their
Institution, they are designed to live, as long as Man-kind, or as
the Lawes of Nature, or as Justice it selfe, which gives them life.
Therefore when they come to be dissolved, not by externall violence, but
intestine disorder, the fault is not in men, as they are the Matter; but
as they are the Makers, and orderers of them. For men, as they become
at last weary of irregular justling, and hewing one another, and desire
with all their hearts, to conforme themselves into one firme and lasting
edifice; so for want, both of the art of making fit Laws, to square
their actions by, and also of humility, and patience, to suffer the rude
and combersome points of their present greatnesse to be taken off, they
cannot without the help of a very able Architect, be compiled, into any
other than a crasie building, such as hardly lasting out their own time,
must assuredly fall upon the heads of their posterity.

Amongst the Infirmities therefore of a Common-wealth, I will reckon in
the first place, those that arise from an Imperfect Institution,
and resemble the diseases of a naturall body, which proceed from a
Defectuous Procreation.

Want Of Absolute Power

Of which, this is one, "That a man to obtain a Kingdome, is sometimes
content with lesse Power, than to the Peace, and defence of the
Common-wealth is necessarily required." From whence it commeth to passe,
that when the exercise of the Power layd by, is for the publique safety
to be resumed, it hath the resemblance of as unjust act; which disposeth
great numbers of men (when occasion is presented) to rebell; In the
same manner as the bodies of children, gotten by diseased parents, are
subject either to untimely death, or to purge the ill quality, derived
from their vicious conception, by breaking out into biles and scabbs.
And when Kings deny themselves some such necessary Power, it is not
alwayes (though sometimes) out of ignorance of what is necessary to the
office they undertake; but many times out of a hope to recover the same
again at their pleasure: Wherein they reason not well; because such as
will hold them to their promises, shall be maintained against them by
forraign Common-wealths; who in order to the good of their own Subjects
let slip few occasions to Weaken the estate of their Neighbours. So was
Thomas Beckett Archbishop of Canterbury, supported against Henry
the Second, by the Pope; the subjection of Ecclesiastiques to the
Common-wealth, having bee