ABSTRACT
Let us now consider what the Scripture teacheth in the same point. . . . For obedience of servants St Paul saith: ‘Servants obey your masters in all things’ (Colossians 3:22), and, ‘children obey your parents in all things’ (Colossians 3:20). There is simple obedience in those that are subject to paternal or despotical dominion. . . .To these places may be added also that of Genesis, ‘Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil’ (3:5). And, ‘Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee thou shouldest not eat?’ (Genesis 3:11). For the cognizance or judicature of Good and Evil, being forbidden by the name of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, as a trial of Adam’s obedience; the Devil to inflame the ambition of the woman, to whom that fruit already seemed beautiful, told her that, by tasting it, they should be as gods, knowing Good and Evil. W hereupon, having both eaten, they did indeed take upon them God’s office, which is Judicature of Good and Evil, but acquired no new ability to distinguish between them aright. And whereas it is said, that having eaten, they saw they were naked, no man hath so interpreted that place as if they had been formerly blind and saw not their own skins. The meaning is plain: that it was then they first judged their nakedness (wherein it was God’s will to create them) to be uncomely; and by being ashamed, did tacitly censure God himself. And thereupon, God saith, ‘Hast thou eaten, etc.’, as if he should say, doest thou that owest me obedience, take upon thee to judge of my Commandments? Whereby, it is clearly, though allegorically, signified that the commands of them that have the right to command are not by their subjects to be censured nor disputed.So that it appeareth plainly, to my understanding, both from reason and Scripture, that the sovereign power, whether placed in one man, as in monarchy, or one assembly of men, as in popular, and aristocratical commonwealths, is as great as possibly men can be imagined to make it. And though of so unlimited a power, men may fancy many evil consequences; yet the consequences of the want of it, which is perpetual war of man against his neighbour, are much worse. The condition of man in this life shall never be without inconveniences; but there happeneth in no commonwealth any great inconvenience but what proceeds from the subjects’ disobedience, and breach of those covenants, from which the commonwealth hath its being. And whosoever thinking sovereign power too great, will seek to make it less, must
110 Early Modern Philosophers
subject himself to the power that can limit it - that is to say, to a greater.The greatest objection is that of the practice when men ask, where, and when, such power has, by subjects, been acknowledged. But one may ask them again, when, or where has there been a kingdom long free from sedition and civil war? In those nations, whose commonwealths have been long-lived, and not been destroyed but by foreign war, the subjects never did dispute of the sovereign power. But howsoever, an argum ent from the practice of men, that have not sifted to the bottom, and with exact reason weighed the causes and nature of commonwealths, and suffer daily those miseries that proceed from the ignorance thereof, is invalid. For though in all places of the world, men should lay the foundation of their houses on the sand, it could not thence be inferred that so it ought to be. The skill of making and maintaining commonwealths, consisteth in certain rules, as doth arithmetic and geometry, not, as tennis-play, on practice only; which rules, neither poor men have the leisure, nor men that have had the leisure, have hitherto had the curiosity, or the method to find out.
