ—… 2. Of Consequences from the same to the Duty and Right of the Subjects Place this Table between folio 40. and 41. CHAP. X. Of POWER WORTH DIGNITY HONOUR and WORTHINESSE THe POWER of a Man to take it Universally is his present means to obtain some future apparent Good And is either Originall or Instrumentall Naturall Power is the eminence of the Faculties of Body or Mind as extraordinary Strength Forme Prudence Arts Eloquence Liberality Nobility Instrumentall are those Powers which acquired by these or by fortune are means and Instruments to acquire more as Riches Reputation Friends and the secret working of God which men call Good Luck For the nature of Power is in this point like to Fame increasing as it proceeds or like the motion of heavy bodies which the further they go make still the more hast The Greatest of humane Powers is that which is compounded of the Powers of most men united by consent in one person Naturall or Civill that has the use of all their Powers depending on his will such as is the Power of a Common-wealth Or depending on the wills of each particular such as is the Power of a Faction or of divers factions leagued Therefore to have servants is Power To have friends is Power for they are strengths united Also Riches joyned with liberality is Power because it procureth friends and servants Without liberality not so because in this case they defend not but expose men to Envy as a Prey Reputation of power is Power because it draweth with it the adhaerence of those that need protection So â—…s Reputation of love of a mans Country called Popularity for the same Reason Also what quality soever maketh a man beloved or feared of many or the reputation of such quality is Power because it is a means to have the assistance and service of many Good successe is Power because it maketh reputation of Wisdome or good fortune which makes men either feare him or rely on him Affability of men already in power is encrease of Power because it gaineth love Reputation of Prudence in the conduct of Peace or War is Power because to prudent men we commit the government of our selves more willingly than to others Nobility is Power not in all places but onely in those Common-wealths where it has Priviledges for in such priviledges consisteth their Power Eloquence is power because it is seeming Prudence Forme is Power because being a promise of Good it recommendeth men to the favour of women and strangers The Sciences are small Power because not eminent and therefore not acknowledged in any man nor are at all but in a few and in them but of a few things For Science is of that nature as none can understand it to be but such as in a good measure have attayned it Arts of publique use as Fortification making of Engines and other Instruments of War because they conferre to Defence and Victory are Power And though the true Mother of them be Science namely the Mathematiques yet because they are brought into the Light by
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
bee Lawes and publike Officers armed to revenge all injuries shall bee done him what opinion he has of his fellow subjects when he rides armed of his fellow Citizens when he locks his dores and of his children and servants when he locks his chests Does he not there as much accuse mankind by his actions as I do by my words But neither of us accuse mans nature in it The Desires and other Passions of man are in themselves no Sin No more are the Actions that proceed from those Passions till they know a Law that forbids them which till Lawes be made they cannot know nor can any Law be made till they have agreed upon the Person that shall make it It may peradventure be thought there was never such a time nor condition of warre as this and I believe it was never generally so over all the world but there are many places where they live so now For the savage people in many places of America except the government of small Families the concord whereof dependeth on naturall lust have no government at all and live at this day in that brutish manner as I said before Howsoever it may be perceived what manner of life there would be where there were no common Power to feare by the manner of life which men that have formerly lived under a peacefull government use to degenerate into in a civill Warre But though there had never been any time wherein particular men were in a condition of warre one against another yet in all times Kings and Persons of Soveraigne authority because of their Independency are in continuall jealousies and in the state and posture of Gladiators having their weapons pointing and their eyes fixed on one another that is their Forts Garrisons and Guns upon the Frontiers of their Kingdomes and continuall Spyes upon their neighbours which is a posture of War But because they uphold thereby the Industry of their Subjects there does not follow from it that misery which accompanies the Liberty of particular men To this warre of every man against every man this also is consequent that nothing can be Unjust The notions of Right and Wrong Justice and Injustice have there no place Where there is no common Power there is no Law where no Law no Injustice Force and Fraud are in warre the two Cardinall vertues Justice and Injustice are none of the Faculties neither of the Body nor Mind If they were they might be in a man that were alone in the world as well as his Senses and Passions They are Qualities that relate to men in Society not in Solitude It is consequent also to the same condition that there be no Propriety no Dominion no Mine and Thine distinct but onely that to be every mans that he can get and for so long as he can keep it And thus much for the ill condition which man by meer Nature is actually placed in though with a possibility to come out of it consisting partly in the Passions partly in his Reason The Passions that encline men to Peace are Feare of Death Desire of such things as are necessary to commodious living and a Hope by their Industry to obtain them And Reason suggesteth convenient Articles of Peace upon which men may be drawn to agreement These Articles are they which otherwise are called the Lawes of Nature whereof I shall speak more particularly in the two following Chapters CHAP. XIV Of the first and sâ—…cond NATURALL LAWES and of CONTRACTS THe RIGHT OF NATURE which Writers commonly call Jus Naturale is the Liberty each man hath to use his own power as he will himselfe for the preservation of his own Nature that is to say of his own Life and consequently of doing any thing which in his own Judgement and Reason hee shall conceive to be the aptest means thereunto By LIBERTY is understood according to the proper signification of the word the absence of externall Impediments which Impediments may oft take away part of a mans power to do what hee would but cannot hinder him from using the power left him according as his judgement and reason shall dictate to him A LAW OF NATURE Lex Naturalis is a Precept or generall Rule found out by Reason by which a man is forbidden to do that which is destructive of his life or taketh away the means of preserving the same and to omit that by which he thinketh it may be best preserved For though they that speak of this subject use to confound Jus and Lex Right and Law yet they ought to be distinguished because RIGHT consisteth in liberty to do or to forbeare Whereas LAW determineth and bindeth to one of them so that Law and Right differ as much as Obligation and Liberty which in one and the same matter are inconsistent And because the condition of Man as hath been declared in the precedent Chapter is a condition of Warre of every one against every one in which case every one is governed by his own Reason and there is nothing he can make use of that may not be a help unto him in preserving his life against his enemyes It followeth that in such a condition every man has a Right to every thing even to one anothers body And therefore as long as this naturall Right of every man to every thing endureth there can be no security to any man how strong or wise soever he be of living out the time which Nature ordinarily alloweth men to live And consequently it is a precept or generall rule of Reason That every man ought to endeavour Peace as farre as he has hope of obtaining it and when he cannot obtain it that he may seek and use all helps and advantages of Warre The first branch of which Rule containeth the first and Fundamentall Law of Nature which is to seek Peace and follow it The Second the summe of the Right of Nature which is By all means we can to defend our selves From this Fundamentall Law of Nature by which men are commanded to endeavour Peace is derived this second Law That a man be willing when others are so too as farre-forth as for Peace and defence of himselfe he shall think it necessary to lay down this right to all things and be contented with so much liberty against other men as he would allow other men against himselfe For as long as every man holdeth this Right of doing any thing he liketh so long are all men in the condition of Warre But if other men will not lay down their Right as well as he then there is no Reason for any one to devest himselfe of his For that were to expose himselfe to Prey which no man is bound to rather than to dispose himselfe to Peace This is that Law of the Gospell Whatsoever you require that others should do to you that do ye to them And that Law of all men Quod tibi fieri non vis
Intention is evill or if the number be considerable unknown they are Unlawfull In Bodies Politique the power of the Representative is alwaies Limited And that which prescribeth the Limits thereof is the Power Soveraign For Power Unlimited is absolute Soveraignty And the Soveraign in every Commonwealth is the absolute Representative of all the subjects and therefore no other can be Representative of any part of them but so far forth as he shall give leave And to give leave to a Body Politique of Subjects to have an absolute Representative to all intents and purposes were to abandon the government of so much of the Commonwealth and to divide the Dominion contrary to their Peace and Defence which the Soveraign cannot be understood to doe by any Grant that does not plainly and directly discharge them of their subjection For consequences of words are not the signes of his will when other consequences are signes of the contrary but rather signes of errour and misreckonning to which all mankind is too prone The bounds of that Power which is given to the Representative of a Bodie Politique are to be taken notice of from two things One is their Writt or Letters from the Soveraign the other is the Law of the Common-wealth For though in the Institution or Acquisition of a Common-wealth which is independent there needs no Writing because the Power of the Representative has there no other bounds but such as are set out by the unwritten Law of Nature yet in subordinate bodies there are such diversities of Limitation necessary concerning their businesses times and places as can neither be remembred without Letters nor taken notice of unlesse such Letters be Patent that they may be read to them and withall sealed or testified with the Seales or other permanent signes of the Authority Soveraign And because such Limitation is not alwaies easie or perhaps possible to be described in writing the ordinary Lawes common to all Subjects must determine what the Representative may lawfully do in all Cases where the Letters themselves are silent And therefore In a Body Politique if the Representative be one man whatsoever he does in the Person of the Body which is not warranted in his Letters nor by the Lawes is his own act and not the act of the Body nor of any other Member thereof besides himselfe Because further than his Letters or the Lawes limit he representeth no mans person but his own But what he does according to these is the act of every one For of the Act of the Soveraign every one is Author because he is their Representative unlimited and the act of him that recedes not from the Letters of the Soveraign is the act of the Soveraign and therefore every member of the Body is Author of it But if the Representative be an Assembly whatsoever that Assembly shall Decree not warranted by their Letters or the Lawes is the act of the Assembly or Body Politique and the act of every one by whose Vote the Decree was made but not the act of any man that being present Voted to the contrary nor of any man absent unlesse he Voted it by procuration It is the act of the Assembly because Voted by the major part and if it be a crime the Assembly may be punished as farre-forth as it is capable as by dissolution or forfeiture of their Letters which is to such artificiall and fictitious Bodies capitall or if the Assembly have a Common stock wherein none of the Innocent Members have propriety by pecuniary Mulct For from corporall penalties Nature hath exempted all Bodies Politique But they that gave not their Vote are therefore Innocent because the Assembly cannot Represent any man in things unwarranted by their Letters and consequently are involved in their Votes If the person of the Body Politique being in one man borrow mony of a stranger that is of one that is not of the same Body for no Letters need limit borrowing seeing it is left to mens own inclinations to limit lending the debt is the Representatives For if he should have Authority from his Letters to make the members pay what he borroweth he should have by consequence the Soveraignty of them and therefore the grant were either voyd as proceeding from Errour commonly incident to humane Nature and an unsufficient signe of the will of the Granter or if it be avowed by him then is the Representer Soveraign and falleth not under the present question which is onely of Bodies subordinate No member therefore is obliged to pay the debt so borrowed but the Representative himselfe because he that lendeth it being a stranger to the Letters and to the qualification of the Body understandeth those onely for his debtors that are engaged and seeing the Representer can ingage himselfe and none else has him onely for Debtor who must therefore pay him out of the common stock if there be any or if there be none out of his own estate If he come into debt by Contract or Mulct the case is the same But when the Representative is an Assembly and the debt to a stranger all they and onely they are responsible for the debt that gave their votes to the borrowing of it or to the Contract that made it due or to the fact for which the Mulct was imposed because every one of those in voting did engage himselfe for the payment For he that is author of the borrowing is obliged to the payment even of the whole debt though when payd by any one he be discharged But if the debt be to one of the Assembly the Assembly onely is obliged to the payment out of their common stock if they have any For having liberty of Vote if he Vote the Mony shall be borrowed he Votes it shall be payd If he Vote if shall not be borrowed or be absent yet because in lending he voteth the borrowing he contradicteth his former Vote and is obliged by the later and becomes both borrower and lender and consequently cannot demand payment from any particular man but from the common Treasure onely which fayling he hath no remedy nor complaint but against himselfe that being privy to the acts of the Assembly and to their means to pay and not being enforced did neverthelesse through his own folly lend his mony It is manifest by this that in Bodies Politique subordinate and subject to a Soveraign Power it is sometimes not onely lawfull but expedient for a particular man to make open protestation against the decrees of the Representative Assembly and cause their dissent to be Registred or to take witnesse of it because otherwise they may be obliged to pay debts contracted and be responsible for crimes committed by other men But in a Soveraign Assembly that liberty is taken away both because he that protesteth there denies their Soveraignty and also because whatsoever is commanded by the Soverign Power is as to the Subject though not so alwayes
Law there whatsoever is inflicted hath the nature of Punishment For he that goes about the violation of a Law wherein no penalty is determined expecteth an indeterminate that is to say an arbitrary Punishment Ninthly Harme inflicted for a Fact done before there was a Law that forbad it is not Punishment but an act of Hostility For before the Law there is no transgression of the Law But Punishment supposeth a fact judged to have been a transgression of the Law Therefore Harme inflicted before the Law made is not Punishment but an act of Hostility Tenthly Hurt inflicted on the Representative of the Common-wealth is not Punishment but an act of Hostility Because it is of the nature of Punishment to be inflicted by publique Authority which is the Authority only of the Representative it self Lastly Harme inflicted upon one that is a declared enemy fals not under the name of Punishment Because seeing they were either never subject to the Law and therefore cannot transgresse it or having been subject to it and professing to be no longer so by consequence deny they can transgresse it all the Harmes that can be done them must be taken as acts of Hostility But in declared Hostility all infliction of evill is lawfull From whence it followeth that if a subject shall by fact or word wittingly and deliberatly deny the authority of the Representative of the Common-wealth whatsoever penalty hath been formerly ordained for Treason he may lawfully be made to suffer whatsoever the Representative will For in denying subjection he denyes such Punishment as by the Law hath been ordained and therefore suffers as an enemy of the Common-wealth that is according to the will of the Representative For the Punishments set down in the Law are to Subjects not to Enemies such as are they that having been by their own act Subjects deliberately revolting deny the Soveraign Power The first and most generall distribution of Punishments is into Divine and Humane Of the former I shall have occasion to speak in a more convenient place hereafter Humane are those Punishments that be inflicted by the Commandement of Man and are either Corporall or Pecuâ—…ary or Ignominy or Imprisonment or Exile or mixt of these Corporall Punishment is that which is inflicted on the body directly and according to the intention of him that inflicteth it such as are stripes or wounds or deprivation of such pleasures of the body as were before lawfully enjoyed And of these some be Capitall some Lesse than Capitall Capitall is the Infliction of Death and that either simply or with torment Lesse than Capitall are Stripes Wounds Chains and any other corporall Paine not in its own nature mortall For if upon the Infliction of a Punishment death â—…ollow not in the intention of the Inflicter the Punishment is not to bee esteemed Capitall though the harme prove mortall by an accident not to be foreseen in which case death is not inflicted but hastened Pecuniary Punishment is that which consisteth not only in the deprivation of a Summe of Mony but also of Lands or any other goods which are usually bought and sold for mony And in case the Law that ordaineth such a punishment be made with design to gather mony from such as shall transgresse the same it is not properly a Punishment but the Price of priviledge and exemption from the Law which doth not absolutely forbid the fact but only to those that are not able to pay the mony except where the Law is Naturall or part of Religion for in that case it is not an exemption from the Law but a transgression of it As where a Law exacteth a Pecuniary mulct of them that take the name of God in vaine the payment of the mulct is not the price of a dispensation to sweare but the Punishment of the transgression of a Law undispensable In like manner if the Law impose a Summe of Mony to be payd to him that has been Injured this is but a satisfaction for the hurt done him and extinguisheth the accusation of the party injured not the crime of the offender Ignominy is the infliction of such Evill as is made Dishonorable or the deprivation of such Good as is made Honourable by the Common-wealth For there be some things Honorable by Nature as the effects of Courage Magnamity Strength Wisdome and other abilities of body and mind Others made Honorable by the Common-wealth as Badges Titles Offices or any other singular marke of the Soveraigns favour The former though they may faile by nature or accident cannot be taken away by a Law and therefore the losse of them is not Punishment But the later may be taken away by the publique authority that made them Honorable and are properly Punishments Such are degrading men condemned of their Badges Titles and Offices or declaring them uncapable of the like in time to come Imprisonment is when a man is by publique Authority deprived of liberty and may happen from two divers ends whereof one is the safe custody of a man accused the other is the inflicting of paine on a man condemned The former is not Punishment because no man is supposed to be Punisht before he be Judicially heard and declared guilty And therefore whatsoever hurt a man is made to suffer by bonds or restraint before his cause be heard over and above that which is necessary to assure his custody is against the Law of Nature But the later is Punishment because Evill and inflicted by publique Authority for somewhat that has by the same Authority been Judged a Transgression of the Law Under this word Imprisoment I comprehend all restraint of motion caused by an externall obstacle be it a House which is called by the general name of a Prison or an Iland as when men are said to be confined to it or a place where men are set to worke as in old time men have been condemned to Quarries and in these times to Gallies or be it a Chaine or any other such impediment Exile Banishment is when a man is for a crime condemned to depart out of the dominion of the Common-wealth or out of a certaine part thereof and during a prefixed time or for ever not to return into it and seemeth not in its own nature without other circumstances to be a Punishment but rather an escape or a publique commandement to avoid Punishment by flight And Cicero sayes there was never any such Punishment ordained in the City of Rome but cals it a refuge of men in danger For if a man banished be neverthelesse permitted to enjoy his Goods and the Revenue of his Lands the meer change of ayr is no Punishment nor does it tend to that benefit of the Common-wealth for which all Punishments are ordained that is to say to the forming of mens wils to the observation of the Law but many times to the dammage of the Common-wealth For a Banished man is a lawfull
Church supposed to be that Kingdom of his to which we are addressed in the Gospel is the Doctrine that it is necessary for a Christian King to receive his Crown by a Bishop as if it were from that Ceremony that he derives the clause of Dei gratiâ in his title and that then onely he is made King by the favour of God when he is crowned by the authority of Gods universall Vicegerent on earth and that every Bishop whosoever be his Soveraign taketh at his Consecration an oath of absolute Obedience to the Pope Consequent to the same is the Doctrine of the fourth Councell of Lateran held under Pope Innocent the third Chap. 3. de Haereticis That if a King at the Popes admonition doe not purge his Kingdome of Haeresies and being excommunicate for the same doe not give satisfaction within a year his Subjects are absolved of the bond of their obedience Where by Haeresies are understood all opinions which the Church of Rome hath forbidden to be maintained And by this means as often as there is any repugnancy between the Politicall designes of the Pope and other Christian Princes as there is very often there ariseth such a Mist amongst their Subjects that they know not a stranger that thrusteth himself into the throne of their lawfull Prince from him whom they had themselves placed there and in this Darknesse of mind are made to fight one against another without discerning their enemies from their friends under the conduct of another mans ambition From the same opinion that the present Church is the Kingdome of God it proceeds that Pastours Deacons and all other Ministers of the Church take the name to themselves of the Clergy giving to other Christians the name of Laity that is simply People For Clergy signifies those whose maintenance is that Revenue which God having reserved to himselfe during his Reigne over the Israelites assigned to the tribe of Levi who were to be his publique Ministers and had no portion of land set them out to live on as their brethren to be their inheritance The Pope therefore pretending the present Church to be as the Realme of Israel the Kingdome of God challenging to himselfe and his subordinate Ministers the like revenue as the Inheritance of God the name of Clergy was sutable to that claime And thence it is that Tithes and other tributes paid to the Levites as Gods Right amongst the Israelites have a long time been demanded and taken of Christians by Ecclesiastiques Iure divino that is in Gods Right By which meanes the people every where were obliged to a double tribute one to the State another to the Clergy whereof that to the Clergy being the tenth of their revenue is double to that which a King of Athens and esteemed a Tyrant exacted of his subjects for the defraying of all publique charges For he demanded no more but the twentieth part and yet abundantly maintained therewith the Commonwealth And in the Kingdome of the Iewes during the Sacerdotall Reigne of God the Tithes and Offerings were the whole Publique Revenue From the same mistaking of the present Church for the Kingdom of God came in the distinction betweene the Civill and the Canon Laws The Civil Law being the Acts of Soveraigns in their own Dominions and the Canon Law being the Acts of the Pope in the same Dominions Which Canons though they were but Canons that is Rules Propounded and but voluntarily received by Christian Princes till the translation of the Empire to Charlemain yet afterwards as the power of the Pope encreased became Rules Commanded and the Emperours themselves to avoyd greater mischiefes which the people blinded might be led into were forced to let them passe for Laws From hence it is that in all Dominions where the Popes Ecclesiasticall power is entirely received Jewes Turkes and Gentiles are in the Roman Church tolerated in their Religion as farre forth as in the exercise and profession thereof they offend not against the civill power whereas in a Christian though a stranger not to be of the Roman Religion is Capitall because the Pope pretendeth that all Christians are his Subjects For otherwise it were as much against the law of Nations to persecute a Christian stranger for professing the Religion of his owne country as an Infidell or rather more in as much as they that are not against Christ are with him From the same it is that in every Christian State there are certaine men that are exempt by Ecclesiasticall liberty from the tributes and from the tribunals of the Civil State for so are the secular Clergy besides Monks and Friars which in many places bear so great a proportion to the common people as if need were there might be raised out of them alone an Army sufficient for any warre the Church militant should imploy them in against their owne or other Princes A second generall abuse of Scripture is the turning of Consecration into Conjuration or Enchantment To Consecrate is in Scripture to Offer Give or Dedicate in pious and decent language and gesture a man or any other thing to God by separating of it from common use that is to say to Sanctifie or make it Gods and to be used only by those whom God hath appointed to be his Publike Ministers as I have already proved at large in the 35. Chapter and thereby to change not the thing Consecrated but onely the use of it from being Profane and common to be Holy and peculiar to Gods service But when by such words the nature or qualitie of the thing it selfe is pretended to be changed it is not Consecration but either an extraordinary worke of God or a vaine and impious Conjuration But seeing for the frequency of pretending the change of Nature in their Consecrations it cannot be esteemed a work extraordinary it is no other than a Conjuration or Incantation whereby they would have men to beleeve an alteration of Nature that is not contrary to the testimony of mans Sight and of all the rest of his Senses As for example when the Priest in stead of Consecrating Bread and Wine to Gods peculiar service in the Sacrament of the Lords Supper which is but a separation of it from the common use to signifie that is to put men in mind of their Redemption by the Passion of Christ whose body was broken and blood shed upon the Crosse for our transgressions pretends that by saying of the words of our Saviour This is my Body and This is my Blood the nature of Bread is no more there but his very Body notwithstanding there appeareth not to the Sight or other Sense of the Receiver any thing that appeared not before the Consecration The Egyptian Conjurers that are said to have turned their Rods to Serpents and the Water into Bloud are thought but to have deluded the senses of the Spectators by a false shew of things yet are esteemed Enchanters But what should wee have thought
on the contrary what interpretation shall we give besides the literall sense of the words of Solomon Eccles. 3. 19. That which befalleth the Sons of Men befalleth Beasts even one thing befalleth them as the one dyeth so doth the other yea they have all one breath one spirit so that a Man hath no praeeminence above a Beast for all is vanity By the literall sense here is no Naturall Immortality of the Soule nor yet any repugnancy with the Life Eternall which the Elect shall enjoy by Grace And chap. 4. ver 3. Better is he that hath not yet been than both they that is than they that live or have lived which if the Soule of all them that have lived were Immortall were a hard saying for then to have an Immortall Soule were worse than to have no Soule at all And againe Chapt. 9. 5. The living know they shall die but the dead know not any thing that is Naturally and before the resurrection of the body Another place which seems to make for a Naturall Immortality of the Soule is that where our Saviour saith that Abraham Isaac and Jacob are living but this is spoken of the promise of God and of their certitude to rise again not of a Life then actuall and in the same sense that God said to Adam that on the day hee should eate of the forbidden fruit he should certainly die from that time forward he was a dead man by sentence but not by execution till almost a thousand years after So Abraham Isaac and Jacob were alive by promise then when Christ spake but are not actually till the Resurrection And the History of Dives and Lazarus make nothing against this if wee take it as it is for a Parable But there be other places of the New Testament where an Immortality seemeth to be directly attributed to the wicked For it is evident that they shall all rise to Judgement And it is said besides in many places that they shall goe into Everlasting fire Everlasting torments Everlasting punishments and that the worm of conscience never dyeth and all this is comprehended in the word Everlasting Death which is ordinarily interpreted Everlasting Life in torments And yet I can find no where that any man shall live in torments Everlastingly Also it seemeth hard to say that God who is the Father of Mercies that doth in Heaven and Earth all that hee will that hath the hearts of all men in his disposing that worketh in men both to doe and to will and without whose free gift a man hath neither inclination to good nor repentance of evill should punish mens transgressions without any end of time and with all the extremity of torture that men can imagine and more We are therefore to consider what the meaning is of Everlasting Fire and other the like phrases of Scripture I have shewed already that the Kingdome of God by Christ beginneth at the day of Judgment That in that day the Faithfull shall rise again with glorious and spirituall Bodies and bee his Subjects in that his Kingdome which shall be Eternall That they shall neither marry nor be given in marriage nor eate and drink as they did in their naturall bodies but live for ever in their individuall persons without the specificall eternity of generation And that the Reprobates also shall rise again to receive punishments for their sins As also that those of the Elect which shall be alive in their earthly bodies at that day shall have their bodies suddenly changed and made spirituall and Immortall But that the bodies of the Reprobate who make the Kingdome of Satan shall also be glorious or spirituall bodies or that they shall bee as the Angels of God neither eating nor drinking nor engendring or that their life shall be Eternall in their individuall persons as the life of every faithfull man is or as the life of Adam had been if hee had not sinned there is no place of Scripture to prove it save onely these places concerning Eternall Torments which may otherwise be interpreted From whence may be inferred that as the Elect after the Resurrection shall be restored to the estate wherein Adam was before he had sinned so the Reprobate shall be in the estate that Adam and his posterity were in after the sin committed saving that God promised a Redeemer to Adam and such of his seed as should trust in him and repent but not to them that should die in their sins as do the Reprobate These things considered the texts that mention Eternall Fire Eternall Torments or the Worm that never dieth contradict not the Doctrine of a Second and Everlasting Death in the proper and naturall sense of the word Death The Fire or Torments prepared for the wicked in Gehenna Tophet or in what place soever may continue for ever and there may never want wicked men to be tormented in them though not every nor any one Eternally For the wicked being left in the estate they were in after Adams sin may at the Resurrection live as they did marry and give in marriage and have grosse and corruptible bodies as all mankind now have and consequently may engender perpetually after the Resurrection as they did before For there is no place of Scripture to the contrary For St. Paul speaking of the Resurrection 1 Cor. 15. understandeth it onely of the Resurrection to Life Eternall and not the Resurrection to Punishment And of the first he saith that the Body is Sown in Corruption raised in Incorruption sown in Dishonour raised in Honour sown in Weaknesse raised in Power sown a Naturall body raised a Spirituall body There is no such thing can be said of the bodies of them that rise to Punishment So also our Saviour when hee speaketh of the Nature of Man after the Resurrection meaneth the Resurrection to Life Eternall not to Punishment The text is Luke 20. verses 34. 35 36. a fertile text The Children of this world marry and are given in marriage but they that shall be counted worthy to obtaine that world and the Resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage Neither can they die any more for they are equall to the Angells and are the Children of God being the Children of the Resurrection The Children of this world that are in the estate which Adam left them in shall marry and be given in marriage that is corrupt and generate successively which is an Immortality of the Kind but not of the Persons of men They are not worthy to be counted amongst them that shall obtain the next world and an absolute Resurrection from the dead but onely a short time as inmates of that world and to the end onely to receive condign punishment for their contumacy The Elect are the onely children of the Resurrection that is to say the sole heirs of Eternall Life they only can die no more it is they that are equall to the Angels and that are the children of God
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
God worshippeth with Divine Worship They that seek the distinction of Divine and Civill Worship not in the intention of the Worshipper but in the Words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 deceive themselves For whereas there be two sorts of Servants that sort which is of those that are absolutely in the power of their Masters as Slaves taken in war and their Issue whose bodies are not in their own power their lives depending on the Will of their Masters in such manner as to forfeit them upon the least disobedience and that are bought and sold as Beasts were called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is properly Slaves and their Service 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The other which is of those that serve for hire or in hope of benefit from their Masters voluntarily are called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is Domestique Servants to whose service the Masters have no further right than is contained in the Covenants made betwixt them These two kinds of Servants have thus much common to them both that their labour is appointed them by another And the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is the generall name of both signifying him that worketh for another whether as a Slave or a voluntary Servant So that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifieth generally all Service but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the service of Bondmen onely and the condition of Slavery And both are used in Scripture to signifie our Service of God promiscuously 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because we are Gods Slaves 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because wee Serve him and in all kinds of Service is contained not onely Obedience but also Worship that is such actions gestures and words as signifie Honor. An IMAGE in the most strict signification of the word is the Resemblance of some thing visible In which sense the Phantasticall Formes Apparitions or Seemings of visible Bodies to the Sight are onely Images such as are the Shew of a man or other thing in the Water by Reflexion or Refraction or of the Sun or Stars by Direct Vision in the Air which are nothing reall in the things seen nor in the place where they seem to bee nor are their magnitudes and figures the same with that of the object but changeable by the variation of the organs of Sight or by glasses and are present oftentimes in our Imagination and in our Dreams when the object is absent or changed into other colours and shapes as things that depend onely upon the Fancy And these are the Images which are originally and most properly called Ideas and IDOLS and derived from the language of the Graecians with whom the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifieth to See They are also called PHANTASMES which is in the same language Apparitions And from these Images it is that one of the faculties of mans Nature is called the Imagination And from hence it is manifest that there neither is nor can bee any Image made of a thing Invisible It is also evident that there can be no Image of a thing Infinite for all the Images and Phantasmes that are made by the Impression of things visible are figured but Figure is a quantity every way determined And therefore there can bee no Image of God nor of the Soâ—…le of Man nor of Spirits but onely of Bodies Visible that is Bodies that have light in themselves or are by such â—…nligtened And whereas a man can fancy Shapes he never saw making up a Figure out of the parts of divers creatures as the Poets make their Centaures Chimaeras and other Monsters never seen So can he also give Matter to those Shapes and make them in Wood Clay or Metall And these are also called Images not for the resemblance of any corporeall thing but for the resemblance of some Phantasticall Inhabitants of the Brain of the Maker But in these Idols as they are originally in the Brain and as they are painted carved moulded or moulten in matter there is a similitude of the one to the other for which the Materiall Body made by Art may be said to be the Image of the Phantasticall Idoll made by Nature But in a larger use of the word Image is contained also any Representation of one thing by another So an earthly Soveraign may be called the Image of God And an inferiour Magistrate the Image of an earthly Soveraign And many times in the Idolatry of the Gentiles there was little regard to the similitude of their Materiall Idol to the Idol in their fancy and yet it was called the Image of it For a Stone unhewn has been set up for Neptune and divers other shapes far different from the shapes they conceived of their Gods And at this day we see many Images of the Virgin Mary and other Saints unlike one another and without correspondence to any one mans Fancy and yet serve well enough for the purpose they were erected for which was no more but by the Names onely to represent the Persons mentioned in the History to which every man applyeth a Mentall Image of his owne making or none at all And thus an Image in the largest sense is either the Resemblance or the Representation of some thing Visible or both together as it happeneth for the most part But the name of Idoll is extended yet further in Scripture to signifie also the Sunne or a Starre or any other Creature visible or invisible when they are worshipped for Gods Having shewn what is Worship and what an Image I will now put them together and examine what that IDOLATRY is which is forbidden in the Second Commandement and other places of the Scripture To worship an Image is voluntarily to doe those externall acts which are signes of honoring either the matter of the Image which is Wood Stone Metall or some other visible creature or the Phantasme of the brain for the resemblance or representation whereof the matter was formed and figured or both together as one â—…nimate Body composed of the Matter and the Phantasme as of a Body and Soule To be uncovered before a man of Power and Authority or before the Throne of a Prince or in such other places as hee ordaineth to that purpose in his absence is to Worship that man or Prince with Civill Worship as being a signe not of honoring the stoole or place but the Person and is not Idolatry But if hee that doth it should suppose the Soule of the Prince to be in the Stool or should present a Petition to the Stool it were Divine Worship and Idolatry To pray to a King for such things as hee is able to doe for us though we prostrate our selves before him is but Civill Worship because we acknowledge no other power in him but humane But voluntarily to pray unto him for fair weather or for any thing which God onely can doe for us is Divine Worship and Idolatry On the other side if a King compell a man to it by
it to the Schools Plato that was the best Philosopher of the Greeks forbad entrance into his Schoole to all that were not already in some measure Geometricians There were many that studied that Science to the great advantage of mankind but there is no mention of their Schools nor was there any Sect of Geometricians nor did they then passe under the name of Philosophers The naturall Philosophy of those Schools was rather a Dream than Science and set forth in senselesse and insignificant Language which cannot be avoided by those that will teach Philosophy without having first attained great knowledge in Geometry For Nature worketh by Motion the Wayes and Degrees whereof cannot be known without the knowledge of the Proportions and Properties of Lines and Figures Their Morall Philosophy is but a description of their own Passions For the rule of Manners without Civill Government is the Law of Nature and in it the Law Civill that determineth what is Honest and Dishonest what is Iust and Vnjust and generally what is Good and Evill whereas they make the Rules of Good and Bad by their own Liking and Disliking By which means in so great diversity of taste there is nothing generally agreed on but every one doth as far as he dares whatsoever seemeth good in his owne eyes to the subversion of Common-wealth Their Loigque which should bee the Method of Reasoning is nothing else but Captions of Words and Inventions how to puzzle such as should goe about to pose them To conclude there is nothing so absurd that the old Philosophers as Cicero saith who was one of them have not some of them maintained And I beleeve that scarce any thing can be more absurdly said in naturall Philosophy than that which now is called Aristotles Metaphysiques nor more repugnant to Government than much of that hee hath said in his Politiques nor more ignorantly than a great part of his Ethiques The Schoole of the Jews was originally a Schoole of the Law of Moses who commanded Deut. 31. 10. that at the end of every seventh year at the Feast of the Tabernacles it should be read to all the people that they might hear and learn it Therefore the reading of the Law which was in use after the Captivity every Sabbath day ought to have had no other end but the acquainting of the people with the Commandements which they were to obey and to expound unto them the writings of the Prophets But it is manifest by the many reprehensions of them by our Saviour that they corrupted the Text of the Law with their false Commentaries and vain Traditions and so little understood the Prophets that they did neither acknowledge Christ nor the works he did of which the Prophets prophecyed So that by their Lectures and Disputations in their Synagogues they turned the Doctrine of their Law into a Phantasticall kind of Philosophy concerning the incomprehensible nature of God and of Spirits which they compounded of the Vain Philosophy and Theology of the Graecians mingled with their own fancies drawn from the obscurer places of the Scripture and which might most easily bee wrested to their purpose and from the Fabulous Traditions of their Ancestors That which is now called an Vniversity is a Joyning together and an Incorporation under one Government of many Publique Schools in one and the same Town or City In which the principall Schools were ordained for the three Professions that is to say of the Romane Religion of the Romane Law and of the Art of Medicine And for the study of Philosophy it hath no otherwise place then as a handmaid to the Romane Religion And since the Authority of Aristotle is onely current there that study is not properly Philosophy the nature whereof dependeth not on Authors but Aristotelity And for Geometry till of very late times it had no place at all as being subservient to nothing but rigide Truth And if any man by the ingenuity of his owne nature had attained to any degree of perfection therein hee was commonly thought a Magician and his Art Diabolicall Now to descend to the particular Tenets of Vain Philosophy derived to the Universities and thence into the Church partly from Aristotle partly from Blindnesse of understanding I shall first consider their Principles There is a certain Philosophia prima on which all other Philosophy ought to depend and consisteth principally in right limiting of the significations of such Appellations or Names as are of all others the most Universall Which Limitations serve to avoid ambiguity and aequivocation in Reasoning and are commonly called Definitions such as are the Definitions of Body Time Place Matter Forme Essence Subject Substance Accident Power Act Finite Infinite Quantity Quality Motion Action Passion and divers others necessary to the explaining of a mans Conceptions concerning the Nature and Generation of Bodies The Explication that is the setling of the meaning of which and the like Terms is commonly in the Schools called Metaphysiques as being a part of the Philosophy of Aristotle which hath that for title but it is in another sense for there it signifieth as much as Books written or placed after his naturall Philosophy But the Schools take them for Books of supernaturall Philosophy for the word Metaphysiques will bear both these senses And indeed that which is there written is for the most part so far from the possibility of being understood and so repugnant to naturall Reason that whosoever thinketh there is any thing to bee understood by it must needs think it supernaturall From these Metaphysiques which are mingled with the Scripture to make Schoole Divinity wee are told there be in the world certaine Essences separated from Bodies which they call Abstract Essences and Substantiall Formes For the Interpreting of which Iargon there is need of somewhat more than ordinary attention in this place Also I ask pardon of those that are not used to this kind of Discourse for applying my selfe to those that are The World I mean not the Earth onely that denominates the Lovers of it Worldly men but the Vniverse that is the whole masse of all things that are is Corporeall that is to say Body and hath the dimensions of Magnitude namely Length Bredth and Depth also every part of Body is likewise Body and hath the like dimeâ—…ions and consequently every part of the Universe is Body and that which is not Body is no part of the Universe And because the Universe is All that which is no part of it is Nothing and consequently no where Nor does it follow from hence that Spirits are nothing for they have dimensions and are therefore really Bodies though that name in common Speech be given to such Bodies onely as are visible or palpable that is that have some degree of Opacity But for Spirits they call them Incorporeall which is a name of more honour and may therefore with more piety bee attributed to God himselfe in whom wee consider not what
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
understood in the same manner For we read Gen. 16. that the same apparition is called not onely an Angel but God where that which verse 7. is called the Angel of the Lord in the tenth verse saith to Agar I will multiply thy seed exceedingly that is speaketh in the person of God Neither was this apparition a Fancy figured but a Voice By which it is manifest that Angel signifieth there nothing but God himself that caused Agar supernaturally to apprehend a voice from heaven or rather nothing else but a Voice supernaturall testifying Gods speciall presence there Why therefore may not the Angels that appeared to Lot and are called Gen. 19. 13. Men and to whom though they were two Lot speaketh ver 18. as but to one and that one as God for the words are Lot said unto them Oh not so my Lord be understood of images of men supernaturally formed in the Fancy as well as before by Angel was understood a fancyed Voice When the Angel called to Abraham out of heaven to stay his hand Gen. 22. 11. from slaying Isaac there was no Apparition but a Voice which neverthelesse was called properly enough a Messenger or Angel of God because it declared Gods will supernaturally and saves the labour of supposing any permanent Ghosts The Angels which Jacob saw on the Ladder of Heaven Gen. 28. 12. were a Vision of his sleep therefore onely Fancy and a Dream yet being supernaturall and signs of Gods speciall presence those apparitions are not improperly called Angels The same is to be understood Gen. 31. 11. where Jacob saith thus The Angel of the Lord appeared to mee in my sleep For an apparition made to a man in his sleep is that which all men call a Dreame whether such Dreame be naturall or supernaturall and that which there Jacob calleth an Angel was God himselfe for the same Angel saith verse 13. I am the God of Bethel Alfo Exod. 14. 9. the Angel that went before the Army of Israel to the Red Sea and then came behind it is verse 19. the Lord himself and he appeared not in the form of a beautifull man but in form by day of a pillar of cloud and by night in form of a pillar of fire and yet this Pillar was all the apparition and Angel promised to Moses Exod. 14. 9. for the Armies guide For this cloudy pillar is said to have descended and stood at the dore of the Tabernacle and to have talked with Moses There you see Motion and Speech which are commonly attributed to Angels attributed to a Cloud because the Cloud served as a sign of Gods preâ—…ence and was no lesse an Angel then if it had had the form of a Man or Child of never so great beauty or Wings as usually they are painted for the false instruction of common people For it is not the shape but their use that makes them Angels But their use is to be significations of Gods presence in supernaturall operations As when Moses Exod. 33. 14. had desired God to goe along with the Campe as he had done alwaies before the making of the Golden Calfe God did not answer I will goe nor I will send an Angell in my stead but thus my presence shall goe 〈◊〉 thee To mention all the places of the Old Testament where the name of Angel is found would be too long Therefore to comprehend them all at once I say there is no text in that part of the Old Testament which the Church of England holdeth for Canonicall from which we can conclude there is or hath been created any permanent thing understood by the name of Spirit or Angel that hath not quantity and that may not be by the understanding divided that is to say considered by parts so as one part may bee in one place and the next part in the next place to it and in summe which is not taking Body for that which is some what or some where Corporeall but in every place the sense will bear the interpretation of Angel for Messenger as John Baptist is called an Angel and Christ the Angel of the Covenant and as according to the same Analogy the Dove and the Fiery Tongues in that they were signes of Gods speciall presence might also be called Angels Though we find in Daniel two names of Angels Gabriel and Michael yet it is cleer out of the text it selfe Dan. 12. 1. that by Michael is meant Christ not as an Angel but as a Prince and that Gabriel as the like apparitions made to other holy men in their sleep was nothing but a supernaturall phantasme by which it seemed to Daniel in his dream that two Saints being in talke one of them said to the other Gabriel let us make this man understand his Vision For God needeth not to distinguish his Celestiall servants by names which are usefull onely to the short memories of Mortalls Nor in the New Testament is there any place out of which it can be proved that Angels except when they are put for such men as God hath made the Messengers and Ministers of his word or works are things permanent and withall incorporeall That they are permanent may bee gathered from the words of our Saviour himselfe Mat. 25. 41. where he saith it shall be said to the wicked in the last day Go ye cursed into everlasting fire prepared for the Devil and his Angels which place is manifest for the permanence of Evill Angels unlesse wee might think the name of Devill and his Angels may be understood of the Churches Adversaries and their Ministers but then it is repugnant to their Immateriality because Everlasting fire is no punishment to impatible substances such as are all things Incorporeall Angels therefore are not thence proved to be Incorporeall In like manner where St. Paul sayes 1 Cor. 6. 3. Know ye not that wee shall judge the Angels And 2 Pet. 2. 4. For if God spared not the Angels that sinned but cast them down into hell And Iude 1 6. And the Angels that kept not their first estate but left their owne habitation hee hath reserved in everlasting chaines under darknesse unto the Iudgment of the last day though it prove the Permanence of Angelicall nature it confirmeth also their Materiality And Mat. 22. 30. In the resurrection men doe neither marry nor give in marriage but are as the Angels of God in heaven but in the resurrection men shall be Permanent and not Incorporeall so therefore also are the Angels There be divers other places out of which may be drawn the like conclusion To men that understand the signification of these words Substance and Incorporeall as Incorporeall is taken not for subtile body but for not Body they imply a contradiction insomuch as to say an Angel or Spirit is in that sense an Incorporeall Substance is to say in effect there is no Angel nor Spirit at all Considering therefore the signification of the word Angel in the Old Testament and the
nature of Dreams and Visions that happen to men by the ordinary way of Nature I was enclined to this opinion that Angels were nothing but supernaturall apparitions of the Fancy raised by the speciall and extraordinary operation of God thereby to make his presence and commandements known to mankind and chiefly to his own people But the many places of the New Testament and our Saviours own words and in such texts wherein is no suspicion of corruption of the Scripture have extorted from my feeble Reason an acknowledgment and beleef that there be also Angels substantiall and permanent But to beleeve they be in no place that is to say no where that is to say nothing as they though indirectly say that will have them Incorporeall cannot by Scripture bee evinced On the signification of the word Spirit dependeth that of the word INSPIRATION which must either be taken properly and then it is nothing but the blowing into a man some thin and subtile aire or wind in such manner as a man filleth a bladder with his breath or if Spirits be not corporeall but have their existence only in the fancy it is nothing but the blowing in of a Phantasme which is improper to say and impossible for Phantasmes are not but only seem to be somewhat That word therefore is used in the Scripture metaphorically onely As Gen. 2. 7. where it is said that God inspired into man the breath of life no more is meant then that God gave unto him vitall motion For we are not to think that God made first a living breath and then blew it into Adam after he was made whether that breath were reall or seeming but only as it is Acts 17. 25. that he gave him life and breath that is made him a living creature And where it is said 2 Tim. 3. 16. all Scripture is given by Inspiration from God speaking there of the Scripture of the Old Testament it is an easie metaphor to signifie that God enclined the spirit or mind of those Writers to write that which should be usefull in teaching reproving correcting and instructing men in the way of righteous living But where St. Peter 2 Pet. 1. 21. saith that Prophecy came not in old time by the will of man but the holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit by the Holy Spirit is meant the voice of God in a Dream or Vision supernaturall which is not Inspâ—…ration Nor when our Saviour breathing on his Disciples said Receive the Holy Spirit was that Breath the Spirit but a sign of the spirituall graces he gave unto them And though it be said of many and of our Saviour himself that he was full of the Holy Spirit yet that Fulnesse is not to be understood for Infusion of the substance of God but for accumulation of his gifts such as are the gift of sanctity of life of tongues and the like whether attained supernaturally or by study and industry for in all cases they are the gifts of God So likewise where God sayes Joel 2. 28. I will powre out my Spirit upon all flesh and your Sons and your Daughters shall prophecy your Old men shall dream Dreams and your Young men shall see Visions wee are not to understand it in the proper sense as if his Spirit were like water subject to effusion or infusion but as if God had promised to give them Propheticall Dreams and Vision For the proper use of the word infused in speaking of the graces of God is an abuse of it for those graces are Vertues not Bodies to be carryed hither and thither and to be powred into men as into barrels In the same manner to take Inspiration in the proper sense or to say that Good Spirits entred into men to make them prophecy or Evill Spirits into those that became Phrenetique Lunatique or Epileptique is not to take the word in the sense of the Scripture for the Spirit there is taken for the power of God working by causes to us unknown As also Acts 2. 2. the wind that is there said to fill the house wherein the Apostles were assembled on the day of Pentecost is not to be understood for the Holy Spirit which is the Deity it self but for an Externall sign of Gods speciall working on their hearts to effect in them the internall graces and holy vertues hee thought requisite for the performance of their Apostleship CHAP. XXXV Of the Signification in Scripture of KINGDOME OF GOD of HOLY SACRED and SACRAMENT THe Kingdome of God in the Writings of Divines and specially in Sermons and Treatises of Devotion is taken most commonly for Eternall Felicity after this life in the Highest Heaven which they also call the Kingdome of Glory and sometimes for the earnest of that felicity Sanctification which they terme the Kingdome of Grace but never for the Monarchy that is to say the Soveraign Power of God over any Subjects acquired by their own consent which is the proper signification of Kingdome To the contrary I find the KINGDOME OF GOD to signifie in most places of Scripture a Kingdome properly so named constituted by the Votes of the People of Israel in peculiar manner wherein they chose God for their King by Covenant made with him upon Gods promising them the possession of the land of Canaan and but seldom metaphorically and then it is taken for Dominion over sinne and only in the New Testament because such a Dominion as that every Subject shall have in the Kingdome of God and without prejudice to the Soveraign From the very Creation God not only reigned over all men naturally by his might but also had peculiar Subjects whom he commanded by a Voice as one man speaketh to another In which manner he reigned over Adam and gave him commandement to abstaine from the tree of cognizance of Good and Evill which when he obeyed not but tasting thereof took upon him to be as God judging between Good and Evill not by his Creators commandement but by his own sense his punishment was a privation of the estate of Eternall life wherein God had at first created him And afterwards God punished his posterity for their vices all but eight persons with an universall deluge And in these eight did consist the then Kingdom of God After this it pleased God to speak to Abraham and Gen. 17. 7 8. to make a Covenant with him in these words I will establish my Covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an evâ—…rlasting Covenant to be a God to thee and to thy seed after thee And I will give unto thee and to thy seed after thee the land wherein thou art a stranger all the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession In this Covenant Abraham promiseth for himselfe and his posterity to obey as God the Lord that spake to him and God on his part promiseth to Abraham the land of Canaan for an everlasting
Attribute expresseth best his Nature which is Incomprehensible but what best expresseth our desire to honour Him To know now upon what grounds they say there be Essences Abstract or Substantiall Formes wee are to consider what those words do properly signifie The use of Words is to register to our selves and make manifest to others the Thoughts and Conceptions of our Minds Of which Words some are the names of the Things conceived as the names of all sorts of Bodies that work upon the Senses and leave an Impression in the Imagination Others are the names of the Imaginations themselves that is to say of those Ideas or mentall Images we have of all things wee see or remember And others againe are names of Names or of different sorts of Speech As Vniversall Plurall Singular are the names of Names and Definition Affirmation Negation True False Syllogisme Interrogation Promise Covenant are the names of certain Forms of Speech Others serve to shew the Consequence or Repugnance of one name to another as when one saith A Man is a Body hee intendeth that the name of Body is necessarily consequent to the name of Man as being but severall names of the same thing Man which Consequence is signified by coupling them together with the word Is. And as wee use the Verbe Is so the Latines use their Verbe Est and the Greeks their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 through all its Declinations Whether all other Nations of the world have in their severall languages a word that answereth to it or not I cannot tell but I am sure they have not need of it For the placing of two names in order may serve to signifie their Consequence if it were the custome for Custome is it that give words their force as well as the words Is or Bee or Are and the like And if it were so that there were a Language without any Verb answerable to Est or Is or Bee yet the men that used it would bee not a jot the lesse capable of Inferring Concluding and of all kind of Reasoning than were the Greeks and Latines But what then would become of these Terms of Entity Essence Essentiall â—…ssentiality that are derived from it and of many more that depend on these applyed as most commonly they are They are therefore no Names of Things but Signes by which wee make known that wee conceive the Consequence of one name or Attribute to another as when we say a Man is a living Body wee mean not that the Man is one thing the Living Body another and the Is or Beeing a third but that the Man and the Living Body is the same thing because the Consequence If hee bee a Man hee is a living Body is a true Consequence signified by that word Is. Therefore to bee a Body to Walke to bee Speaking to Live to See and the like Infinitives also Corpâ—…reity Walking Speaking Life Sight and the like that signifie just the same are the names of Nothing as I have elsewhere more amply expressed But to what purpose may some man say is such subtilty in a work of this nature where I pretend to nothing but what is necessary to the doctrine of Government and Obedience It is â—…o this purpose that men may no longer suffer themselves to be abused by them that by this doctrine of Separated Essences built on the Vain Philosophy of Aristotle would fright them from Obeying the Laws of their Countrey with empty names as men fright Birds from the Corn with an empty doublet a hat and a crooked stick For it is upon this ground that when a Man is dead and buried they say his Soule that is his Life can walk separated from his Body and is seen by night amongst the graves Upon the same ground they say that the Figure and Colour and Tast of a peece of Bread has a being there where they say there is no Bread And upon the same ground they say that Faith and Wisdome and other Vertues are sometimes powred into a man sometimes blown into him from Heaven as if the Vertuous and their Vertues could be asunder and a great many other things that serve to lessen the dependance of Subjects on the Soveraign Power of their Countrey For who will endeavour to obey the Laws if he expect Obedience to be Powred or Blown into him Or who will not obey a Priest that can make God rather than his Soveraign nay than God himselfe Or who that is in fear of Ghosts will not bear great respect to those that can make the Holy Water that drives them from him And this shall suffice for an example of the Errors which are brought into the Church from the Entities and Essences of Aristotle which it may be he knew to be false Philosophy but writ it as a thing consonant to and corroborative of their Religion and fearing the fate of Socrates Being once fallen into this Error of Separated Essences they are thereby necessarily involved in many other absurdities that follow it For seeing they will have these Forms to be reall they are obliged to assign them some place But because they hold them Incorporeall without all dimension of Quantity and all men know that Place is Dimension and not to be filled but by that which is Corporeall they are driven to uphold their credit with a distinction that they are not indeed any where Circumscriptivè but Definitivè Which Terms being meer Words and in this occasion insignificant passe onely in Latine that the vanity of them may bee concealed For the Circumscription of a thing is nothing else but the Determination or Defining of its Place and so both the Terms of the Distinction are the same And in particular of the Essence of a Man which they say is his Soule they affirm it to be All of it in his little Finger and All of it in every other Part how small soever of his Body and yet no more Soule in the Whole Body than in any one of those Parts Can any man think that God is served with such absurdities And yet all this is necessary to beleeve to those that will beleeve the Existence of an Incorporeall Soule Separated from the Body And when they come to give account how an Incorporeall Substance can be capable of Pain and be tormented in the fire of Hell or Purgatory they have nothing at all to answer but that it cannot be known how fire can burn Soules Again whereas Motion is change of Place and Incorporeall Substances are not capable of Place they are troubled to make it seem possible how a Soule can goe hence without the Body to Heaven Hell or Purgatory and how the Ghosts of men and I may adde of their clothes which they appear in can walk by night in Churches Church-yards and other places of Sepulture To which I know not what they can answer unlesse they will say they walke definitivè not circumscriptivè or spiritually not temporally for such egregious distinctions are