Another doctrine repugnant to civil society is that whatsoever a man does against his conscience is sin;and it dependeth on the presumption of making himself judge of good and evil.For a man's conscience and his judgement is the same thing;and as the judgement,so also the conscience may be erroneous.Therefore,though he that is subject to no civil law sinneth in all he does against his conscience,because he has no other rule to follow but his own reason,yet it is not so with him that lives in a Commonwealth,because the law is the public conscience by which he hath already undertaken to be guided.Otherwise in such diversity as there is of private consciences,which are but private opinions,the Commonwealth must needs be distracted,and no man dare to obey the sovereign power farther than it shall seem good in his own eyes.
It hath been also commonly taught that faith and sanctity are not to be attained by study and reason,but by supernatural inspiration or infusion.Which granted,I see not why any man should render a reason of his faith;or why every Christian should not be also a prophet;or why any man should take the law of his country rather than his own inspiration for the rule of his action.And thus we fall again into the fault of taking upon us to judge of good and evil;or to make judges of it such private men as pretend to be supernaturally inspired,to the dissolution of all civil government.Faith comes by hearing,and hearing by those accidents which guide us into the presence of them that speak to us;which accidents are all contrived by God Almighty,and yet are not supernatural,but only,for the great number of them that concur to every effect,unobservable.Faith and sanctity are indeed not very frequent;but yet they are not miracles,but brought to pass by education,discipline,correction,and other natural ways by which God worketh them in His elect,at such time as He thinketh fit.And these three opinions,pernicious to peace and government,have in this part of the world proceeded chiefly from tongues and pens of unlearned divines;who,joining the words of Holy Scripture together otherwise is agreeable to reason,do what they can to make men think that sanctity and natural reason cannot stand together.
A fourth opinion repugnant to the nature of a Commonwealth is this:that he that hath the sovereign power is subject to the civil laws.It is true that sovereigns are all subject to the laws of nature,because such laws be divine and divine and cannot by any man or Commonwealth be abrogated.But to those laws which the sovereign himself,that is,which the Commonwealth,maketh,he is not subject.
For to be subject to laws is to be to be subject to the Commonwealth,that is,to the sovereign representative,that is,to himself which is not subjection,but freedom from the laws.Which error,because it setteth the laws above the sovereign,setteth also a judge above him,and a power to punish him;which is to make a new sovereign;and again for the same reason a third to punish the second;and so continually without end,to the confusion and dissolution of the Commonwealth.
A fifth doctrine that tendeth to the dissolution of a Commonwealth is that every private man has an absolute propriety in his goods,such as excludeth the right of the sovereign.Every man has indeed a propriety that excludes the right of every other subject:and he has it only from the sovereign power,without the protection whereof every other man should have right to the same.But the right of the sovereign also be excluded,he cannot perform the office they have put him into,which is to defend them both from foreign enemies and from the injuries of one another;and consequently there is no longer a Commonwealth.
And if the propriety of subjects exclude not the right of the sovereign representative to their goods;much less,to their offices of judicature or execution in which they represent the sovereign himself.
There is a sixth doctrine,plainly and directly against the essence of a Commonwealth,and it is this:that the sovereign power may be divided.For what is it to divide the power of a Commonwealth,but to dissolve it;for powers divided mutually destroy each other.And for these doctrines men are chiefly beholding to some of those that,making profession of the laws,endeavour to make them depend upon their own learning,and not upon the legislative power.
And as false doctrine,so also oftentimes the example of different government in a neighbouring nation disposeth men to alteration of the form already settled.So the people of the Jews were stirred up to reject God,and to call upon the prophet Samuel for a king after the manner of the nations:so also the lesser cities of Greece were continually disturbed with seditions of the aristocratical and democratical factions;one part of almost every Commonwealth desiring to imitate the Lacedaemonians;the other,the Athenians.
And I doubt not but many men have been contented to see the late troubles in England out of an imitation of the Low Countries,supposing there needed no more to grow rich than to change,as they had done,the form of their government.For the constitution of man's nature is of itself subject to desire novelty:when therefore they are provoked to the same by the neighbourhood also of those that have been enriched by it,it is almost impossible to be content with those that solicit them to change;and love the first beginnings,though they be grieved with the continuance of disorder;like hot bloods that,having gotten the itch,tear themselves with their own nails till they can endure the smart no longer.
