LXXVII. LAW OF NATURE. I CANNOT fancy to myself what the law of nature means, but the law of God. How should I know I ought not to steal, I ought not to commit adultery, unless somebody had told me so? Surely 'tis because I have been told so. 'Tis not because I think I ought not to do them, nor because you think I ought not; if so, our minds might change: whence then comes the restraint? From a higher power; nothing else can bind. I cannot bind myself, for I may untie myself again; nor an equal cannot bind me, for we 10 may untie one another. It must be a superior, even God Almighty. If two of us make a bargain, why should either his person be neither present nor assenting thereto.' Rushworth, Collections, iv. 698. This can hardly be distinguished from a claim to do what Selden terms 'make law that was never heard of before.' Selden's restriction applies, of course, to Parliament sitting in its judicial, not in its legislative capacity. See 'Power, State,' sec. 8, where he lays it down that 'the Parliament of England has no arbitrary power in point of Judicature, but in point of making law.' 1.2. I cannot fancy to myself &c.] This is Selden's position in his treatise De Jure Naturali, &c., apud Ebraeos. He there treats the Law of Nature as identical with certain precepts handed down by Noah to his descendants. These precepts were of Divine origin, communicated by God to Adam, and by Adam to Noah. The same theory will be found in Gratian's work on the Canon Law (written about 1150) known as the Decretum Gratiani, and long an accepted authority for the subject of which it treats. But it appears there in a different form and without the laboured proofs which Selden accumulates from Jewish traditional sources. See 'Humanum genus duobus regitur, naturali videlicet jure et moribus. Jus naturae est, quod in lege et evangelio continetur, quo quisque jubetur alii facere quod sibi vult fieri, et prohibetur alii inferre quod sibi nolit fieri. Unde Christus in Evangelio: "Omnia quaecunque vultis ut faciant vobis homines, et vos, eadem facite illis. Haec est enim lex et prophetae." 'Hinc Isodorus in V libro Etymologiarum [c. 2] ait. Omnes leges aut divinae sunt aut humanae. Divinae naturâ, humanae moribus constant. Corpus Juris Canonici. Friedberg, vol. i. p. 1 (ed. 2, 1879). of us stand to it? What need you care what you say, or what need I care what I say? Certainly because there is something about me that tells me fides est servanda, and if we after alter our minds, and make a new bargain, there's fides servanda there too. ΙΟ LXXVIII. LEARNING. 1. No man is the wiser for his learning; it may administer matter to work in, or objects to work upon, but wit and wisdom are born with a man. 2. Most men's learning is nothing but history dully taken up. If I quote Thomas Aquinas for some tenet, and believe it because the schoolmen say so, that's but history. Few men make themselves masters of the things they write or speak. 3. The Jesuits and the lawyers of France, and the Low Countrymen, have engrossed all learning. The rest of the world make nothing but homilies. 4. 'Tis observable, that in Athens where the arts flourished, they were governed by a democracy; learning 20 made them think themselves as wise as anybody, and they would govern as well as others; and they spake, as it were by way of contempt, that in the east and in the north they had kings. And why? Because the most part of them followed their business; and if some man had made himself wiser than the rest, he governed them, and they willingly submitted to him. Aristotle makes the observation. And as 1.26. Aristotle makes the observation] See Пapà тaúrтny d' äλλo μovapxías εἶδος, οἷαι παρ' ἐνίοις εἰσὶ βασιλεῖαι τῶν βαρβάρων. Ἔχουσι δ' αὗται τὴν δύναμιν πᾶσαι παραπλησίαν τυραννικῇ, εἰσὶ δ ̓ ὅμως κατὰ νόμον καὶ πατρικαί· διὰ γὰρ τὸ δουλικώτεροι εἶναι τὰ ἤθη φύσει οἱ μὲν βάρβαροι τῶν Ἑλλήνων, οἱ δὲ περὶ τὴν ̓Ασίαν τῶν περὶ τὴν Εὐρώπην, ὑπομένουσι τὴν δεσποτικὴν ἀρχὴν οὐδὲν δυσχεραίνοντες.-Politics, iii. 14. 6. in Athens, the philosophers made the people knowing, and therefore they thought themselves wise enough to govern, so does preaching with us, and that makes us affect a democracy; for upon these two grounds we all would be governors; either because we think ourselves as wise as the best, or because we think ourselves the elect, and have the spirit, and the rest a company of reprobates that belong to the devil. LXXIX. LECTURERS. 1. LECTURERS do in a parish church what the friars did 10 heretofore; get away not only the affections, but the bounty, that should be bestowed upon the minister. Καὶ διὰ τοῦτ ̓ ἴσως ἐβασιλεύοντο πρότερον, ὅτι σπάνιον ἦν εὑρεῖν ἄνδρας πολὺ διαφέροντας κατ' ἀρετήν, ἄλλως τε καὶ τότε μικρὰς οἰκοῦντας πόλεις. Ἔτι δ ̓ ἀπ ̓ εὐεργεσίας καθίστασαν τοὺς βασιλεῖς, ὅπερ ἐστὶν ἔργον τῶν ἀγαθῶν ἀνδρῶν. Ἐπεὶ δὲ συνέβαινε γίγνεσθαι πολλοὺς ὁμοίους πρὸς ἀρετήν, οὐκέτι ὑπέμενον ἀλλ ̓ ἐζήτουν κοινόν τι, καὶ πολιτείαν καθίστασαν.—iii. 14. ΙΙ. He shows elsewhere how at Athens successive popular leaders and demagogues ὥσπερ τυράννῳ τῷ δήμῳ χαριζόμενοι τὴν πολιτείαν εἰς τὴν νῦν δημοκρατίαν κατέστησαν.—ii. 12. 4 and 5. 1. 10. Lecturers do in a parish church &c.] In the early part of Charles's reign, the lecturers were under the control of the bishops, and we have frequent proof of the trouble which they caused, and of the pains taken by Laud and by other bishops to keep a tight hand upon them, and to see that they did not abuse the somewhat anomalous position which they occupied as licensed trespassers on another man's ground. By the parliamentary party they were regarded with great favour, and were, so to say, established by an Order of the House (Sept. 6, 1641) 'that it shall be lawful for the Parishioners of any Parish in the Kingdom of England or Dominion of Wales, to set up a lecture, and to maintain an orthodox minister at their own charge, to preach every Lord's day where there is no preaching, and to preach one day in every week where there is no weekly lecture.' 'Thus (says Nalson) did they set up a spiritual Militia of those lecturers who were to marshall their troops .. neither parsons, ... 2. Lecturers get a great deal of money, because they preach the people tame [as a man watches a hawk] and then they do what they list with them. 3. The lecture in Black-friars, performed by officers of the army, tradesmen, and ministers, is as if a great man should make a feast, and he would have his cook dress one dish, and his coachman another, his porter a third, &c. vicars, nor curates, but like the order of the Friers Predicants among the Papists, who run about tickling the people's ears with stories of legends and miracles, in the meantime picking their pockets, which were the very faculties of these men.' Nalson, Collections, ii. 447, 8. 1. 2. as a man watches a hawk] i.e. forces it to watch; keeps it without sleep. For this obsolete use of the word, conf.: 'Another way I have to man my haggard, 'my lord shall never rest, I'll watch him tame.' Othello, iii. sc. 3. ... This is still a known method by which wild hawks are tamed: see 'I have trained haggards or wild hawks perfectly in three weeks. This is done by keeping them awake at night and during the day, until tame.' Corballis, Forty-five Years of Sport. Falconry, p. 463. 1. 4. The lecture in Black-friars &c.] By 1647, after a good deal of alarm had been caused to the Presbyterian party by the growing influence of the Independents, and after several efforts had been made to put down their unlicensed preaching in the army and elsewhere, 'liberty of conscience was now become the great charter; and men who were inspired, preached and prayed when and where they would. Cromwell himself was the greatest preacher; and most of the officers of the army, and many common soldiers, shewed their gifts that way.' Clarendon, Hist. iii. 175. Walker, in his History of Independency, gives a specimen of a common soldier's sermon, preached in 1649; and tells how, on the Sunday after Easter day, six preachers militant at Whitehall tired the patience of their hearers, until at last the Spirit of the Lord called up Oliver Cromwell, who spent an hour in prayer and an hour and a half in a sermon. Part ii. pp. 152, 153 (ed. of 1660). LXXX. LIBELS. THOUGH SOME make slight of libels, yet you may see by them how the wind sits. As take a straw and throw it up into the air, you shall see by that which way the wind is, which you shall not do by casting up a stone. More solid things do not shew the complexion of the times so well as ballads and libels. LXXXI. LITURGY. I. THERE is no church without a liturgy, nor indeed can there be conveniently, as there is no school without a 10 grammar. One scholar may be taught otherwise upon the stock of his acumen, but not a whole school. One or two that are piously disposed, may serve themselves their own way, but hardly a whole nation. 2. To know what was generally believed in all ages, the way is to consult the liturgies, not any private man's writing. As if you would know how the Church of England serves God, go to the Common-prayer book, consult not this, or that man. Besides, liturgies never compliment1, nor use high expressions. The fathers oft-times speak 20 oratoriously. LXXXII. LORDS BEFORE THE PARLIAMENT. I. GREAT lords, by reason of their flatterers, are the first that know their own virtues, and the last that know their 1 Compliment] complement, MSS. |