Footnotes
[1]
. "The public power of all society is above every
soul contained in the same society, and the principal use of that power is to
give laws unto all that are under it, which laws in such cases we must obey,
unless there be reason showed which may necessarily enforce that the law of
reason or of God doth enjoin the contrary." Hooker, Eccl. Pol., i. 16.
[2]
. "To take away all such mutual grievances, injuries,
and wrongs — i.e., such as attend men in the state of Nature, there was no
way but only by growing into composition and agreement amongst themselves by
ordaining some kind of government public, and by yielding themselves subject
thereunto, that unto whom they granted authority to rule and govern, by them
the peace, tranquillity, and happy estate of the rest might be procured. Men
always knew that where force and injury was offered, they might be defenders of
themselves. They knew that, however men may seek their own commodity, yet if
this were done with injury unto others, it was not to be suffered, but by all
men and all good means to be withstood. Finally, they knew that no man might,
in reason, take upon him to determine his own right, and according to his own
determination proceed in maintenance thereof, in as much as every man is
towards himself, and them whom he greatly affects, partial; and therefore, that
strifes and troubles would be endless, except they gave their common consent,
all to be ordered by some whom they should agree upon, without which consent
there would be no reason that one man should take upon him to be lord or judge
over another." Hooker, ibid. 10.
[3]
. "At the first, when some certain kind of regimen
was once appointed, it may be that nothing was then further thought upon for
the manner of governing, but all permitted unto their wisdom and discretion
which were to rule till, by experience, they found this for all parts very
inconvenient, so as the thing which they had devised for a remedy did indeed
but increase the sore which it should have cured. They saw that to live by one
man's will became the cause of all men's misery. This constrained them to come
unto laws wherein all men might see their duty beforehand, and know the
penalties of transgressing them." Hooker, Eccl. Pol. i. 10.
[4]
. "Civil law, being the act of the whole body
politic, doth therefore overrule each several part of the same body."
Hooker, ibid.