And because the first instruction of children dependeth on the care of their parents,it is necessary that they should be obedient to them whilst they are under their tuition;and not only so,but that also afterwards,as gratitude requireth,they acknowledge the benefit of their education by external signs of honour.To which end they are to be taught that originally the father of every man was also his sovereign lord,with power over him of life and death;and that the fathers of families,when by instituting a Commonwealth they resigned that absolute power,yet it was never intended they should lose the honour due unto them for their education.For to relinquish such right was not necessary to the institution of sovereign power;nor would there be any reason why any man should desire to have children,or take the care to nourish and instruct them,if they were afterwards to have no other benefit from them than from other men.And this accordeth with the fifth Commandment.
Again,every sovereign ought to cause justice to be taught,which,consisting in taking from no man what is his,is as much as to say,to cause men to be taught not to deprive their neighbours,by violence or fraud,of anything which by the sovereign authority is theirs.Of things held in propriety,those that are dearest to a man are his own life and limbs;and in the next degree,in most men,those that concern conjugal affection;and after them riches and means of living.
Therefore the people are to be taught to abstain from violence to one another's person by private revenges,from violation of conjugal honour,and from forcible rapine and fraudulent surreption of one another's goods.For which purpose also it is necessary they be shown the evil consequences of false judgment,by corruption either of judges or witnesses,whereby the distinction of propriety is taken away,and justice becomes of no effect:all which things are intimated in the sixth,seventh,eighth,and ninth Commandments.
Lastly,they are to be taught that not only the unjust facts,but the designs and intentions to do them,though by accident hindered,are injustice;which consisteth in the pravity of the will,as well as in the irregularity of the act.And this is the intention of the tenth Commandment,and the sum of the second table;which is reduced all to this one commandment of mutual charity,"Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thy self";as the sum of the first table is reduced to "the love of God";whom they had then newly received as their king.
As for the means and conduits by which the people may receive this instruction,we are to search by what means so many opinions contrary to the peace of mankind,upon weak and false principles,have nevertheless been so deeply rooted in them.I mean those which Ihave in the precedent the precedent chapter specified:as that men shall judge of what is lawful and unlawful,not by the law itself,but by their own consciences;that is to say,by their own private judgements:that subjects sin in obeying the commands of the Commonwealth,unless they themselves have first judged them to be lawful:that their propriety in their riches is such as to exclude the dominion which the Commonwealth hath the same:that it is lawful for subjects to kill such as they call tyrants:that the sovereign power may be divided,and the like;which come to be instilled into the people by this means.They whom necessity or covetousness keepeth attent on their trades and labour;and they,on the other side,whom superfluity or sloth carrieth after their sensual pleasures (which two sorts of men take up the greatest part of mankind),being diverted from the deep meditation which the of truth,not only in the matter of natural justice,but also of all other sciences necessarily requireth,receive the notions of their duty chiefly from divines in the pulpit,and partly from such of their neighbours or familiar acquaintance as having the faculty of discoursing readily and plausibly seem wiser and better learned in cases of law and conscience than themselves.And the divines,and such others as make show of learning,derive their knowledge from the universities,and from the schools of law,or from the books which by men eminent in those schools and universities have been published.It is therefore manifest that the instruction of the people dependeth wholly on the right teaching of youth in the universities.But are not,may some man say,the universities of England learned enough already to do that?Or is it,you will undertake to teach the universities?Hard questions.
Yet to the first,I doubt not to answer:that till towards the latter end of Henry the Eighth,the power of the Pope was always upheld against the power of the Commonwealth,principally by the universities;and that the doctrines by so many preachers against the sovereign power of the king,and by so many lawyers and others that had their education there,is a sufficient argument that,though the universities were not authors of those false doctrines,yet they knew not how to plant the true.For in such a contradiction of opinions,it is most certain that they have not been sufficiently instructed;and it is no wonder,if they yet retain a relish of that subtle liquor wherewith they were first seasoned against the civil authority.But to the latter question,it is not fit nor needful for me to say either aye or no:for any man that sees what I am doing may easily perceive what I think.