whole set of bishops, and those defending them; so that the differences fairly stated, would be much of a sort with those in religion among us, and amount to little more than, who should take place or go in and out first, or kiss the Queen’s hand; and what are these but a few court ceremonies?  Or, who should be in the ministry?  And what is that to the body of the nation, but a mere speculative point?  Yet I think it must be allowed, that no religious sects ever carried their aversions for each other to greater heights than our state-parties have done, who the more to inflame their passions have mixed religious and civil animosities together; borrowing one of their appellations from the Church, with the addition of High and Low, how little soever their disputes relate to the term as it is generally understood.

I now proceed to deliver the sentiments of a Church of England man with respect to government.

He doth not think the Church of England so narrowly calculated, that it cannot fall in with any regular species of government; nor does he think any one regular species of government more acceptable to God than another.  The three generally received in the schools have all of them their several perfections, and are subject to their several depravations.  However, few states are ruined by any defect in their institution, but generally by the corruption of manners, against which the best institution is no long security, and without which a very ill one may subsist and flourish:  Whereof there are two pregnant instances now in Europe.  The first is the aristocracy of Venice, which founded upon the wisest maxims, and digested by a great length of time, hath in our age admitted so many abuses through the degeneracy of the nobles, that the period of its duration seems to approach.  The other is the united republics of the States-general, where a vein of temperance, industry, parsimony, and a public spirit, running through the whole body of the people, hath preserved an infant commonwealth of an untimely birth and sickly constitution, for above an hundred years, through so many dangers and difficulties, as a much more healthy one could never have struggled against, without those advantages.

Where security of person and property are preserved by laws which none but the Whole can repeal, there the great ends of government are provided for whether the administration be in the hands of One, or of Many.  Where any one person or body of men, who do not represent the Whole, seize into their hands the power in the last resort, there is properly no longer a government, but what Aristotle and his followers call the abuse and corruption of one.  This distinction excludes arbitrary power in whatever numbers; which notwithstanding all that Hobbes, Filmer[10] and others have said to its advantage, I look upon as a greater evil than anarchy itself; as much as a savage is in a happier state of life than a slave at the oar.