But that we may observe a little further how the heathen
politicians have written, not only out of nature, but as it were
out of Scripture: as in the Commonwealth of Israel, God is said
to have been king, so the commonwealth where the law is king, is
said by Aristotle to be "the kingdom of God." And where by the
lusts or passions of men a power is set above that of the law
deriving from reason, which is the dictate of God, God in that
sense is rejected or deposed that he should not reign over them,
as he was in Israel. And yet Leviathan will have it that "by
reading of these Greek and Latin [he might as well in this sense
have said Hebrew] authors, young men, and all others that are
unprovided of the antidote of solid reason, receiving a strong
and delightful impression of the great exploits of war achieved
by the conductors of their armies, receive withal a pleasing idea
of all they have done besides, and imagine their great prosperity
not to have proceeded from the emulation of particular men, but
from the virtue of their popular form of government, not
considering the frequent seditions and civil wars produced by the
imperfection of their polity." Where, first, the blame he lays to
the heathen authors, is in his sense laid to the Scripture; and
whereas he holds them to be young men, or men of no antidote that
are of like opinions, it should seem that Machiavel, the sole
retriever of this ancient prudence, is to his solid reason a
beardless boy that has newly read Livy. And how solid his reason
is, may appear where he grants the great prosperity of ancient
commonwealths, which is to give up the controversy. For such an
effect must have some adequate cause, which to evade he
insinuates that it was nothing else but the emulation of
particular men, as if so great an emulation could have been
generated without as great virtue, so great virtue without the