to the universal course of ancient prudence, are in the power of
the magistrate; but, according to the common practice of modern
prudence, since the papacy, torn out of his hands.
But, as a government pretending to liberty, and yet
suppressing liberty of conscience (which, because religion not
according to a man's conscience can to him be none at all, is the
main) must be a contradiction, so a man that, pleading for the
liberty of private conscience, refuses liberty to the national
conscience, must be absurd.
A commonwealth is nothing else but the national conscience.
And if the conviction of a man's private conscience produces his
private religion, the conviction of the national conscience must
produce a national religion. Whether this be well reasoned, as
also whether these two may stand together, will best be shown by
the examples of the ancient commonwealths taken in their order.
In that of Israel the government of the national religion
appertained not to the priests and Levites, otherwise than as
they happened to be of the Sanhedrim, or Senate, to which they
had no right at all but by election. It is in this capacity
therefore that the people are commanded, under pain of death, "to
hearken to them, and to do according to the sentence of the law
which they should teach;" but in Israel the law ecclesiastical
and civil was the same, therefore the Sanhedrim, having the power
of one, had the power of both. But as the national religion
appertained to the jurisdiction of the Sanhedrim, so the liberty
of conscience appertained, from the same date, and by the same
right, to the prophets and their disciples; as where it is said,
"I will raise up a prophet; and whoever will not hearken to my
words which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him."
The words relate to prophetic right, which was above all the
orders of this commonwealth; whence Elijah not only refused to
obey the King, but destroyed his messengers with fire. And
whereas it was not lawful by the national religion to sacrifice
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