Query, whether it be the duty of kings to provide for the salvation of their subjects’ souls, as they shall judge best in their own consciences.
5. And first of all, princes do believe that it mainly concerns eternal salvation, what opinions are held of the Deity, and what manner of worship he is to be adored with. Which being supposed, it may be demanded whether chief rulers, and whosoever they be, whether one or more, who exercise supreme authority, sin not against the law of nature, if they cause not such a doctrine and worship to be taught and practised, or permit a contrary to be taught and practised, as they believe necessarily conduceth to the eternal salvation of their subjects. It is manifest that they act against their conscience; and that they will, as much as in them lies, the eternal perdition of their subjects. For if they willed it not, I see no reason why they should suffer (when being supreme they cannot be compelled) such things to be taught and done, for which they believe them to be in a damnable state. But we will leave this difficulty in suspense.
Wherein the safety of the people consists.
6. The benefits of subjects, respecting this life only, may be distributed into four kinds. 1. That they be defended against foreign enemies. 2. That peace be preserved at home. 3. That they be enriched, as much as may consist with public security. 4. That they enjoy a harmless liberty. For supreme commanders can confer no more to their civil happiness, than that being preserved from foreign and civil wars, they may quietly enjoy that wealth which they have purchased by their own industry.
That discoverers are necessary for the defence of the people.
7. There are two things necessary for the people’s defence; to be warned and to be forearmed. For the state of commonwealths considered in themselves, is natural, that is to say, hostile. Neither if they cease from fighting, is it therefore to be called peace; but rather a breathing time, in which one enemy observing the motion and countenance of the other, values his security not according to the pacts, but the forces and counsels of his adversary. And this by natural right, as hath been showed in chap. II. [art. 11], from this, that contracts are invalid in the state of nature, as oft as any just fear doth intervene. It is therefore necessary to the defence of the city, first, that there be some who may, as near as may be, search into and discover the counsels and motions of all those who may prejudice it. For discoverers to ministers of state, are like the beams of the sun to the human soul. And we may more truly say in vision political, than natural, that the sensible and intelligible species of outward things, not well considered by others, are by the air transported to the soul; that is to say, to them who have the supreme authority: and therefore are they no less necessary to the preservation of the state, than the rays of the light are to the conservation of man. Or if they be compared to spider’s webs, which, extended on all sides by the finest threads, do warn them, keeping in their small holes, of all outward motions; they who bear rule, can no more know what is necessary to be commanded for the defence of their subjects without spies, than those spiders can, when they shall go forth, and whither they shall repair, without the motion of those threads.
To have soldiers, arms, garrisons, and money in readiness in time of peace, is necessary for the people’s defence.
8. Furthermore, it is necessarily requisite to the people’s defence, that they be forearmed. Now to be forearmed is to be furnished with soldiers, arms, ships, forts, and monies, before the danger be instant; for the lifting of soldiers and taking up of arms after a blow is given, is too late at least, if not impossible. In like manner, not to raise forts and appoint garrisons in convenient places before the frontiers are invaded, is to be like those country swains, (as Demosthenes said), who ignorant of the art of fencing, with their bucklers guarded those parts of the body where they first felt the smart of the strokes. But they who think it then seasonable enough to raise monies for the maintenance of soldiers and other charges of war, when the danger begins to show itself, they consider not, surely, how difficult a matter it is to wring suddenly out of close-fisted men so vast a proportion of monies. For almost all men, what they once reckon in the number of their goods, do judge themselves to have such a right and propriety in it, as they conceive themselves to be injured whensoever they are forced to employ but the least part of it for the public good. Now a sufficient stock of monies to defend the country with arms, will not soon be raised out of the treasure of imposts and customs. We must therefore, for fear of war, in time of peace hoard up good sums, if we intend the safety of the commonweal. Since therefore it necessarily belongs to rulers, for the subjects’ safety to discover the enemy’s counsel, to keep garrisons, and to have money in continual readiness; and that princes are, by the law of nature, bound to use their whole endeavour in procuring the welfare of their subjects: it follows, that it is not only lawful for them to send out spies, to maintain soldiers, to build forts, and to require monies for these purposes; but also not to do thus is unlawful. To which also may be added, whatsoever shall seem to conduce to the lessening of the power of foreigners whom they suspect, whether by slight or force. For rulers are bound according to their power to prevent the evils they suspect; lest peradventure they may happen through their negligence.
A right instruction of subjects in civil doctrines, is necessary for the preserving of peace.
9. But many things are required to the conservation of inward peace; because many things concur (as hath been showed in the foregoing chapter) to its perturbation. We have there showed, that some things there are, which dispose the minds of men to sedition, others which move and quicken them so disposed. Among those which dispose them, we have reckoned in the first place certain perverse doctrines. It is therefore the duty of those who have the chief authority, to root those out of the minds of men, not by commanding, but by teaching; not by the terror of penalties, but by the perspicuity of reasons. The laws whereby this evil may be withstood, are not to be made against the persons erring, but against the errors themselves. Those errors which, in the foregoing chapter, we affirmed were inconsistent with the quiet of the commonweal, have crept into the minds of ignorant men, partly from the pulpit, partly from the daily discourses of men, who, by reason of little employment otherwise, do find leisure enough to study; and they got into these men’s minds by the teachers of their youth in public schools. Wherefore also, on the other side, if any man would introduce sound doctrine, he must begin from the academies. There the true and truly demonstrated foundations of civil doctrine are to be laid; wherewith young men, being once endued, they may afterward, both in private and public, instruct the vulgar. And this they will do so much the more cheerfully and powerfully, by how much themselves shall be more certainly convinced of the truth of those things they profess and teach. For seeing at this day men receive propositions, though false, and no more intelligible than if a man should join together a company of terms drawn by chance out of an urn, by reason of the frequent use of hearing them; how much more would they for the same reason entertain true doctrines, suitable to their own understandings and the nature of things? I therefore conceive it to be the duty of supreme officers, to cause the true elements of civil doctrine to be written, and to command them to be taught in all the colleges of their several dominions.