that they should hold that there could be any other, for
if there be such a thing as pure monarchy, yet that there should be such
a one as pure aristocracy or pure democracy is not in my understanding.
But the magistracy, both in number and function, is different in
different commonwealths. Nevertheless there is one condition of it that
must be the same in every one, or it dissolves the commonwealth where it
is wanting. And this is no less than that, as the hand of the magistrate
is the executive power of the law, so the head of the magistrate is
answerable to the people, that his execution be according to the law; by
which Leviathan may see that the hand or sword that executes the law is
in it and not above it.

Now whether I have rightly transcribed these principles of a
commonwealth out of nature, I shall appeal to God and to the world--to
God in the fabric of the Commonwealth of Israel, and to the world in
the universal series of ancient prudence. But in regard the same
commonwealths will be opened at large in the Council of legislators, I
shall touch them for the present but slightly, beginning with that of
Israel.

The Commonwealth of Israel consisted of the Senate, the people, and the
magistracy.

The people by their first division, which was genealogical, were
contained under their thirteen tribes, houses, or families; whereof the
first-born in each was prince of his tribe, and had the leading of it:
the tribe of Levi only, being set apart to serve at the altar, had no
other prince but the high-priest. In their second division they were
divided locally by their agrarian, or the distribution of the land
of Canaan to them by lot, the tithe of all remaining to Levi; whence,
according to their local division, the tribes are reckoned but twelve.

The assemblies of the people thus divided were methodically gathered by
trumpets to the congregation: which was, it should seem, of two sorts.
For if it were called with one trumpet only, the princes of the tribes
and the elders only assembled; but if it were called with two, the whole
people gathered themselves to the congregation, for so it is rendered
by the English; but in the Greek it is called Ecclesia, or the Church of
God, and by the Talmudist the great "Synagogue." The word Ecclesia
was also anciently and properly used for the civil congregations, or
assemblies of the people in Athens, Lacedaemon, and Ephesus, where it
is so called in Scripture, though it be oth