Such is the description of governments.  We see the government of God over the world is hidden, insomuch as it seemeth to participate of much irregularity and confusion.  The government of the soul in moving the body is inward and profound, and the passages thereof hardly to be reduced to demonstration.  Again, the wisdom of antiquity (the shadows whereof are in the poets) in the description of torments and pains, next unto the crime of rebellion, which was the giants’ offence, doth detest the offence of futility, as in Sisyphus and Tantalus.  But this was meant of particulars:  nevertheless even unto the general rules and discourses of policy and government there is due a reverent and reserved handling.

(48) But contrariwise in the governors towards the governed, all things ought as far as the frailty of man permitteth to be manifest and revealed.  For so it is expressed in the Scriptures touching the government of God, that this globe, which seemeth to us a dark and shady body, is in the view of God as crystal:  Et in conspectu sedis tanquam mare vitreum simile crystallo.  So unto princes and states, and specially towards wise senates and councils, the natures and dispositions of the people, their conditions and necessities, their factions and combinations, their animosities and discontents, ought to be, in regard of the variety of their intelligences, the wisdom of their observations, and the height of their station where they keep sentinel, in great part clear and transparent.  Wherefore, considering that I write to a king that is a master of this science, and is so well assisted, I think it decent to pass over this part in silence, as willing to obtain the certificate which one of the ancient philosophers aspired unto; who being silent, when others contended to make demonstration of their abilities by speech, desired it might be certified for his part, “That there was one that knew how to hold his peace.”

(49) Notwithstanding, for the more public part of government, which is laws, I think good to note only one deficiency; which is, that all those which have written of laws have written either as philosophers or as lawyers, and none as statesmen.  As for the philosophers, they make imaginary laws for imaginary commonwealths, and their discourses are as the stars, which give little light because they are so high.  For the lawyers, they write according to the states where they live what is received law, and not what ought to be law; for the wisdom of a law-maker is one, and of a lawyer is another.  For there are in nature certain fountains of justice whence all civil laws are derived but as streams; and like as waters do take tinctures and tastes from the soils through which they run, so do civil laws vary according to the regions and governments where they are planted, though they proceed from the same fountains.  Again, the wisdom of a law-maker consisteth not only in a platform of justice, but in the application thereof;