politics, as I am able to frame in so short a time:

The two first orders, that is to say, the Senate and the people, are
legislative, whereunto answers that part of this science which by
politicians is entitled "of laws;" and the third order is executive,
to which answers that part of the same science which is styled "of the
frame and course of courts or judicatories." A word to each of these
will be necessary.

And first for laws: they are either ecclesiastical or civil, such as
concern religion or government.

Laws, ecclesiastical, or such as concern religion, according 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;