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