[20:0] CHAPTER XX - THAT IN A FREE STATE EVERY MAN
MAY THINK WHAT HE LIKES, AND SAY WHAT HE THINKS.

[20:1] (1) If men's minds were as easily controlled as their tongues, every
king would sit safely on his throne, and government by compulsion would
cease; for every subject would shape his life according to the intentions of
his rulers, and would esteem a thing true or false, good or evil, just or
unjust, in obedience to their dictates. (2) However, we have shown already
(Chapter XVII.) that no man's mind can possibly lie wholly at the
disposition of another, for no one can willingly transfer his natural right
of free reason and judgment, or be compelled so to do. (3) For this
reason government which attempts to control minds is accounted tyrannical,
and it is considered an abuse of sovereignty and a usurpation of the rights
of subjects, to seek to prescribe what shall be accepted as true, or
rejected as false, or what opinions should actuate men in their worship of
God. (4) All these questions fall within a man's natural right, which he
cannot abdicate even with his own consent.

(20:5) I admit that the judgment can be biassed in many ways, and to an
almost incredible degree, so that while exempt from direct external control
it may be so dependent on another man's words, that it may fitly be said to
be ruled by him; but although this influence is carried to great lengths, it
has never gone so far as to invalidate the statement, that every man's
understanding is his own, and that brains are as diverse as palates.

(20:6) Moses, not by fraud, but by Divine virtue, gained such a hold over
the popular judgment that he was accounted superhuman, and believed to speak
and act through the inspiration of the Deity; nevertheless, even he could