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 that are unprovided of the antidote of solid reason,receiving a strong and delightful impression of the great exploits of war achieved by the conductors 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 tyrant.For they say not regicide,that is,killing of a king,but tyrannicide,that is,killing of a tyrant,is lawful.From the same books they that live under a monarch conceive an the opinion that the subjects in a 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 that they 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 that 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 endeavoured 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.
As 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 ****** 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 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 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 to it in all times a very considerable part of the people:and the spiritual,though it stand in the darkness of School distinctions and hard words;yet,because the fear of darkness and ghosts is greater than other fears,cannot want a party sufficient to trouble,and sometimes to destroy,a Commonwealth.And this is a disease which not unfitly may be compared to the epilepsy,or falling sickness (which the Jews took to be one kind of possession by spirits),in the body natural.For as in this disease there is an unnatural spirit or wind in the head that obstructeth the roots of the nerves and,moving them violently,taketh the motion which naturally they should have from the power of the soul in the brain;thereby causeth violent and irregular motions,which men call convulsions,in the parts;insomuch as he that is seized therewith falleth down sometimes into the water,and sometimes into the fire,as a man deprived of his senses:so also in the body politic,when the spiritual power moveth the members of a Commonwealth by the terror of punishments and hope of rewards,which are the nerves of it,otherwise than by the civil power,which is the soul of the Commonwealth,they ought to be moved;and by strange and hard words suffocates their understanding;it must needs thereby distract the people,and either overwhelm the Commonwealth with oppression,or cast it into the fire of a civil war.
