right of Nature to make war; wherein the sword iudgeth not, nor doth the victor make distinction of nocent and innocent, as to the time past, nor has other respect of mercy than as it conduceth to the good of his own people. And upon this ground it is that also in subjects who deliberately deny the authority of the commonwealth established, the vengeance is lawfully extended, not only to the fathers, but also to the third and fourth generation not yet in being, and consequently innocent of the fact for which they are afflicted: because the nature of this offence consisteth in the renouncing of subjection, which is a relapse into the condition of war, commonly called rebellion, and they that so offend, suffer not as subjects, but as enemies. For "rebellion" is but war renewed.

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"Reward" is either of "gift" or by contract." When by contract, it is called 66 salary " and " wages; " which is benefit due for service performed or promised. When of gift, it is benefit proceeding from the grace" of them that bestow it, to encourage or enable men to do them service. And therefore when the sovereign of a commonwealth appointeth a salary to any public office, he that receiveth it is bound in justice to perform his office; otherwise, he is bound only in honour to acknowledgment, and an endeavour of requital. For though men have no lawful remedy, when they be commanded to quit their private business, to serve the public, without reward or salary; yet they are not bound thereto, by the law of Nature, nor by the institution of the commonwealth, unless the service cannot otherwise be done; because it is supposed the sovereign may make use of all their means, insomuch as the most common soldier may demand the wages of his warfare as a debt.

The benefit which a sovereign bestoweth on a subject, for fear of some power and ability he hath to do hurt to the commonwealth, are not properly rewards; for they are not salaries; because there is in this case no contract supposed, every man being obliged already not to do the commonwealth disservice: nor are they graces, because they be extorted by fear, which ought not to be incident to the sovereign power: but are rather sacrifices, which the sovereign, considered in his natural person, and not in the person of the commonwealth, makes, for the appeasing the discontent of him he thinks more potent than himself; and encourage not to obedience, but on the contrary, to the continuance and increasing of further extortion.

And whereas some salaries are certain, and proceed from the public treasure; and others uncertain and casual, proceeding from the execution of the office for which the salary is ordained; the latter is in some cases hurtful to the commonwealth; as in the case of judicature. For where the benefit of the judges and ministers of a court of justice ariseth from the multitude of causes that are brought to their cognizance, there must needs follow two inconveniences: one, is the nourishing of suits; for the more suits, the greater benefit: and another that depends on that, which is contention about jurisdiction, each court drawing to itself as many causes as it can. But in offices of execution there are not those inconveniences; because their employment cannot be increased by any endeavour of their And thus much shall suffice for the nature of punishment and reward; which are, as it were, the nerves and tendons that move the limbs and joints of a commonwealth.

own.

Hitherto I have set forth the nature of man, whose pride and other passions have compelled him to submit himself to government: together with the great power of his governor, whom I compared to "Leviathan," taking that comparison out of the two last verses of the one-and-fortieth of Job; where God, having set forth the great power of " Leviathan," calleth him king of the proud, "There is nothing," saith he, "on earth

to be compared with him. He is made so as not to be afraid. He seeth every high thing below him; and is king of all the children of pride." But because he is mortal, and subject to decay, as all other earthly creatures are; and because there is that in heaven, though not on earth, that he should stand in fear of, and whose laws he ought to obey; I shall in the next following chapter speak of his diseases, and the causes of his mortality; and of what laws of Nature he is bound to obey.

CHAPTER XXIX.

Of those Things that Weaken, or tend to the Dissolution of a Commonwealth.

THOUGH nothing can be immortal which mortals make, yet if men had the use of reason they pretend to, their commonwealths might be secured, at least from perishing by internal diseases. For by the nature of their institution, they are designed to live as long as mankind, or as the laws of Nature or as justice itself, which gives them life. Therefore when they come to be dissolved, not by external violence, but intestine disorder, the fault is not in men, as they are the "matter;" but as they are the "makers," and orderers of them. For men, as they become at last weary of irregular jostling and hewing one another, and desire with all their hearts to conform themselves into one firm and lasting edifice: so for want, both of the art of making fit laws, to square their actions by, and also of humility and patience, to suffer the rude and cumbersome points of their present greatness to be taken off, they cannot without the help of a very able architect, be compiled into any other than a crazy building, such as hardly lasting out their own time, must assuredly fall upon the heads of their posterity.

Amongst the "infirmities" therefore of a commonwealth, I will reckon in the first place, those that arise from an imperfect institution, and resemble the diseases of a natural body, which proceed from a defectuous procreation.

Of which this is one, "that a man to obtain a kingdom, is sometimes content with less power, than to the peace and defence of the commonwealth is necessarily required." From whence it cometh to pass, that when the exercise of the power laid by is for the public safety to be resumed, it hath the resemblance of an unjust act; which disposeth great numbers of men, when occasion is presented, to reb; in the same manner as the bodies of children, gotten by diseased parents, are subject either to untimely death, or to purge the ill quality, derived from their vicious conception, by breaking out into boils and scabs. And when kings deny themselves some such necessary power, it is not always, though sometimes, out of ignorance of what is necessary to the office they undertake; but many times out of a hope to recover the same again at their pleasure. Wherein they reason not well; because such as will hold them to their promises, shall be maintained against them by foreign commonwealths; who in order to the good of their own subjects let slip few occasions to "weaken" the estate of their neighbours. So was Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, supported against Henry the Second, by the Pope; the subjection of ecclesiastics to the commonwealth, having been dispensed with by William the Conqueror at his reception, when he took an oath not to infringe the liberty of the Church. And so were the barons, whose power was by William Rufus, to have their help in transferring the succession from his elder brother to

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himself, increased to a degree inconsistent with the sovereign power, maintained in their rebellion against king John, by the French.

Nor does this happen in monarchy only. For whereas the style of the ancient Roman commonwealth was "the senate and people of Rome,' neither senate nor people pretended to the whole power; which first caused the seditions of Tiberius Gracchus, Caius Gracchus, Lucius Saturninus, and others; and afterwards the wars between the senate and the people, under Marius and Sylla; and again under Pompey and Cæsar, to the extinction of their democracy, and the setting up of monarchy.

The people of Athens bound themselves but from one only action; which was, that no man on pain of death should propound the renewing of the war for the island of Salamis; and yet thereby, if Solon had not caused to be given out he was mad, and afterwards in gesture and habit of a madman, and in verse, propounded it to the people that flocked about him, they had had an enemy perpetually in readiness, even at the gates of their city; such damage or shifts are all commonwealths forced to, that have their power so little limited.

In the second place, I observe the "diseases" of a commonwealth, that proceed from the poison of seditious doctrines, whereof one is, “That every private man is judge of good and evil actions." This is true in the condition of mere nature, where there are no civil laws; and also under civil govern ment, in such cases as are not determined by the law. But otherwise, it is manifest, that the measure of good and evil actions, is the civil law; and the judge the legislator, who is always representative of the commonwealth. From this false doctrine, men are disposed to debate with themselves and dispute the commands of the commonwealth; and afterwards to obey or disobey them, as in their private judgments they shall think fit; whereby the commonwealth is distracted and weakened."

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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 judgment is the same thing, and as the judgment, 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, further than it shall seem good in his own eyes.

It hath been also commonly taught, "that faith and sanctity, are not to

Xbe 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 in 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 then in His elect, at such times as He thinketh fit. And these three opinions, pernicious to peace and government, have

in this part of the world, proceeded chiefly from the tongues and pens of unlearned divines, who joining the words of Holy Scripture together, otherwise than 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 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 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 equal right to the same. But if 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 Lacedemonians; 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 for them not 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.

And as to rebellion in particular against monarchy; one of the most frequent causes of it is the reading of the books of policy and histories of the ancient Greeks and Romans; from which young men, and all others

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that are unprovided of the antidote of solid reason, receiving a strong and
delightful impression of the great exploits of war, achieved by the con-
ductors of their armies, receive withal a pleasing idea of all they have done
besides; and imagine their great prosperity, not to have proceeded from
the emulation of particular men, but from the virtue of their popular form
of government not considering the frequent seditions, and civil wars,
produced by the imperfection of their policy. From the reading, I say, of
such books, men have undertaken to kill their kings, because the Greek
and Latin writers, in their books and discourses of policy, make it lawful
and laudable for any man so to do; provided, before he do it, he call him
tyran-
tyrant. For they say not "regicide," that is, killing a king, but "
nicide," that is, killing of a tyrant is lawful. From the same books, they
that live under a monarch conceive an opinion, that the subjects in a

Asad popular commonwealth enjoy liberty; but that in a monarchy they are all

slaves. I say, they that live under a monarchy conceive such an opinion; not they that live under a popular government: for they find no such matter. In sum, I cannot imagine how anything can be more prejudicial to a monarchy than the allowing of such books to be publicly read, without present applying such correctives of discreet masters, as are fit to take away their venom which venom I will not doubt to compare to the biting of a mad dog, which is a disease the physicians call "hydrophobia," or "fear of water." For as he that is so bitten has a continual torment of thirst, and yet abhorreth water; and is in such an estate, as if the poison endea voured to convert him into a dog: so when a monarchy is once bitten to the quick by those democratical writers, that continually snarl at that estate; it wanteth nothing more than a strong monarch, which nevertheless out of a certain "tyrannophobia," or fear of being strongly governed, when they have him, they abhor.

Ás there have been doctors that hold there be three souls in a man; so there be also that think there may be more souls, that is, more sovereigns, than one in a commonwealth; and set up a supremacy" against the " sovereignty; """canons against "laws;" and a ghostly authority" against the "civil;" working on men's minds with words and distinctions, that of themselves signify nothing, but bewray by their obscurity; that there

walketh, as some think, invisibly another kingdom, as it were a kingdom of fairies, in the dark. Now seeing it is manifest that the civil power and the power of the commonwealth is the same thing; and that supremacy, and the power of making canons, and granting faculties, implieth a commonwealth; it followeth that where one is sovereign, another supreme; where one can make laws, and another make canons; there must needs be two commonwealths, of one and the same subjects; which is a kingdom divided in itself, and cannot stand. For notwithstanding the insignificant distinction of "temporal" and "ghostly," they are still two kingdoms, and every subject is subject to two masters. For seeing the "ghostly " power challengeth the right to declare what is sin, it challengeth by consequence P to declare what is law, sin being nothing but the transgression of the law; and again, the civil power challenging to declare what is law, every subject must obey two masters, who both will have their commands be observed as and law; which is impossible. Or, if it be but one kingdom, either the "civil," which is the power of the commonwealth, must be subordinate to the 'ghostly," and then there is no sovereignty but the "ghostly;" or the 'ghostly must be subordinate to the "temporal," and then there is no supremacy" but the "temporal." When therefore these two powers oppose one another, the commonwealth cannot but be in great danger of civil war and dissolution. For the "civil" authority being more visible, and standing in the clearer light of natural reason, cannot choose but draw

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