nity upon it, as may partly appear from hence, because that jus vitæ et necis, that power of life and death-which civil sovereigns have, was never lodged in singulars, before civil society; and therefore could not be conferred by them. Had not God and nature made a city; were there not a natural conciliation of all rational creatures, and subjection of them to the Deity, as their head (which is Cicero's,a "una civitas deorum atque hominum," one city of gods and men)-had not God made ἄρχειν καὶ ἄρχεσθαι, ruling and being ruled superiority and subjection, with their respective duty and obligation; men could neither by art, or political enchantment, nor yet by force, have made any firm cities or polities. The civil sovereign is no Leviathan, no beast, but a God ("I have said, Ye are gods"): he reigns not in mere brutish force and fear, but in natural justice and conscience, and in the right and authority of God himself. Nevertheless, we deny not, but that there is need of force and fear too, to constrain those to obedience, to whom the conscience of duty proveth ineffectual. Nor is the fear of the civil sovereign's own sword alone sufficient for this neither, unassisted by religion, and the fear of an invisible Being omnipotent, who seeth all things, and can punish secret as well as open transgressors, both in this life and after death. Which is a thing so confessedly true, that Atheists have therefore pretended religion to have been at first a mere political figment. We conclude, therefore, that the civil sovereign reigneth not, merely in the fear of his own power and sword; but first * De Natur. Deor. lib. ii. cap. lxii. p. 3043. tom. ix. oper. in the justice and authority, and then in the power and fear also of God Almighty. And thus much for the first atheistic pretence, from the interest of civil sovereigns. To their second, that sovereignty is essentially infinite, and therefore altogether inconsistent with religion, that would limit and confine it, we reply; that the right and authority of civil sovereigns is not, as these our atheistic politicians ignorantly suppose, a mere belluine liberty, but it is a right essentially founded in the being of natural justice, as hath been declared. For authority of commanding is such a right, as supposes abligation in others to obey, without which it could be nothing but mere will and force. But none can be obliged in duty to obey, but by natural justice; commands, as such, not creating obligation, but presupposing it. For, if persons were not before obliged to obey, no commands would signify any thing to them. Wherefore, the first original obligation is not from will, but nature. Did obligation to the things of natural justice, as many suppose, arise from the will and positive command of God, only by reason of punishments threatened, and rewards promised; the consequence of this would be, that no man was good and just, but only by accident, and for the sake of something else; whereas the goodness of justice or righteousness is intrinsical to the thing itself, and this is that which obligeth (and not any thing foreign to it), it being a different species of good from that of appetite, and private utility, which every man may dispense withal. Now there can be no more infinite justice, than there can be an infinite rule, or an infinite measure. Justice is essentially a determinate thing; and therefore can there not be an infinite jus, right or authority. If there be any thing in its own nature just and obliging, or such as ought to be done; then must there of necessity be something unjust, or unlawful, which therefore cannot be obligingly commanded by any authority whatsoever. Neither ought this to be thought any impeachment of civil authority, it extending universally to all, even to that of the Deity itself. The right and authority of God himself, who is the supreme sovereign of the universe, is also in like manner bounded and circumscribed by justice. God's will is ruled by his justice, and not his justice ruled by his will; and therefore God himself cannot command, what is in its own nature unjust. And thus have we made it evident, that infinite right and authority of doing and commanding any thing with out exception, so that the arbitrary will of the commander should be the very rule of justice itself to others, and consequently might oblige to any thing, is an absolute contradiction, and a nonentity; it supposing nothing to be in its own nature just or unjust; which if there were not, there could be no obligation nor authority at all. Wherefore the Atheists, who would flatter civil sovereigns with this infinite right, as if their will ought to be the very rule of justice and conscience, and upon that pretence prejudice them against religion, do as ill deserve of them, as of religion hereby; they indeed absolutely divesting them of all right and authority, and leaving them nothing, but mere brutish force and belluine liberty. And could civil sovereigns utterly demolish and destroy conscience and religion in the minds of men (which yet is an absolute impossibility), they thinking thereby to make elbowroom for themselves, they would certainly bury themselves also in the ruins of them. Nevertheless, thus much is true; that they, in whom the sovereign legislative power of every polity is lodged (whether single persons, or assemblies); they, who make civil laws, and can reverse them at pleasure, though they may unquestionably sin against God, in making unjust laws, yet can they not sin politically or civilly, as violators or transgressors of those laws cancelled and reversed by them, they being superior to them. Nor is this all; but these sovereign legislative powers may be said to be absolute also in another sense, as being ávvπεúlvνo, unjudicable,—or uncensurable by any human court; because, if they were so obnoxious, then would that court or power, which had right to judge and censure them, be superior to them; which is contrary to the hypothesis. And then, if this power were again judicable by some other, there must either be an infinite progress, or endless circulation (a thing not only absurd, but also utterly inconsistent with government and property; because, there being no ultimate judgment unappealable from, there could never be any final determination of controversies); or else at last, all must be devolved to the multitude of singulars, which would be a dissolution of the body politic, and a state of anarchy. And thus have we fully confuted the second atheistic pretence also, for the "inconsistency of religion with civil sovereignty." Their third and last follows; "That private judgment of good and evil is contradictious to civil sovereignty, and a body politic, this being one artificial man, that must be all governed by one reason and will." But conscience is private judgment of good and evil, lawful and unlawful, &c. To which we reply, that it is not religion, but, on the contrary, the principles of these atheistic politicians, that unavoidably introduce private judgment of good and evil, such as is absolutely inconsistent with civil sovereignty; there being, according to them, nothing in nature of a public or common good, nothing of duty or obligation, but all private appetite and utility, of which also every man is judge for himself. For if this were so, then, whenever any man judged it most for his private utility to disobey laws, rebel against sovereigns, nay, to poison or stab them, he would be unquestionably bound by nature, and the reason of his own good, as the highest law, to do the same. Neither can these atheistic politicians be ever able to bring men out of this state of private good, judgment and will, which is natural to them, by any artificial tricks and devices, or mere enchantments of words, as artificial justice, and an artificial man, and a common person and will, and a public conscience, and the like. Nay, it is observable, that themselves are necessitated, by the tenor of these their principles, casuistically to allow such private judgment and will, as is altogether inconsistent with civil sovereignty; as, that any man may lawfully resist in defence of his own life; and that they, who have once rebelled, may afterwards justly defend themselves by force. Nor indeed can this private judgment of men, accord |