A COMPARATIVE DISCOURSE OF THE BODIES NATURAL AND politic. Wherein out of the principles of Nature, is set forth the true form of a Commonweal, with the duty of Subjects, and the right of the Sovereign: together with many good points of Political learning, mentioned in a Brief after the Preface.  
By EDWARD FORSET.  
LONDON, Printed for john Bill. 1606.   

To the Reader.  
THe Commonweal with all her parts, 
The aptest resemblances of a Commonweal.  orders, qualities, and requisites whatsoever, is (for better apprehension & illustration) set forth by sundry fit resemblances, as by the architecture of an house, by the swarming and cohabiting of Bees in an hive, by a ship floating on the sea, and such like; but by none more properly than either by the universal mass of the whole world, (consisting of all the several subsistances in that great frame by the high wisdom and might of God compact and united) or else by the body of man, being the lesser world, 
The greater and lesser world.  even the diminutive and model of that wide extending universal. And (by the way) it were a pains well bestowed, to observe the good correspondence between every the particular parts or faculties in man, and the other distinct parts, powers, and operations of that bigger bulk: which seemeth to have been both sweetly and sound conceived by that thrice renowned Philosopher Trismegistus, 
Trismegistus his great Giant.  when he imagined an huge and mighty Giant, whose head was above the firmament, his neck, shoulders, and upper parts in the heavens, his arms and hands reaching to East and West, his belly in the whole spaciousness under the Moon, his legs and feet within the earth. But for that the discourse or discovery of this secret, with the agreeable references to arise thereof, falleth not within the line wherewith I have listed and bounded this Treatise; I will only from this observation of Gods own imitating of himself in the likeness of the less with the greater, 
God's imitating of himself, a direction for our imitating of him  gather and infer that which giveth groundwork unto my purpose: That the incomprehensible wisdom of God, in the composing & ordering of his works in nature, hath so dignified them with all perfection, as that they be left unto us as eminent and exemplary patterns, as well for the consolidating, as for the beautifying of that we work by art or policy; as well for conjoining of all discordances into firmness, as also for the applyablenesse of particulars in their many services, for the use and benefit of the whole. It is beyond the compass of any contradiction, that in the moral virtues Christ's actions are our instructions; and no less may the like rule hold, that in the contriving of a prudent government, the impressions and footsteps of God's wisdom (which in things natural we contemplate by study) be in the point of regiment, our directories for imitation. Wherefore seeing that the uttermost extent of man's understanding, can shape no better form of ordering the affairs of a State, than by marking and matching of the works of the finger of God, either in the larger volume of the universal, or in the abridgement thereof, the body of man: I account these two to be the two great lights for inquiry and meditation concerning this business, and do worthily omit all other worthless precedents, as inferior starrelights, which oftentimes seduceth by their dimness, and at their best are but derivative and subaltern unto these. And of these two also (as not daring to gaze too much upon the Sun, 
Man the fittest pattern to imitate in the forming of a civil state.  and unable in mine own weakness to run the round of such a large compass) I have made my choice to pursue only those applyances, which from the so skilful workmanship of God in man, may be well apted to the civil government of the assemblies of men: which being of more facility to be understood (as deduced from a more familiar example) and equalling the other both in dignity (having the same author) and in certainty (respecting the fitness of their relation) may also sort both agreeably with other men's like (as bred in their bosoms) and with mine intentions, which seeketh wholly a demonstrative plainness.  
This similitude was both fitly and fortunately enforced by Menenius Agrippa, 
Agrippa his tale of the parts of the body. Livius lib. 2.  who being employed in the appeasing and persuading of the seditious revolting commons of Rome, did by a very tale of this proportionable respectivenes of the parts in man's body, and the mutuality of kindness and aid afforded from each to other, so sensibly show them their error, that surseasing their malignant envy wherewith they were enraged against their rulers (whom they accounted as the idle belly that swallowed the labours of their hands) they discerned at the last, that their repining against, and their pining of that belly, whence was distributed unto them their blood and nourishment, necessarily tended to their own destruction; and were thereupon forthwith reclaimed into their bounds of obedience. The like comparison is most divinely enlarged by a much better Orator, 
The like comparisons used in the scriptures. 1. Cor. 12.  and in a much more important point of the unseparable union of the members of Christ with their head, and of the necessary communion of their distinct gifts and works amongst themselves; yea, it hath pleased God himself for the manifestation in some measure of his unmeasurable infiniteness, & the incomprehensible nature of his deity, to vouchsafe unto us as it were some glimpse thereof, by this self same well agreeing semblance, drawn and borrowed from our weak, mortal, and sinful bodies. His omni-science is set forth by an all-seeing eye, his omnipotency by a mighty and outstretched arm, his mercy by the cheerfulness of a loving countenance, his bounty by the opening of his hand, and filling of all things with his blessings: by which so apt types he openeth for our more easy understanding, the profoundness of his attributes, and (as I may say) the mysteries of his essence.  
I need not spend any speech in the praise of such familiar and well pleasing illustrations: 
In praise of such comparisons.  look but upon that exsuperant and not attainable by human powers wisdom of Solomon, is not the brightest appearance thereof in comparative parables? but behold a greater than Solomon, who without parables spoke nothing to them; as if both the depth and delicacy of wits invention for either proving or persuading, consisted chiefly in such equipolling and parabolical applications. It remaineth that before I proceed to the producing or presenting upon the Stage of State the similitudes themselves, to be scanned and considered of, (which I wish may prove themselves right parallel) I do for advantage interline first a Caution, than a Limitation: My Caution is, 
A Caution against crossing with dissimilitudes.  That no man in straining too hard, do force the blood, where he is offered milk. It is easy for a curious objector, even in the fittest comparisons to make disseverance by inferring different respects and inequality. The dissimilitudes of things be infinite, and roameth with error in the circumference, where the well apted likeness settleth in the centre of truth, and is compacted closely in one only point of good congruity, from the which it may neither be drawn awry without wrongful wresting, nor enlarged too far without extreme torturing. It is the greatest miracle of God's powerful wisdom, in the innumerable forms of things, to make so infinite variation; Then it must needs be a great work of the wit of man, in such multiplicity of disference to find out the well agreeing semblances, To knit and match together sundry things by an aptness of application, is the proper effect of union; but to disjoin the well coupled from their lovely analogy of each to other, is a violent divorce and distraction: Therefore let such makebates (if any be) abate their humour of crossing with dissimilitudes, & content their conceits with that which they shall discern to be matched with a right mirror, and representingly expressed by the show of a good concordance.  
My Limitation is, 
A limitation not to strive too far.  That it be not exacted or expected of me, so mincingly to manage this matter, as that unto every particular part or faculty of our human nature, I must needs find out in the State's body some several members or branches entirely matchable to the same; like a picture to be newly drawn by a former pattern, conforming therewith in every line, shape, or shadow. We use to say that one man is like an other, if but the faces, yea the colours or figures, yea the frowns or smiles, yea the casting of the eyes, or any other shows in their visages do seem to agree, though in other respects or parts there be betwixt them rather apparent repugnances, than any right resemblances; Then let no man think that I will so be put to my shifts, or that I will impose myself so hard a task, as (by descending to each singular or individual) to find for it an even yoak-fellow, or well matching companion, that may serve as a relative or representative unto it, by the aptness of propriety: The which labour as it would be endless in toil, so would it be no less needless in use; and I hope it will suffice, so to compare or make parity between the bodies Natural and Politic, that each part may be brought in rather easily entreated, than streiningly intruded; and rather agreeing naturally, than forced violently. Therefore omitting all industrious curiousity, and frivolous affectation of following too far (where yet I must needs fall short;) I only desire, that where I shall show a reciprocal likeness of habitude, affection, or disposition; there the similitude may pass approved, and induce assent: and that where these may not readily be had, there I may find such courteous construction, as that I may neither be charged with partiality of concealing (where it is meet I should be mute) nor be suspected of unsufficiency for not pursuing where I can find no footing.  
It is unfallable what I propound for my first principle, That in every particular person, there is both the seed and similitude of a State incorporate, yet to imagine or seek for in each severed or subdivided parts, such affinity and fitness betwixt them, as may mutually illustrate each other; were not to tune but to crack the strings, and to make quidlibet ex quodlibet, or, ex quovis ligno Mercurium. Modesty and discretion bindeth us to a stint, beyond the which if we shall stretch or strain, 
Of enforcing a similitude beyond his agreeableness.  we may justly be said to have borrowed of the wyerdrawers: we must not compel our applications there to shake hands and embrace, where discrepance of nature hath estranged and set apart. Were it not ridiculous for absurdity, and blasphemous for impiety, if in that serious similitude of Christ's coming to judgement like a thief in the night, we should (beyond the ge●●inall agreeableness of their unlooked for stealing upon us) in other most ungodly senses link in Christ in likeness with a thief? Or if that other notable parable of the unjust Steward, were (from the commendation of his provident prevention) racked with other references, to make his deceitfulness also praiseworthy; who would not convince such unfit and lefthanded handling, both of wildness in wit, and wickedness of heart? To conclude, I will knit up this point thus, That in the knitting and according of things divers into one point of agreement, (making by such their interchangeable lend of like reason and respect, a lightsomeness of proof and understanding) we must avoid their diversities as sands and rocks, and keep the right channel of an allowed likeness; which will conduct us both safely and delightsomly in this course of comparing.  
Farewell.   

¶ A Brief of such points as are comparatively handled in the Discourse following.  
WHat is meant in the saying of Pythagoras, that man is the measure of all things, and how this measure may serve in the matching of the state thereunto. 
Folio 1.  In every state, Sovereignty the soul, Allegiance the body. 
3.  In every civil state there must be the ruling, and the ruled. 
ibid.  Impugners of magistracy refuted. 
ibid.  Of the good that subjects have by government, with the end thereof. 
3.  Mutual offices between sovereign and subject. 
ibid.  Good government the state's happiness. 
4.  No government without law. 
ibid.  Sovereign's love to their subjects. 
5.  Sovereign's care of their subjects well doing. 
ibid.  The excellency of sovereignty, and how they be ordained of God, and what thereof is inferred. 
5. & 6.  Against ambition. 
7.  Sovereign's have a weighty charge full of labours and cares. 
8.  They divide part of their care and work to inferior magistrates, and be wronged by their negligence. 
8.  All command and power in the state derived from the sovereign. 
8.  Supremacy is maintained against the Pope, or any other without or within the Realm. 
9  The rights of Sovereign's not too far to be extended, nor too much to be restrained. 
10.  Of sovereignty. 
11  The soul set forth in his several powers, and then the sovereignty compared to the same. 
ibid.  Sovereignty in his vegetable powers. 
13.  Sovereignty in his sensitive and intellectual parts. 
14.  Councillors. 
15.  Favourites. 
ibidem.  Whether the Sovereign's will may stand for law. 
16.  Misinforming of Sovereigns. 
17.  The Sovereign's yielding to the customs and inclinations of the people. 
ibid.  The sovereign may not admit different sects of resolution. 
ibid.  The sovereign helped or wronged by obedience or disobedience of the people. 
ibid.  Sovereign's sometimes suppressed by Rebels. 
18.  The sovereign troubled with Courtiers suits. 
19  The sovereign troubled with Male contents. 
ibid.  All offenders have their pretences; Especially Traitors. 
ibid.  The sovereigns' records; And of the embezilling or falsifying of them. 
20.  Sovereign's prerogatives. 
ibid.  Sovereign's not to be evil spoken of upon supposal of any faults in them. 
21.  Sovereign's called gods, and what thereof inferred. 
23.  The large extent of Sovereignty, by comparison thereof to God and the Soul. 
ibid.  Whether it is better for the Sovereign to be much or seldom seen of the people. 
25.  Sovereign's compared to the head. 
26.  In the plantation of civil people, the head the root. 
27.  The excellency of the head; It dearly loveth all the parts; And it again 〈…〉. 
ibid.  The diseases of the head caused from the body, therefore to be borne with. 
28.  No repugnancy of the parts against the head. 
ibid.  How there should be no opposing, nor deposing of sovereigns. 
ibid.  Good Subjects oft take upon them the faults committed by their sovereign. 
ibid.  Sovereigns, in what sense they be likened to the heart. 
29.  Their command and force. 
ibid.  Their bounty and benefits, binding subjects to all duty. 
30.  Their love of virtue. 
ibid.  Sovereign's to look well to them that be near about them. 
31.  How factions and sides do grow; And how they be prevented. 
ibid.  The sovereigns' sports and recreations not to be grudged at. 
ibid.  The sovereign wronged, when his Officers, judges, and Councillors be wronged. 
32.  The person of the sovereign full of majesty. 
ibid.  Diversity of respects in the sovereign, touching his person and sovereignty; The work thereof showeth the majesty of it. 
33.  The sovereign may not do wrong to his Subjects. 
34.  Of certain essential orders in the state. 
35.  The gifts of statesmen to be well disposed of. 
36.  The chief officers or nobles to be well fafegarded. 
ibid.  Of the Body politic, and the four elements whereof it is compounded. 
37. & 38.  How the uneven mixture of these elements maketh abounding of humours, and difference of complexions. 
38.  The necessity of keeping these elements in concord, there is oft discord in the parts of one and the same element. 
39  Sundry forms of bodies politic arising from unequal mixture. 
40.  The harm which cometh by distemper, which converteth that to hurt which otherwise were good. 
41.  The beginnings, increasings, and end of Commonwealths, with all their alterations, chiefly of God. 
41. & 42.  The people's different dispositions, and the right ruling of them all to the public good, by the example of the body in the dieting thereof, in exercise, and in other sundry tendances. 
43. & 44.  Equality how to be observed in the distribution of the profits of the Commonweal. 
45.  Against parity, proving difference in dignity and riches. 
ibid.  Not to reward, worse than not to punish. 
46.  Difference of dignities and degrees, 
47.  Dignities not to be basely bestowed. 
48.  Why the body politic is called a Commonweal. 
ibid.  The mutuality of helps in the members. 
ibid.  Greatest respect to be had of the chief parts, against whom the enemies bend most. 
49.  Each part to be allotted to his own work. 
50.  Parts disordered maketh the body monstrous. 
50.  Against conspiracies, and of the late intended treasons. 
51.  Against idle vagrant and unprofitable people. 
54.  Against engrossing of many offices into one man's hands. 
ibid.  Of many well agreeing in one work. 
56.  In the work of ruling no more heads but one. 
57  Britania one body needing but one head. 
58.  Inducements for Union. 
ibid.  The body politic may have many imperfections, and yet remain a body. 
59  Shifts used for supply of defects, as to entertain strangers, to take mercenaries, and to enter leagues with other realms. 
60  And what success such shifts usually have. 
ibid.  What perfection may be looked for in the commonweal. 
ibid.  Signs of health in the state. 
61.  Signs infer no certainty, but often deceive. 
ibid.  Health how necessary. 
62.  A grief in part putteth the whole out of health. 
63.  Of discontentedness. 
ibid.  The observing of original orders preserveth health. 
ibid.  Alterations dangerous. 
ibid.  Nature best liketh that whereto it hath been accustomed. 
64.  Alterations must not be sudden, or of the whole, but by leisure and degrees. 
ibid.  Cases of alteration. 
65.  Better keep health than recover it. 
ibid.  Of providing in prosperity for adversity. 
ibid.  Timely preventions very requisite, because of small beginnings great mischiefs often ensue. 
66.  Of toleration of evils in the state. 
67.  Cases for sufferance of evil. 
68  We may hurt to heal, and take physic to prevent diseases. 
70.  Of the diseases of the state, and how they arise. 
71.  Difference in faults. 
72.  Against equality of sin, and how punishment must be proportionable to the offence. 
72.  Outward evils not so dangerous as inward. 
ibid.  Laws compared to physic, and the sovereign the chief Physician, and under him magistrates, their great charge. 
73. & 74.  The cause why their authority is so repined at. 
74.  The necessity of magistracy. 
ibid.  Magistrates not to be discouraged by the repugnancy of the people. 
75.  Magistrates works agreeth with the physicians works. 
ibid.  Sundry sorts of medicines for the state. 
ibid.  Whether the magistrate may be trusted in altering the punishment by law appointed by increasing or mitigating of the same. 
77.  As the faults be not equal, no more must be the punishment. 
ibid.  Points to be observed of the states Physician. 
78. & 79.  The Physicians of the state, are to tend all that be diseased, especially great men, whose faults are most perilous, and why they be so. 
80.  divers requisites in the Physicians of the body politic, and sundry positions touching the diseases of the state, and their cure. 
81.  Against unskilful Pragmatikes. 
85.  The learned fittest for government. 
86.  The harm of unperfect curing. 
ibid.  Discretion in ordering of state business, or in any other learning. 
87.  Of severity. 
ibid.  Of lenity. 
ibid.  The same disease may be cured by contrary ways. 
87. & 88  Repealing of old, and making of new laws. 
88  Magistrates may make use of the wicked. 
89.  The praise of good magistrates. 
ibid.  Qualities requisite in the Physician. 
ibid.  His love towards the people. 
90.  Not to be covetous. 
ibid.  Greediness of gain in some Lawyers. 
91.  A misery never to be out of law. 
ibid.  Magistrates may have private faults, and yet be good Magistrates. 
ibid.  Skill in governing his chiefest virtue. 
91.  Rather to be Natives than strangers. 
92.  Their good example of great force. 
92.  They must not defist from their duties for any abuses offered. 
ibid.  The ought not to have too many offices or employments. 
ibid.  Compared to a Surgeon in three properties. 
93.  They sometimes offend the law, and are then to be punished by other Magistrates. 
93.  Their faults no presence for any to disobey them. 
93.  Their deservings soon forgotten, and often not recompensed sufficiently. 
94.  Their good endeavours often censured by the events. 
94.  The Lawmakers abused and discouraged for want of execution of their laws; And how great an injury that is. 
94.  laws often by cavils illuded to the wrong of magistracy and justice. 
95.  Obedience the chief virtue of subjects. 
95.  A knitting the subject and the sovereign in mutual love, making the commonweal blessed thereby. 
95.   

In the conclusion.  Political governors made famous by the praises of the learned. 
96.  The Benefit which sovereigns may have by reading of Political books. 
97  The dedicattion of such works, due to the governors of the state. 
97.  Against curiosity in private persons, of looking into state business. 
98.  Sobriety to be used in inquisitive, the highest degree whereof is to pry into Princes dealings and dispositions. 
99  The heinousness of that fault. 
99  A caveat against it by a comparison of the sovereign to the soul. 
99  Sovereignty as great a mystery in policy, as the soul in the body. 
100   
FINIS.   

A comparative Discourse of the Bodies Natural and Politic.  
IT was pithily spoken of Pythagoras, 
Homo monsura rerum omnium.  That man is the measure of all things: importing thereby, that man by the ampliation and application of his powers apprehensive, discerneth, discusseth, and confineth the several works of nature: with his senses he measureth things sensible, with his understanding he perceiveth things intellectual, with his illuminate & inspired knowledge, he comprehendeth things divine and supernatural; yea more, by this so large and unmeasured measure, all things are made suitable to the esteem of man, and be either great or small, light or heavy, fair or ill-favoured, desirable or avoidable, as by man's well or ill conceiving the same be valued. But beyond all this, the meaning of that sage sentence extendeth yet farther, That in the very composure of man, there is manifestly discovered a summary abstract of absolute perfection, by the which as by an excellent Idea, or an exact rule, we may examine and exemplify all other things.  
The Mathematicians have found out by their observance of the beauteous and uniform proportion of the body of man, and by the symmetry of the parts thereof, their true scantlines and dimensions; yea by the laying of it in his full length, & then spreading the arms and legs to their widest compass, they have contrived both the perfect square, and the exact circle: The square, by four right lines at the four uttermost points of the hands and feet; the circle, by rounding a line about those points, placing the centre of their compass upon the navel. The natural Philosophers reduceth the vastness of the universal (comprehending all things that hath either being, or vegitation, or sense, or reason) unto this same well compacted Epitome of man's fabrifacture.  
Then much more may the politic Philosopher, having for his proper subject the compound of men civilly assembled and associate, make man the object of his discourse and contemplation, to fit his treatise with good fashion to so imitable a pattern. Therefore this measure (thus induced thereto) I have made my choice of, to try thereby the form of a commonweal, what therein is right or wry, what redundant or defective, what orderly or disproportionable; the help of such a brief, and the truth of such a standard, may serve to balance the matters of deliberation, fitly accommodating and rectifying all designments and proceedings. And sith I do find this line of likeness to be chalked out unto us in God's works, I will there begin my applying, where that profound wisdom hath begun his framing.  
As in the creating of man God conjoined a soul for action, in a body passive: so in his ordinance of man's sociable conversing (to make the union of a body politic) he hath knit together a passive subjection to an active superoiritie: 
Sovereignty the soul, Allegiance the body.  and as in every man there is both a quickening & ruling soul, and a living and ruled body; so in every civil state, 
In every civil state there must be the ruling, and the ruled.  there is a directing & commanding power, & an obeying and subjecteth allegiance, For as neither the soul alone, nor body alone (if they should be severed) can be a man, so not the ruler alone, nor the subjects alone, can be a commonweal. Where all will rule, there is no rule, and where none doth rule, there is all misrule: but to rule well, and to be well ruled, is the surest bond of human society. 
Impugners of magistracy.  Such unruly routs, as (humourously led in dislikes) denieth the lawfulness of Magistrates, may well be likened to certain peevish Malcontents, who overtoyled with the tediousness of life (and that often without any apparent cause) wisheth that they had no souls, it being all one to want in the body a soul, and in the state a governor: yet as the body sustaineth no harm or wrong, 
Magistracy worketh the good of the people.  yea is infinitely benefited and graced by the powerful working of the soul in his organs; so the people guided by a just government, not only are not thereby injured, hindered or abased, but much enabled, ennobled, and advanced even to the highest pitch of a wealthy and safe repose. 
Mutual offices between sovereign and subject.  Then as the soul is the form which to the body giveth being, and essence; and the body is the matter which desiringly affecteth his form: so both the ruler should wholly endeavour the welfare of his people, and the subject ought (as in love to his own soul) to conform unto his sovereign; that both of them mutually like twins of one womb, may in the near and dear nature of relatives, maintain unuiolate that compound of concordance, in which and for which they were first combined. As the coupling of the soul and body, tendeth not only to give life, but also to the attaining of a perfect and happy life: So the right temper of sovereignty and obedience, intendeth end effecteth not only the being, 
The end of government, to make the state happy.  but also the flourishing and felicity of a Commonweal. For the gaining of which propounded happiness, as the soul is the worthier agent, taking the greatest care, and deserving the chiefest commendation, in so much as a man is not said to be happy for any his strength, his bigness, properness, or comely feature of body, but for the goodness, nobleness, and virtuous endowements of his soul: So for the acquiring or framing of any perfection in the Commonweal, we are not so much to behold the largeness, the power, or the well showing composure thereof, as the prudency, justice, and other virtuous sincerity of a rightful government. In man the soul ruleth by reason, and in the State the Sovereign governeth by laws; 
All government by law.  which may no less aptly be termed the soul of sovereignty, than reason is said to be the soul of the soul. It can never be so much as conceived, that the soul should be without reason, though by the unaptness or repugnancy of the organs, his power in working is either interrupted or impugned: So government may not be so much as imagined to be without law, though the force and life of the law, through the waywardness of the subjects, cannot always alike be showed or seen in his due effects: no not the Sovereign will infringe laws, no more than the soul will renounce reason. Herewith the fiction of the Poets and the Painters well agreeth, which in the description and portraiture of jupiter adjoined justice sitting on his right hand; howsoever it pleased Anaxarchus gybingly to tell Alexander, that jupiter was not bound thereby to do justly, but that the people were thereof to conceive, that whatsoever jupiter did was just.  
It is worthy the noting, 
The sovereigns love to their subjects.  that albeit the body doth often unthankfully rebel against the soul, yet the soul ever loveth the body, still seeking to reduce it to the better, even as a workman mendeth his tools, or a Musician his Instruments: whereof good Rulers do make to themselves this rule, That notwithstanding the subjects by their misbehaviour do often cause an incitation to wrath in their Sovereign against them, yet in the punishing of such offenders, he will discover no hatred to their persons, but to their faults, showing himself grieved and unwilling to afflict them, seeking rather their chastisement with pity, than their destruction with cruelty, and rather to hold a conjunction with them by the mutuality of loving offices, than to weaken his own strength by the loss and cutting off the imployable parts of the state public. 
The sovereigns care of their subjects welfare.  The welfare and prosperity of the body giveth to the soul sweet contentment, as secured thereby from the cares, perplexities, and griefs which want occasioneth: so the plentiful and abundant estate of the subjects, is by a good Sovereign both maintained and rejoiced at, sith it giveth to him assurance of supply and comfort in all necessities.  
In the creating of man, 
The excellency of sovereignty.  God is said to have breathed into him the soul, whereby the purity and dignity thereof is much extolled above that lump of mowlded earth his body: So is the place of pre-eminence of an high majesty, & of a more choice and better esteemed worth, as being more to the image of God, & participating more aptly with his greatness, his power, his justice, his mercy, his wisdom, his goodness and bounty, and whatsoever else unspeakable perfection in his unsearchable essence; for if man's governing of the creatures be to the image of God, than the governing of men is much more to that image.  
It was not in the power of the body either to choose or refuse the soul, but his right of admission depended only on the pleasure of his immediate maker. 
Sovereign's ordained by God.  I forbear to force the consequence so far, as wholly to debar the people's liking or electing of their governors: yet somewhat to temper the harshness, and to restrain the rashness of some peremptory pragmatics, I may be bold from that averment of the souls imbreathing, to propound this application comparatively from thence inferred, That in this high point of principality, God hath reserved to himself this prerogative ofbestowing that dignity, according to his own most unscrutable counsel: By me (saith he) Kings do reign. And Saint Paul avoucheth, 
Rom. 13.  That there is no power but of God: Yea Homer produceth grave Nestor, reproving of Achilles for his obstinate withdrawing from Agamemnon's regiment, and his overbold contending with the King, sith his empery was of God. True it is, that even in the same phrases all things may be said to be of God, and from God, as the author, creator, preserver, and disposer thereof: yet when we find him to single out and appropriate any onething more especially unto his own designments, we are there to take notice of his greater respectiveness, and his overswaying greatness in the disposing and ordering of that matter beyond the orders and limitations of laws or customs; yea in such a case he conformeth the secondary causes, to cooperate with him to his own ends: as when he framed the people's hearts, and the concurrence of their consents in the electing of Saul and David unto the kingly office, whom notwithstanding he had before himself appointed and anointed to that function. Wherefore as the soul notwithstanding the mediate means of procreation, is usually said to be infused from above into the body: so the Sovereign even in his particular parson, but much more the sovereign authority may notwithstanding the approbation of men, or any other assisting helps in the establishing thereof, be rightly avouched to be ordained and designed by God himself.  
As the soul (in imitation of that infiniteness from which it was first breathed) spendeth all his powers with an insatiate desire in the search and inquisition of more and more knowledge, 
Against ambition.  endeavouring thereby a further dilatation or extension of his nature (as to be like unto God himself:) so doth oft times a Sovereign (haughtily conceited of the likeness he hath with his ordainer) strive with all restless thoughts and dear adventures, to enlarge the amplitude of his dominion, reckoning it the absoluteness of perfection to be extended beyond the compass of any limitation, and then wishing the subduing of many worlds, that he might more nearly resemble the highest God, that made and ruleth all the world. But unto them both (out of sorrowful experience) I may add this correcting caveat, That such ambitious affectation, as it brought upon the one the deprivation of his former blessedness, so is it commonly punished in the other by the downfall and dissipation of his so exalted state. And as the one hath ever since been stinted at a measure of understanding acquirable by the organs of the body (the which to seek to exceed is a renouncing of humility, yea a forgetting of our human imbecility, & a curiosity beyond sobriety:) so is each sovereign power listed & confined to his own territories, maynteinable by the strength thereof, the which who so is not contented with, is accounted blamable of a presumptuous & unjust usurpation beyond the bounds to him assigned.  
In that the soul is author of action and motion in the body passive, 
Sovereign's have a weighty charge.  himself being never idle, it showeth by similitude, that the sovereign doth uncessantly care and labour for the public good, and that his place is not (as some vain heads imagine) the seat of idleness and pleasure, but that his crown is accompanied, and even encompassed with so many restless thoughts, and stinging cares, as affordeth him but small respite of ease, no not in the night season, as Homer describeth his Agamemnon.  
Howsoever the body be termed passive, in regard of the souls working in and by his instruments, 
Sovereign's impart to inferior magistrates a part of their power.  yet unto it also the soul imparteth his power of moving and acting, and the more noble parts thereof be the more endued and enabled with the soul's best and worthiest faculties. 
All command in the state derived from the sovereign.  So is all superiority and command in the state, derivatively branching from the supreme principality; and the subjects of best sort, & fittest for use and employments do share the greatest portion of such their sovereigns subdivided authority: the remembrance & meditation whereof cannot but add unto such designed and derived magistrates a spur of quickening encouragement, more watchfully to attend so weighty a charge, least through their faintness and dullness there be procured to their Sovereign a distayning disgrace or imputation of disability. 
Sovereign's wronged by the negligence of under officers.  For as when the senses and powers of the body be fallen asleep, the soul also (as not showing himself in the life of his actions) may be thought to be fast bound & surprised with the same slumbers: so when the substituted and authorized officers do desist from their endeavours and vigilancy in the tendance of the charge or business to them credited; the soul of sovereignty is in such their slackness or sleepiness greatly discredited, as if it were wholly deprived of his power, yea of the very appearance of his governing virtue.  
I● i● not impossible & unsensible, that a body should live or move by any other soul, than that whereunto by nature it is united. And is it not as absurd in any man's understanding, and as preposterous by usurpation, that any foreign power should intrude to rule and exercise jurisdiction in any other kingdom entire within itself, 
Against foreign supremacy  and of absolute supremacy & sufficiency to governeal persons & causes within the dominions thereof. Surely, as in every individual body, the own soul thereof sufficeth for all natural works requisite to be effected therein: so in every sovereign state, the ruling authority thereof is of itself competent and complete, for the well governing and ordering of all the affairs, needful or behovable to be attended unto, in that entire territory: and it may in no wise be contradicted, but that in any country, the commanding, summoning, and censuring of subjects, together with the sentensing of causes, hath his whole dependence & derivation from the right and pre-eminence of the sovereignty and that the duties style and intitelings usual and belonging, aught with all submissive acknowledgement and respective reference, to be rendered thereunto: which points of high regality, when any subject shall either deny unto his Sovereign, or take unto himself, what is it else, than as if an inferior and ministerial spirit, who hath no other function in the body, but as an agent or deputy for the soul in the works to him assigned, shall intrudingly usurp, arrogate, and possess the place, name and office of the soul itself? except we should witlessely imagine two souls in one body, like two suns in one firmament.  
The soul and the body are so firmly and entirely united in nature, that the Philosophers found it no easy work to bond each from other with just distinguishment, or proportionable partition. Tully desirous to hold an equal or middle course, blameth as well Aristippus, for affecting the body too much, as if there were no soul: as also Zeno, for forgetting that we have also bodies, 
The rights of sovereignty not to be to far extended, nor too much restrained.  when he referreth all unto the soul. Such good respect is observed to have been had in equalling the rights of the Realm and Sovereign: for such as extendeth pre-eminence too far, may be likened to such Philosophers, as said, That man was all soul, and nothing but the soul: And such on the other side which kirbeth too much the awful authority of high supremacy, with an interpose of any popular or mediate force to restrain or resist it, agreeth with that Philosophy, That darkeneth, drowneth and imprisoneth the soul within the body, as if it were rather subdued by the body, than the body endued with his gifts. To be sure to deal indifferently on each part, it is not amiss to consider of them sundered and apart.  
To begin with the soul: If we should gather and bind together all his distinguished parts, 
First of sovereignty.  and essential faculties, into one as himself is one, we shall readily find what in propriety of interest to him belongeth. 
The powers of the soul set forth.  It fareth with the soul in the body, as it did amongst the Poets with jupiter in the heavens, who notwithstanding that he did all in all, and was the unlimited transcendence above all, yet what ever he did in the skies, in the air, and winds, in the earth, in the sea, or places subterraniall, by nature, by force, by art, by wisdom, by persuasion, by curious workmanship, by profitable inventions, by extraordinary instincts of the mind, or by any other means whatsoever, for governing of the world, or the good of man, and the commodity of this life, was attributed unto some other feigned gods, so as in very truth, the multitude of gods in those times, was but the multiplicity of power in one God: The soul likewise in the body being but one, and the same, operating diversly according to the disposition and aptness of the instruments, is to challenge to himself as the rightful owner or author, whatsoever life, sense, motion, discerning, health, strength, beauty, abilities, actions, graces, or gifts inherent or appertaining unto the body, howsoever the same (by a change or new purchase of their names) seemeth to disavow their proceeding from his essence. Even that faculty of vegetation (which seemeth so base and drossy, and to hold most of the earthliness of the body) hath yet his original root and plantation in the soul, whether we consider the same in the power nutritive for preservation, or in the augmentative for perfection, or in the generative for multiplication, we shall find it wholly to flow from this fountain: with the nutritive power must concur appetition, digestion, retention, and expulsion: In digestion is required an immutation, a formation, and an assimilation; in all which so necessary and fundamental functions of life, the soul evidently blazeth forth his effecting force, sith neither without a soul, nor with any more souls than one, the body of itself could possibly, either so orderly and concordantly contrive his own good by so helpful means, or perform such worthy actions by any native vigour. The sensitive faculty is much more sensibly discerned to take descent from the soul. The senses are as the doors and windows through and forth of the which he maketh his prospects and passages; yea their attendance is so unseparably annexed unto the soul, that where he diverteth himself, and giveth no attention, there the eye seeing seeth not, the ear hearing heareth not, and all other acts of any senses, be void of perceiving or apprehending.  
To discourse at large, with full sails, how the senses do recommend their conceiving unto the fantasy; how the fantasy delivereth them over unto the understanding; how the understanding either absolutely judgeth them by reason, or erroneously mistaketh them by opinion; how either reason or opinion, exciteth affections; how affections either advised by deliberation, or passionate by humours, induceth the assent of the will; and how the will commandeth & enforceth motion and prosecution in all or any parts of the booby: howsoever it might amply and excellently illustrate the powerful operations of the soul, so orderly linked, chained, and wrapped one within another: yet lest the delightsomeness of following the tract of so well pleasing a theme, should draw me too far out of my way, I will wind about again, by making a second survey thereof, in the matching to the same of mine applications. The governing pre-eminence of the estate, 
The matching of the powers of sovereignty to the powers of the soul.  though it be sometimes in like manner obscured, and wronged by inferior derivations; yet such as can surmount the vulgar thoughts, in reducing unto one glorious and potent head of majesty, all the several branchings and subalternations thereof, shall easily find how agreeably it holdeth semblance with the soul, in this respect also, as to be but one, yet effecting all, yea, to be all in all, and all in every part of the body politic. There is not in the Commonwealth, any the least sinew for motion, the least vain for nourishment, the least spirit for life and action, the least strength for defence, or offence, the least member for use and benefit, which is not replenished with this power, and sucketh from this overflowing cistern, all his subsistence and performance. (And if I thought it not unfit to be over-curious in fitting exactly the particulars of each) I would not pretermit a more large comparing of them, even in their alike forces of vegetation also. Who seeth not, 
Sovereignty in his vegetable power.  that it belongeth to the office of sovereignty, to provide for the nourishing and maintaining of the state with necessaries, to amplify the dominions thereof, for profit and dignity, to spread abroad the increase of the people by Colonies, in the nature of generating or propagating, to cherish in the subjects an appetite of acquiring of commodities, to grant to them places of Mart and Market for the digesting of the same unto all parts of the Realm, and so to change form and assimilate them to their most behoof: to give order for the holding and retaining of that which is become their well agreeing and natural sustenance, and for the expelling as well of the hurtful overcharge, as the unprofitable excrements of the weal public. Will you yet see farther the sovereign virtue of the Sovereign power, in all and every the parts of the State? produce me any (though a person altogether private, occupying but a room or drawing breath in the Common wealth) that is not enforced both by foreseeing reason, and after-proving events, to acknowledge all his good whatsoever, to be first given, and then secured unto him, by the force of a well ordered government, out of the circle whereof there can be neither welfare, nor safety, but chose, all confusion, slaughter, rapine, and unjust bereaving of him of all that is or can be dear unto him.  
But who so listeth to behold this Political soul of the State in his full royalty and amplitude, let him look upon his more noble parts, the sensual and intellectual; 
In the sensitive and intellectual.  the according and conforming whereof to his important uses, maketh the Gordian knot of a powerful and peaceful blessedness. Then the sovereignty (moving, working, & ruling in his three estates) matcheth well the three headed Geryon, whom justine interpreteth to signify the union of three loving brethren; than it seeth more than the hundredth eyes of Argus, and acteth more than the hundredth hands of Briareus. All Subjects will, as the senses, play the espials and intelligencers; as the members, be stirred and commanded in cases of employment; and as the spirits imaginative, propose for apprehension, the true shapes and forms of things, either pleasing and eligible, or hurtful and avoidable.  
The Councillors of State like the understanding faculty, 
councillors.  apply all their endeavours to advance the glory, and further the enterprises of this their ruling soul, being themselves also by his supreme reason to be ordered, or judged in their right or wrong conceivings.  
The favourites of a Prince may be resembled to the fantasies of the Soul, 
Favourites.  wherewith he sporteth and delighteth himself; which to do (so the integrity of judgement, and Majesty of State be retained) is in neither of both reprovable. Which of us is there that doth not (especially in matters rather pleasing than important) follow and feed his fantasies, give scope unto them, suffer them to prevail with him, reckoning it a great part of his contentment to have them satisfied? I will refrain to press the application farther than the well taught Subjects will of themselves conceive. There must be no despiteful envying at the Sovereign's favourites: as they be to him the recreating comforts choicely selected; acceptably to consort withal; so their enriching, advancing, and gracing, with the clearest signs of their Sovereign's love, is not only allowable, but plainly necessary, sith they cannot walk continually in the Sun, but they must needs be coloured.  
The will of the Sovereign in the decreeing or enacting of Laws, 
The Sovereign's will, and whether it alone may stand for law.  holdeth the like right as the will of the soul doth in the performing the resolves of reason. Allow that the Soul were now in his first clear sighted innocency, it could not will or affect any thing that were not absolute reason: So were Sovereign's uncorrupted with that all-taynting canker of sin, and free from every human infirmity, their will alone were undoubted law & justice; but on the other side, when reason (whose office it is to show the right) is vanquished by the errors of misconceiving, then the will by such bad direction is driven to sin in his designed works: So where the judgement of the Sovereign swerveth from sincerity of true discerning, there his will and all decrees, or executions following the same, must of necessity be culpable and turn to wrong. Wherefore sith it will not be gainsaid, but that Sovereigns through their natural frailties, are subject as well to the imbecility of judgement, as also to sensual and irrational motions, rising out of the infectious mud of flesh and blood, (the observance of which taint in man's nature, caused Plato to say, 
Plato  That the body was more in the soul, than the soul in the body) and that such their defects may well disable them, from either attaining unto, or retaining firmly the precise points of perfect justice: How both prudently and lovingly do those Sovereign's govern, who neither taking to themselves that absoluteness of sole power in law-giving, which by some (being indeed of too hard a temper) is colourably, claimed to be original and hereditary to their places; neither trusting too much to their own sufficiencies, either of wisdom or uprightness, (which seldom be without some admixture of imperfections) do at the making of Statutes and ordinances, assemble for consultation and consent, a full assistance of the noblest and choicest advisours that the State affourdeth: thereby drawing supplies out of their political body, to make good what wanteth in their natural?  
From the errors of inferior senses, the conceit of the common sense receiveth much misinforming, 
Sovereign's often misinformed.  which in the end and by degrees reacheth a seducement to the soul itself: So may the Sovereign unwittingly by wrong reports of some near about him, be misled from the knowledge of the truth, into many misbeleeving. The humours of the body do often forcibly prevail in the working and stirring of the mind; 
Customs and inclinations of the people oft prevail with the sovereign.  whereupon some Philosophers have tied the soul unto the temperature of the body: So the customs and inclinations of the people in each Country, hath otherwhile no small force in the inclining of the Sovereign's disposition, if not to approve, yet to tolerate some imperfections. The mind must not suffer itself, for want of resolution, 
Resolution in the sovereign.  to be distracted by diversity of undiscussed opinions, as wavering and wandering without judgement, having war within itself: So the governor may not well admit or hearken unto different and factious sects, tending to the disturbing and instability of his government. The affections so long as they be obedient unto reason, 
Obedience in the people.  standeth the soul in great steed; but if they become violent and unruly, then (of their disordering, and disturbing of the minds tranquillity) they be rightly termed perturbations. Such is the Sovereign's case; If the people be tractable, and truly serviceable, with all duteous subjection, in the nature of right allegiance, then as loving subjects, by their forwardness in cooperating with him, they give strength and stay unto his government: but if they turn mutinous and tumultuous, troubling the governor and State with seditious disorders, then be they as Rebels by the justice of the law to be suppressed, even as the perturbations of the mind must be subdued by reason, which alone is that powerful Pallas that bestoweth her golden bridle upon Bellorophon, 
Rebels.  to rule therewith that fierce and haughty Pegasus. The force of these heady and giddy perturbations is tyrannously extreme, and that not only in the common sort of men, (whom like to a heard of Swine, they whirl headlong into a Sea of vices) but also in persons of the best quality, whose resistance proveth oft too faint to escape, or keep off such violent invasions as suppresseth and vanquisheth even reason itself: So is the Sovereign sometimes by Traitors and Revolters surprised and constrained unnaturally and unlawfully, to the interruption of his government, and ruinating of the State. Opinion is the forerunner (if not the father) of affections, 
Opinion.  himself a very misbegotten, between Self-love the mother, and Supposal the sire, which (like an amorous make-love) wooeth at once both the virgin Truth, and the harlot Error, yet affianced to neither, hath but unperfect notions betwixt both; from which notions notwithstanding, as the same shall apprehend a conceit of good or evil, the affections taking motion, do start forth, putting themselves in readiness, to repel the imagined evil, and to embrace the seeming good. Upon the surmise of good, Appetites are excited: These be the attendants, and as it were the Courtiers of the soul, 
Suitors in Court like Appetites.  who immoderately seeking to satisfy their own desires, giveth the soul no rest, till he bestow all his faculties of understanding wit, and devise, to accomplish their requests: Princes seldom want the Apes of such appetites, that is to say, begging and flattering petitioners, pleasing and applauding Parasites, who using all cunning insinuating, are never without their variety of suits, to advance their own good, howsoever their Sovereign be thereby either impoverished or dishonoured. Upon the opinion of evil ariseth that hideous & snaky head of Medusa, fearful, fretful, grieving, careful, repining, and despairing thoughts, filling the soul with the horror of much discomfiture; such malcontents and froward cinicks the Sovereign oft is pestered with, 
Malcontents.  who never well pleased with the aucthorized proceedings, (though most approvable) do still feed upon their own disliking conceits, and will always with the Keistrell, fly against the wind, making their opposition (by clamorous complaints) against authority. These affections of both sorts, being in their original altogether oppinionat, will sometimes (by reason of the nearness that opinion hath unto reason) make bold to allege reason for themselves, 
Pretences in treason.  and will seem to be judicious & just in their intendments. This wanteth not his semblance (as in the natures before described) so chiefly in some Traitors of better place, who knowing their dignities in nearness to the Prince, and of command in their Countries, will take upon them (though intending their own end) to pretend equity & honesty, yea, and the Sovereign's authority also, giving out a popular pretext of public good, only to make way thereby to their foul treasons.  
The mind hath yet one endowment more, which almost equalleth all the rest; 
Records and their imbeziling or falsifying.  which is a faithful memory of his fore-attainted knowledges, in whose good trust and custody, he treasureth up all his rich acquirings: what semblance there is thereof also in the soul of State, it cannot be obscure. The Sovereign is well stored with remembrancers, nothing passeth from him, or settleth in him but by record; All his seats of judgement entereth and preserveth the proceedings in causes; and to forge, corrupt, or embezzle the Records (whereof any good government hath a tender and strict regard) what is it else, Than as if the memory should be clean taken from the mind, to the which it is unseparable, or should become a lying misreporter; which nor his nature, nor his office can endure.  
These faculties the soul doth show and exercise, in and with the organs of the body, but he hath a farther and more enlarged force, 
Prerogative royal.  beyond & without the compass of any concreat or material substance, as abstracting and segregating himself to his own purity, and advanced thereby to a more near resemblance of the divine nature. For as we rightly conceive of God, that albeit he worketh efficiently, and (if I may so say) naturally, by the mediate causes, yet his potency is not so by them tied or confined, but that he often performeth his own pleasure by extraordinary means, drawn out of his absolute power, both preter & contra naturam: So the soul, besides his usual & functionarie operations, in and by the ministerial abilities of the body, hath other peculiar motions and actions of his own, neither aided nor impeached by any corporiall assistance or resistance.  
To this likeness of God and the soul, let us also shape our Sovereignty: which (besides that which is regular in regiment, and from his power and goodness imparted unto the people) hath still, and retaineth to itself certain prerogative rights of most ample extensions, and most free exemptions, whereof true reverence (filled with all submissive acknowledgements, and contented with that portion and interest which it receiveth from regality) admitteth no questioning disputes, and whereof just governors do not so far enlarge the lists, as to do what they lust, but do so moderate the use (as God in the world, and the Soul in the body) not to the impeach, but to the support of justice; not to the hurt, but to the good of subjects.  
Thus having perused the several parts and properties of the soul, together with the likeness and correspondence of sovereignty thereto; not without touching also the dangers and declinations whereunto they both are subject: I should (if I were not tied within a teather, and thereby restrained from all affectionate discoursing or dilating) frame unto them both some hortatory admonition unto circumspect demeanour, for the preventing of ensnaring evils, and reproachful obloquys. 
Sovereign's not to be evil spoken of.  O let not the pure substance of the soul, for some few his imperfections be unpurely censured: so neither the dear reputation of anointed majesty maliciously traduced by some slender imputations. If upon some displeasing occasions his anger be enkindled, shall any Zeno dare to say of him (as of the soul) That he is all fire? If he should be thought somewhat to offend in softlinesse and effeminatnes, will the Philosopher Hippias (as he defined the soul) so slander him to be but water? If he could be noted for a little levity and unconstancy, must there needs be found out strait some Anaximenes, to term him as he conceived of the soul, to be wavering and fleeting air? If caringly he regard the support of his high port, by attending his profits, and looking to his provisions, is he to be concluded and pronounced, as Zenophantes thought the soul, to be concreat of earth? How much better were it rather to apply unto the Sovereign the opinion which Aristotle held of the soul, that he consisteth of the pure and excellentest essence, being to be accounted scant any human creature, 
Cicero.  but wholly of a celestial temper, as from thence both originally ordained, & daily governed? or to make him hold comparison with the soul, in that supremest title (which Euripides durst bestow upon the soul) even to be a God. For which appellation to be bestowed upon the Sovereign, the God of gods hath given us a warrant beyond all warrants, The manifold and mighty effects, which in, and for the body politic, this state's soul performeth, doth ratify the same by reason also. Is not the body of itself a confused lump, unformed, senseless, witless, and destitute of all helping means to maintain itself from perishing and utter dissolving? and doth not this soul (setting to work all his assisting powers) quicken it, move it, care for it, provide for it, cherish it with his love, furnish it with his gifts, govern it with his wisdom, establish it with his justice, & protect it with his puissance? If then he be the derivative, and (as it were) a diminutive of the mighty God, shall not his vassals (both respectively to his so high entitelings, 
The Sovereign a God.  & gratefully for his great deservings) refrain their rashness of deeming and dooming in his doings? and rather reverently recognise the blessed benefits that bindeth them to love, than with a Giantlike presumption seek to deprave his sacred estimation? to accumilate calumnies and detractions against the Sovereign (so to abase and pull down majesty) is like to the piling up of hill upon hill, to war with heaven: and it may be better called petit blasphemy, for a subject to blemish the Sovereign with soul aspersions, than it is called petit treason for a servant to slay his master; sith the duty and privity between them is more astringent, and the offences against a deity hath an infinity of sin.  
There is a question amongst the Philosophers, where and in what part of the body the soul should be seated; some place it in the head, 
The large extent of sovereignty, by comparison with God and the soul.  as in the highest tower, with his chief informers, advisors and assistants round about him; some in the heart, as the midst of his kingdom, from thence to spread and distribute life and spirit more readily to all the parts; and others alloting to it no chief seat at all, extendeth it equally unto all, though it show itself in each member differently as their capacities or abilities will permit, as if it therein also were in similitude with God himself, who being by the infinity of his essence, every where, yet is no where circumscribed, bounded with no including limits, or more certainly in one place than in another: but as God is said to have his centre every where, his circumference no where; to be in all places, yet not placed; and with every thing, yet mixed with nothing: So the soul communicating to all the parts his essential nature, is not encompassed by any part, nor is not more present in any one than in all. And as God (notwithstanding such his unmeasurable infiniteness of being every where) is often said positively, & namely there to be, where he maketh the more appearance of his presence: So the soul may be said there to be resiant, where his force and efficiencies be most discerned; when he attendeth the discussing of Intelligence and reason, then is his chair of estate placed in the upper house, and so seemeth to dwell in the head. When he betaketh himself to matter of Action, or followeth the fervency of affections, than he is thought to be contained within the irascible part enwalled in the breast, and issuing chiefly from the heart; when he falleth lower to the place of bestial concupiscence, than he there also discovereth his presence in those inferior parts. And (in a word) according to the aptness or appliableness of any part, wheresoever he acteth, there he is: because (as Aristotle teacheth) the efficient must conjoin unto the effect, & the mover to the moved.  
If any desire to understand how this discourse of the Souls either larger dilatation of himself throughout the whole body, or of his more especial appropriating of his presence and work unto particular parts, will accord by comparison with Sovereignty in a State civil; let him in like sort examine how fitly the name of the head agreeth with the nature of a Sovereign; and how properly the heart patterneth the pre-eminence, and how he doth severally convey and impart to any part of his dominions, the very essential faculties of his government; without the which no people can ever as subjects range themselves into the order, and community of human society, howsoever, as men, or rather as wild savages, they may perhaps breathe a while upon the earth. It is a truth, that as the Soul, so the power of principality in government, (though showing itself in diverse manner, as the variety of events ministereth occasion) yet in all points, and all parts is all one. And that a righteous Sovereign (as the soul doth in defending and succouring any the least member from destruction and harm) hath an unpartial and most respective care, which extendeth itself (as God and the Soul doth) universally to the whole, and particularly to each member individual. The which point of so large dilating his force, (to the resemblance of such two patterns in a manner secresed and unseen) if I might have leave to strain a little farther, I could have it serve me also thus far, as (at the least) to make a show in that question propounded by some great Clerks in policy, touching the Princes over prodigal imparting of his presence amongst his people: For seeing that both God and the Soul, 
Of the Sovereign's showing himself to the people.  working so unlimitably, be yet undiscerned, in their essence, as hidden and concealed from the eyes of men; it may seem to stand more with majesty, 
Philip Comm.  and to work more regarding, more admiring, and more adoring, if (howsoever their power in operating doth show itself) yet their presence be more sparingly & less familiarly vouchsafed. What is become ordinary, that we use either neglectingly to contemn, or fastidiously to dislike; as on the other side, what hath for strangeness a novelty, for worth a dignity, and for attaining a difficulty, is more desiringly, and more admiringly esteemed. Hence ariseth in the minds of subjects such eagerness and longing to satisfy their senses in the seeing, hearing, and well knowing of their Sovereign, as if they were to seek after the head of Nilus, which sendeth them the overflow of their plenty; or after the primum mobile of the world, which governeth the conversions and fortunes of their life. It is hereof concluded, that a Sovereign the less he is exposed to public observance, the more he is presupposed to excel in amplitude of glory: nevertheless it being so commendable a virtue in a governor to have such a facility and goodness of nature, as (remitting the high carriage of his greatness) yieldeth to his people with an affable gentleness easy approach for enterlocution. I cannot tell whether the contrary sternness (in haughtily shunning or repulsing their aspect) will not have (in the even eye of a well regarding policy) the greater disallowing. Now let us pass on to peruse the comparisons, taken from the head.  
Plato imagined man to be an heavenly plant; 
Plato.  his head to be the root; 
Man's head his root.  his bulk, the stock; his arms and legs the branches; and his root to draw his sap from the heavens to feed therewith the under parts, spreading downward towards the earth. Such a plantation do I conceive in the institution of a State politic: the sovereign head to be designed, inspired, depending, and protected from above; and the body with the out-growing parts thereof, to receive nourishment, strength, flourishing, and fruitfulness from that root of a rightful regiment. If the root thrive, sucking abundantly of his heavenly nutriment, the plant must needs prosper, and cannot do amiss: but if the root be destitute of grace, as deprived of his sap, it induceth upon the whole stock of the State, a withering decay and pining barrenness. 
The excellency of the head or Sovereign.  In the head is the first wheel & string of motion, giving force and order to the whole frame, the first fountain of sense streaming from thence to the other cisterns, and the high erected palace, where the mind keepeth his court, shining in his greatest Majesty. The head is by the order and instinct of nature, 
The head loved of the body.  so dearly esteemed and honoured of the body, as that every part will not only seek his ease and health, but even expose itself to any perils for his sake and safety: the inferior parts do sustain and bear him up, moving at his beck, and fast bound when he taketh rest: the hands and arms, do readily receive upon themselves the strokes and wounds, intended against the head; yea, any part doth endure pain, by incision, scarifying, ligature, or issue, to remedy the grievances of the head. These good duties of kindly subjection, to kingly power, I leave to the consideration and conscience of every true subject, wishing him to make his best use thereof by contemplating and applying of the same in the performance of like offices of allegiance, love, and loyalty. We see the head naturally endued with a fellow feeling of any the griefs in the whole body, in so much as there is scant any disease so weak or small in any part, as doth not affect and disturb the head also; yea, it holdeth such a sympathy with the very foot, as that a little wet or cold taken in that remotest place, 
Sovereign's have a sympathy with subjects.  hath forthwith a ready passage to the head. Gracious Sovereigns have the like compassions and compunctions in the distresses of their subjects, and be in the same sort deeply pierced & perplexed with any wrong or distemperatures, happening to the meanest of their people. 
How to think of sovereigns' faults.  I have learned of the Physicians, that most of the diseases of the head, are originally arising and caused from the body: and I think that I may thus thereof infer; That many the escapes of Sovereigns by omission or commission, may thus far by this excuse be extenuated, as more imputable to the people than to them. 
Subjects have a cause to bear with Sovereign's faults.  Therefore when from the head a flux of humours shall annoy and enfeeble the whole, or any part, I wish it should be remembered, that such as is our offering, such should be our suffering. Many and very dangerous be the evils, that from a distempered heat be distilled into the body. I might laboriously enlarge what harms he may do to his subjecteth members, by his several excesses or defects, the disorder and uneven carriage whereof filleth the whole with remediless mischiefs. Yet let us mark this withal, That in the natural body, there was never any parts so far digressing from their native nature of allegiance, and their indissolluble band of obedience, forgetting as well the good which they otherwise receive, 
No opposition to the Sovereign, much less no deposing of them.  as the wrong whereby they continually infest him, as did once presume to oppose, or but repine against their head, much less seek or attempt to shake him off the shoulders. How much more kind be those subjects, who out of their own duteous love, 
Kind subjects take upon themselves the blame imputed to the Sovereign.  be content to have the blame of the faults, or oversights, likely to blemish their Sovereign, transferred & imposed upon themselves? It may seem by a drunkard in Plautus, that the head thought himself privileged, as it were with a point of prerogative, to charge the inferior parts with the shame of his own distemper; Siccine fit hoc pedes? statin an non? Nam hercle si cecidero vestrum erit flagitium. 
In Pseud.   
Here leaving the head in his unresistible right of ruling over the body, I will to the Soul again, taking a farther view thereof, 
The sovereign likened to the heart.  as sitting in his other principal seat the heart: when I behold the intricate net or curious web of veins, spread from it over all the body; me thinketh I may well liken it to a little spider, placed in the midst of her work, where she so caringly and cunningly ordereth the matter, that she presently feeleth the least shake or touch in any though the farthest part of her web. No less feelingly doth the heart perceive, and partake, with any injury done unto his veins. Sometimes he sendeth forth the blood and spirits with a full flush, replenishing all parts plenteously, other while he rerireth them home with all speed to his little sconce, to comfort and fortify itself. 
The command and force of sovereignty.   
It is admirable to see the swift and sudden recourse of blood, now stirred outwardly at a start like lightning, and anon posting back in fear of danger to the hearts succour, leaving a paleness and trembling in the outward parts. The heart is the well of life, the furnace of heat, the centre of blood, the first living and the last dying part. Agreeably to these virtues or efficacies of the heart, let it be confessed, that every commonweal acknowledgeth a sovereign power, from the which it drew his first beginning, of which it receiveth his dearest life blood, with which it is quickened as with a living fire, to the which it wholly trusteth, and returneth for refuge, by which it is employed and directed in all intentions, and without which it faileth of continuance, and is incontinently dissolved. Then to such a Governor which both imparteth to all parts the veins and artiries of their surest welfare, and hath a sense of any their griefs and wrongs, as of his own; what and how regardant thankfulness, service, and observance is deservedly due by the faithful performance (with the uttermost strain of the very heartstrings) of all obedience to his commands and authority.  
The heart is of all other the firmest flesh, yet not fed with blood by any veins; and from it all other flesh deriveth by veins his borrowed living. I have heard it argued, 
Of the Sovereign all hold what they have.  that a King in like sort is alone firmly and absolute stated, in and to the lands of his realm, and that all other owners take from him by the veins and conveyances which he passeth to them. That which Aristotle saith of the heart, That it giveth and imparteth to every member, but itself receiveth or taketh not from any; is a good pattern of regal magnificence and bounty, 
Bounty in a Sovereign.  seeing that nothing more aptly representeth the nature of the soul, or cometh nearer to God himself than to do good, and extend reliefs to others, with free heart and open hand, himself in the mean while having no need of any. The figure of the heart is shaped sharp pointed at the lower end, 
Sovereign's love of virtue.  and upward it is more widely spread abroad: To this form the best princes do conform, they open their hearts with a full spread towards virtue, goodness, and heavenly things, but do make narrow and close the same against all base appetites of this unhallowed flesh. The heart is the dwelling place of the affections and inclinations of the mind, whereof (as of his own train, family, or household, 
sovereigns to look well to them that be near about them  he alone is to have the government) if they be let loose with scope to follow their disordered desires, not only the heart itself is subdued and trampled upon by their turbulent passions, but the whole body also fareth the worse, and taketh no small harm thereby. Right wisely do Sovereigns hereof take this instruction, to uphold their government in a strict steadiness, tempering all extremities with an evenness of moderation, that none about them grow too violent or headstrong, which cannot but work as a disturbance to their persons, so a disproportion to their states.  
Where any affection predominantly reigneth, it draweth thither such humours of the body, as are likest and best consorteth to itself: 
How factions grow.  as anger calleth to him choler, to further his fierceness; mirth cheereth itself with the freshest blood; and sorrow will not be without the company of sour and dampish melancholic: So if the Sovereign in the precincts of his regiment, shall suffer an overgrowing inequalltie of greatness to get an head, it will quickly gather to itself a siding faction of like disposed disturbers, which will make a shrewd adventure, both of overtopping him, and overturning of his state.  
There is nothing that is either more graceful for seemliness of show, 
The Sovereign's sports not to be grudged at.  or more available to any man for his health, than to have always a light and cheerful heart: and it was yet never seen that any part of the body ever grudged at or repugned, but rather willingly furthered the wellpleasing delights of the heart. From hence good people will learn this well-resembling inference, That the recreating sports and pleasures of Sovereigns (in whom is the heart blood of the civil body) be not dislikingly crossed or repined at, but rather entertainingly allowed, and comfortably afforded unto them; yea though some occasions of dislike should work a distaste, and harder censure thereof.  
We do account as the head, so the heart to receive hurt two ways, 
Two ways to wrong the Sovereign.  primarily, or immediately; and by consent which it hath with other more choicely affected and much aggrieved parts: so may we reckon offences or misdemeanours to tend to the impugning of the prince, not only when they directly concern his own person, state, or dignity, but also when they be committed against his Council, judges, or chief officers, in whom their Sovereign hath engraven his own image or character, imparting unto them a portion of his own authority, and with whom he maintaineth a mutuality of all aiding kindness, and honourable respectiveness.  
Admit that the heart or the brain were so laid open to ouraspects, 
Majesty in a Sovereign.  that we might attentively behold the substance, the shape, the very life and actions thereof; would not the consideration of the dignity of the soul, there resiant and working, work an impression in our thoughts, to regard, esteem, and admire those parts, as excelling and surpassing all the rest? so when the person of a Prince is looked upon (whereon we do seldom gaze enough) our inward cogitations filled with a reverence of the regal majesty seated in that flesh (otherwise as infirm and full of imperfe●●●ons as other 
A Sovereign how to be respected.  is) ought to surmount all sensual conceits (scant thinking of any human nature) but making an infinite difference between that body, so (as it were) glorified with the presence, representation & in dwelling of that supreme or exalted eminency, and other ordinary persons, which yet doth consist materially of the same substance, and perhaps endued by nature with equal graces.  
Do you desire a brighter displaying of the illustrious majesty shining in sovereignty? 
Diversities of respects in the Sovereign touching his person and his sovereignty.  do but observe how much it surmounteth the person itself thereof possessed, like a brittle glass all enlightened with the glorious blaze of the Sun. The Sovereign as in his personal respects, hath his childhood and his impotency of minority, but his Sovereignty is like Hercules the son of jupiter, that in his very cradle could gripe Snakes to death, being at no time abridged or enfeebled, but to be supposed ever of a full strength, age, and power. In his personal respects he may partake of the mixture of blood and kindred with the subjects, but sovereignty admitteth no terms or titles of consanguinity. In his personal respects he is as one man, single and individual, yet as in the right of Sovereignty, he gaineth the appellation and capacities of a corporation: In his personal respects death maketh an end of his life and glory all at once, but sovereignty never faileth (not by the space of one moment still living in a successive continuation:) and as the consideration of the excellency of the soul (whereunto the sovereignty, as in these respects also is agreeably patterned) caused the old Philosophers (not able by their sharp inquirings to penetrate into the deep profoundness thereof) admiringly to proclaim, 
Man the great miracle of nature.  That man was magnum naturae miraculum. So the resplendence and power of sovereignty in the royal person of a Sovereign, showing itself both in so great majesty, as dazzleth the eyes of all beholders, and in so admirable effects, as to transform savageness into civility, repugnances into concord's, vices into virtues, procuring love, yet implying fear; compelling obedience, yet with yield of highest honour; holding towards all, the proportion of justice, yet extending withal the remorse of mercy, doth in like sort (by such the conversion of the body natural, into a body political) beget thereunto a more admired glory, and a more dear esteem.  
Let me yet proceed a little farther in the discerning of the wisdom and goodness of the Creator, in the ordaining and enduing with property of these principal receptacles of the soul, the head, and the heart: 
Nor head nor heart have any power to do wrong.  we do not find that either of them is naturally enabled to offer any wrong by any means unto the body, or once to incline by any so much as imagination of mischief thereunto; but chose, fully furnished and accomplished with store of helping reliefs, to nourish and preserve the same. For as in God himself (if it were possible that he should do any unjustice) it would make a greater proof of his impotency, than show forth his power: So if he had given unto the soul, or to these parts most replenished with the powers thereof, any such natural ability or quality, as might infer an injury and prejudice to the rest of the body; it might rightlyer be termed a disabling than an enabling, and no way conforming to his image: for what a confusion or rather destruction would ensue, if the head should shrink up his sinews that conveyeth his vigour and spirits unto the members? or if the heart should at his pleasure withhold or take away the nourishment of blood, that giveth sustenance & substance to the whole body? If the application hereof to our state's soul: How comfortably may we conceive, & even glory in our happiness, that stand undubitably assured of our sovereigns goodness (which limitteth or rather much exceedeth his power) that the sinews of law & justice knitting all subjection to sovereignty, shall still from him receive an increase of strength and firmness: and that this political soul (in the very tenderness of his soul) will be so far from depriving and impairing of our necessary nutriments, as that he will rather drain his own heart blood dry, than the wealth of the land should either be wastefully exhausted, or not suffisingly maintained?  
The Soul also hath made choice of some other principal parts in the body, 
Certain essential orders in the state.  which he needfully useth & employeth in the ministerial functions of life; which if they once either fail in their offices, or decay in their essence, the body can neither continue living, nor perform his actions: of which sort may be reckoned, first the lungs and lights, ordained for the alaying of the heat in the heart, and the necessity of respiration: Then the liver, which beginneth the concoction of our susteinance, and the same so prepared, doth recommend over to the hearts more perfect converting and accommodating: Last, the milt, the gall, and the kidneys, every whereof is allotted to some good work of dissevering the refuse and drossy remnants from the selected and purified nutriment. But for that in these the soul showeth his weakest and meanest virtue, which is of vegitation only, whereas in the head, or heart, he displaieth all his glory, conversing with them as with the darlings of his love, I esteem it of no great merit, 
The gifts of statesmen to be well disposed of.  to meditate too much of their worth, or to labour the likening of them (which to do were easy and obvious) unto certain necessary and essential orders or powers in the state. Only two considerations I have conceived, which me thinketh may not be omitted. The first, That as these be placed so helpfully in the body, with such succeeding each other in their works, as acordeth to an accomplishment of health and perfection in the whole: so there must be in the public weal, a wise and political ordering of the good gifts and employments of the chief statesmen, that their endeavours be discreetly sorted to the general good, and not suffered out of course either promiscuously to intrude, 
Chief officers or nobles to be well safgarded.  or disorderedly to cause dissensions. The second, that as these parts of chief use for the preservation of life, be by the providence of nature strongly savegarded within an enclosed wall, as more cared for than the rest; so such as be the more noble and more necessary members of the commonweal, aught to be attended on with the more tender regard of their safety, and well provided for against perils, lest in their ruin or subversion, the whole State also receive a deadly stroke.  
The mentioning of these parts of the body (though upon occasion of setting forth the operations of the Soul, in and by them) hath put me in mind of my fore-intended Method; which after a matching of the ruling pre-eminence to the nature of the soul, calleth me to a survey or recounting of such observable respects, as may make the like correspondence between the subjects of a state, and the condition of a body: Wherein I must be fain to deal with the body of the state, as Minerva did with the body of Ulysses, who in the safe conducting, and reducing of him to his true Penelope, did transform him into divers shapes, sometimes putting upon him the show of a rimpled and withered age, and anon again restoring him to his freshest hue, and lustiest strength: So will I also (holding my intention to make at last an everlasting union of the obeying body to the sovereign authority) turn the same, as I treat thereof, into different forms, diversities, and altering respects, according as any variety of consideration shall afford. And I must also further entreat the good patience & licence of my friendly Readers, for affording unto me such liberty, as myself scantly liketh of; which is of inserting and giving a place in the contexrure of this Treatise, unto some such comparisons, as by there frequent use in good Authors may seem to be over vulgar, which I could have been well content to have avoided, had they not pressed upon me with some show of necessity, sith the more notoriously their likeness hath been discovered & allowed, the more might I be noted either of ignorance in not discerning so public proofs for my purpose, or of an affected singularity, in contemningly omitting what the worthiest writers have chosen as diamonds and precious stones to enrich and garnish their works withal. And thus much perhaps I may perform in part of amends, that by such (as it were) my new setting thereof, the same shall be more lightsomly refreshed, and emblazoned with a more orient lustre.  
In the composition of the body politic (as of the natural) there is required a concurrence or even mixture of four Elements, 
The four Elements of the body politic.  which I do reckon to be these following: First, the generous, to advance and maintain the state with their well deserving actions: Then the learned, to instruct and direct with skill in cases of consultation: Thirdly, yeomen with their labour to produce and work the commodities of the land: And lastly Trafiquers which may both vent out by exportation what may be spared, & bring in the necessaries that shall be wanting. Within these four sorts, all Subjects compacted into a Civil state, may well be ranged and reckoned. How these state-Elements may severally hold similitude, with either the Fire, or the Air, or the Earth, or the Water, I leave to be conceived and disscussed of such as have good leisure to be idle, or like well to be somewhat curious. This I think not impertinent to propound, That where any of these do exceed, 
The well mixing of the elements.  or over sway the rest, there such distemper (as in the bodily mixture) inclineth the State to be ruled by that overruling force. And as in our bodies by the unequal temper of the Elements the humours get mastery each over other (of which humours the diversities of complexions do arise:) So in the body politic, according as either the base and passive Elements do prevail to popularity, or as the other more worthy and active, do reduce to the power of a few; thereof the humour, complexion, 
The predominance of the elements active or passive, maketh the complexion of the body politic.  condition, and disposition of the state is discovered: in so much as (if the Soul or superiority of governing be not strong enough to hold his own) the exsuperance of the humour predominant, having altered the complexion of the body, will also violently draw the soul to follow the form of his temperature: wherefore right needful it is in any Commonweal, to contrive the true and proportionable mixture of these four Elements, lest when they be put at odds, reverting to the original repugnances of their nature, they do fill the state with hateful strifes, in the steed of blessefull peace. For as in the body natural, 
The elements to be held in concord.  if the wisdom of the Creator had not composed into a concord the contrarieties of the first Elements, it had (as still sticking in the confusion of the first Chaos) never attained the strength, beauty, & order, which we now admire: So in the civil body, if prudent policy by advised tempering of the disparity of the people, should not conjoin them to a well agreeing consent, how could any hope be conceived, but that the difference of poor and rich, vulgar & noble, ignorant and learned, fearful and valiant, 
Discords in the parts of one and the same elements.  industrious and such as take their ease, must needs by their opposite qualities, not only deface the dignity, but also subvert the stability of the state? yea the differences of such as be all of one Element, through a natural emulation, (each part seeking to attain nearest to the centre and perfection of that whereunto he is encircled) proveth oft spitefully troublesome, and must come under the care of a well disposing prudency. For as the more trafiquing maketh the greater merchants, the happier husbanding the richer yeomen; so the more virtuous may stand upon it to be reckoned, the more generous. And each exsuperance will disturb the temper, if for the governing of such inequalities, and prevention of strife amongst themselves, the wisdom of the State (taught by nature's example) did not use a correspondent carriage. From the discrepance of unequal temperature, ariseth so sundry forms and shapes of bodies politic. 
Sundry forms of bodies politic.  Some are hugely big, and their very greatness rendereth them unwieldy, having their arms and their legs too far a sunder; some very little, yet well compact, active and strongly set to save themselves; some carry a goodly show on their outside, yet inwardly looked into, have great defects, as either a foul Soul in so fair a body, or some deadly wrings tormenting their very bowels; Some not so well favoured or pleasingly shaped, yet are sound enough, and in good health; Some be so fat and over fed with wealth, as their neighbours be thereby tempted to make attempts against them: some so lean and forlorn, as that their poverty is their best safety: some all sluggish and sottish, can scant attend their own defence, but do so long pray aid of others, till they be made a prey to all; some haughty and fierce are never out of quarrels making, and taking occasions, through the flames of ambition, and the gall of revengefulnesse, to exercise a continual enmity. Thus we see how (after the example of the body natural) the State civil also, is diversly figured, and varieth his forms, whereof (were I not bound to brevity) I could of each sort make instance and demonstrance in particular, But it liketh me better, to hold my accustomed course, by speaking in generality: for that I may so hope to instruct some, and be sure to offend none.  
Where the humours are in good harmony of good agreement, & the body thereby in good health, there we do not dislike to have flesh and fat enough, but if they be peccant, and so the body crazy, 
In a distemper all turneth to hurt, even that which otherwise were good enough.  than the more liberally we feed, the more dangerously we do offend. So in a State, when each degree conformeth itself to his own duties, makng in the whole a perfection of love and obedience, than the abundance of riches, the multitude of people, the titles of honour, the increase of power, are both available & commendable: But when any part becometh outrageous or exorbitant, whereby the body is in a distemper, and getteth an evil habit, than what was otherwise comely and comfortable, will turn cumbersome and dangerous, working a clean contrary effect, of a greater endamagement, if not of an utter divastation.  
The natural body hath his infancy, his youthfulness, 
The degrees of growth in the body politic.  his confirmed, declining, and decrepit age: so hath each Commonwealth, his beginning, his enlarg●●ing, his puissance, his drooping, his decay and downfall. The Philosophers, 
Philosophers.  for the reason of alterations in both the bodies, direct us to their principals of generation and corruption, 
The causes o change in the body politic.  telleth us of the imbecility and mutability of things compounded, of the difficulty of persisting in perfectness, of the easy declination into the worse, and of their foreframed connexion of effecting causes. The Astronomers have also alike fitted them both with certain climacterical changes, 
Astronomers.  appointed periods, and fatal revolutions: yea they teach us, that the influence of superior planets do forcibly prevail (as in and over private persons) so also over whole regions and kingdoms, changing and inverting them at their pleasures. I will yield unto the Philosophers their consequences and dependency of causes, touching the many variable events in both bodies, yet with this provision, 
God in alterations worketh the causes, and oft without causes.  That the first cause, combining and causing all causes be not forgotten, who alone hath all life and death, beginnings and end at his dispose. Neither will I stick with the Astronomers to acknowledge their stinted times, and prefixed points, beyond the which neither of the said bodies can pass or prolong themselves one instant: But to attribute that to the Stars, which the God (which holdeth all the stars in his hands) challengeth to himself, and his own foredecreeing counsels, were to refuse the sun, and be guided by a starlight: He it is that raiseth and strengtheneth some mightier (like to superior planets) to subdue the worthless, whom he hath refused; and his inclining of hearts is the right powerful influence, that effecteth these great changes. Then (leaving this human wisdom fast tied up within these limitations, as in the iron net of Vulcan) I will only make this gain of that first comparison, That sith the said two bodies are so fitly and fully conjoined in semblance by their whole course, even from the cradle to the grave; I shall not need to fear blame, for fashioning of their agreeableness in other also more particular considerations.  

Difference of parts in the Commonwealth vegetable.  In the Commonwealth (as in the body) some parts seem chiefly vegetable, caring for nothing more than to maintain their growth, by their sucking from all the veins of the land, the nutriment and provisions of this life. 
Sensitive.  Some live all sensually, giving no rest or contentedness to themselves, but by pleasing of their senses, feeding of their affections, and fulfilling of their desires; be it of revenge in the course of wrath, and quarreling, or of haughtiness to aspire, or of lust to sensuality. Othersome moderated with staidness in both the former, shape their lives after the powers rational and intellectual, 
Rational.  disposing themselves by the rules of reason, to virtuous actions, and to studious cogitations, endeavouring chiefly to deserve well of their Country, and to uphold the frame of civil policy.  
The natural body for the preserving of health, 
Dieting of the body.  useth the help of a good diet, whereby the humours are kept in their equality of temper: so must the state also be dieted, neither glutted with excess, nor scanted with penury: howbeit sith it is more dangerous, from fullness to fall away to leanness, than from leanness to spread and grow fat; I wish such foresight and forecast, rather to leave than to lack, to rise than to fall, & to amend than to pair, the defect being ever worse than the excess, as nearer to a nullity.  
As the regiment of health in our bodies may fail or offend, 
Too precise or too careless of health.  in either of the extremities of being either too careless by licentious adventures, or else too precise & strict by needless restraints: so the governance of the states welfare may fall into the like opposite disordering by either too much remissness and looseness for want of hard holding of the reins of well-ruling, or else by over severe debarring of such lawful liberty as both nature requireth, and reason denieth not. It is hard to define which of these is worse or more hurtful. The stirring nature of man, is like the quickness and slipperiness of the Eel, si laxes erepit, but si string as erumpit: so that (though he be hardly by either way detained in steaddinesse) yet by the feeling of himself to be too much gripped, he the more enforceth all his strength and motion for his enlargement: for my part I profess, that I had rather (as taking it to be less to my harm) go slackly girt, yea quite loose & male cinctus, than to be straightly pinched with tying or swaddling too hard: and it is but too often found by experience, that the strait laced men, whether so held in by any compelling authority, or thereunto fashioned by a voluntary imposition, from their own austerity, do break forth more outrageously, and shake off the cords of obedience more desperately, when occasion shall move them to strain and strive for a pretenced liberty, by a course of commotion; opinionat wilfulness, the more check and stop it findeth, the more violently it will seek to make his way forth, ut exeat in ingenuum suum.  
The body also must have moderate exercise for the increase of heat, the digesting of crudities, and the acquiring of a more active strength. 
Exercise of the body.  The like benefit will ensue to the Commonweal, if public occasion do hold the people in employment, their spirits are thereby enkindled, their superfluous vanities laid away, and their valour & ableness to achieve high attempts much confirmed. Aristotle hath a true observation, That that which moveth doth not so soon putrefy as that which resteth. And the wisest Commonweals have even purposedly made and procured to themselves great business, that their men should rather be refreshed & purified by action, than be either consumed with ease & voluptuousness, or eaten into with the rust of a revolting disobedience.  
Both the bodies do also herein agree, as to be tended and ordered as several respects shall give occasion: 
Tendance of the body politic according to different respects.  nor we nor our judgement is the same when we be children and when we be elder, when we be full and when we be fasting, when we be sick and when we be sound, when we be free and when we be bound; we do suffer more at one time than we will do at another, we be able to perform more in our good plight and strength than we dare so much as hope of in our feebleness, we be more circumspect in our fears than careful in prosperities, and we be often so much distracted with discrepant conditions as we be not always alike ourselves: such interchangeable times and dispositions being in the same sort incident unto the state, there is good heeled to be taken thereof, that the counsels and provisions be answerable to the necessities or conveniences that ought to be regarded.  
In the body natural the sustenance is not all carried to one side, or to one part, 
Equality to be observed.  to the pining and beguiling of the rest: So in the state, the nobility is so to be maintained, as that the Commons be not wronged; and the Clergy so to be cherished, as the laity be not overlaid, but each part must be fed competently with a proportionable partition of the profits, alloting the same with such indifferency, as the plenty of some be not the cause of penury unto others, nor that the eversucking veins of some do draw dry the poorer that be in want.  
Neither yet must we hereupon induce any parity or equality, which nature herself abandoneth: 
Against parity to prove differences of dignity & riches.  for howsoever (like a wise economical governor) she sustaineth every part of the body with a sufficiency, yet doth she give (in her intentions) to some more worthy and principal than the rest, a precedence to be chiefly provided for. The blood (unto the which the Turk compared his tribute and treasure, inferring thereby the moderate expending thereof) though it be derived and dispersed to all parts, yet is it more abundantly bestowed in the gracing of the face. The heart though it spreadeth his arteries all over the body, yet he beateth and worketh more strongly with his pulses in one place than in another. Not so much as our garments but must be fitted to our bigness or smallness, observing therein such difference as ariseth by the diversities of our bodies: Why then should it be grudged at, if the nobility and gentry of the land (in whom the dignity and the well-shewing countenance of the state consisteth) be better stored and furnished than the meaner of the people? why should any body envy at the glory of some selected persons, in and by whom the Sovereign doth more manifestly discover his purposes, make show of his force, and express his affections? or why should it be disliked, that honours and favours, riches, and preferments be bestowed, or rather fitted (regardingly unto the merits of the virtuous) by taking knowledge (and as it were taking measure) of their good service and honourable deservings? And (to wade yet further) I will confidently make good thus much more, That as in the body it is a greater mischief not to nourish and sustain the sound and serviceable parts, than not to cut off the diseased and corrupted: so in the Commonweal, not to reward and advance the worthy, 
Not to reward worse than not to punish.  is more pernicious and of more dangerous consequence, than not to afflict, punish, or pair away the hurtful and infectious: for where the one is but spared awhile by lenity and impunity in some hope of amendment, the other unrespected in his goodness, is so pinched by that coldness of entertainment, as he seldom or never can come forward and put forth any shoots of virtue. Thence will it fall out, that as in the body the decay or corruption of any part, is but the want of that health, soundness, or good temper which it ought to have had, and employed to the help and not to the hurt of the whole: So in the body politic, if in the better part thereof (by occasion of such discouragement, & the proneness of men unto naughtiness more than unto goodness) there be a want of honesty or virtuous performances, must it not necessarily effect a general declination from all true duties? diverting that to the harm that should have been converted to the benefit of the state, and introducing thereby, an overswelling tide of sin, corrupting and confounding all, and that merely by the neglect of desert and virtue.  
If there be any not yet persuaded of this different respectiveness to be had of men in the state, 
Difference of dignities and degrees.  according as they differ in esteem and worthiness; let him yet farther bethink himself of his own different usage of the several parts of his own body: doth he not adorn some of them with silks, velvets, purple, and cloth of gold, and yet leaveth others wholly naked, or but homely and coarsely attired? he hath for the head and neck, garlands, chains, and jewels of rich value; where for the feet (though they do bear up the whole) he hath but leather only. What artificial devices will he not find out, and that with his extremest cost, to grace and set forth the comeliness of his face? and yet hideth for very shame some other parts unfit and unworthy of producing to open aspect? and were it not as unfitting, that the dignities and degrees of reputation, 
Dignities ill bestowed.  should be promiscuously cast abroad amongst the meaner sort of mechanical tradesmen, as for the ornaments and dress provided for the better parts, to be bestowed so low as upon the feet? Hereof my inference is, That as in our private, so in our public body, difference of regard maketh difference of advancement, by a distributing justice, which yieldeth to every one (though not the same) yet his fit proportion.  
It is not therefore called a Commonwealth, 
Why the body politic is called a Common wealth.  that all the wealth should be common; but because the whole wealth, wit, power, and goodness whatsoever, of every particular person, must be conferred and reduced to the common good: and that in the same sort and semblance, as the distinct members of the body, being ordained to different uses, do yet concur in this consonance of intention, as to impart and refer all their helps and endeavours (to the uttermost reach of their abilities) for the procuring and preserving of the comfort and continuance of this one body.  
All the members join their assisting aid, and effect their whole force according to their divers functions, 
mutuality of help in the members.  as well for the upholding of the whole and every part in soundness, as also against a common enemy: And whatsoever presseth nature with any grief, is repelled by the consent of a general resistance. If but a thorn have pricked the foot, how doth the eye seek to spy it out? how doth the hand bestir him to draw it out? how doth the head contrive to work it out? and each part as his power permitteth him, doth think to procure his own ease by remedying the disease in another: 
More respect of the chief members.  but in case any the principal or vital parts be much distressed, or in great danger, than (as overmatched with a mountain of misery) the care, the fear, the sorrow is so far increased, as that remediless of help, and languishing in despair, they do all yield themselves vanquished, as partakers also of that calamity so uncurable.  
This fellow suffering, this strong union, and interchanged kindness, showed so lovingly in the parts of the body, instructeth all true subjects of any country to the mutual performance of all friendly offices, and to the firmest adherence against all opposing enmities, or in all perilous necessities; remembering that a common danger alike distresseth the less as the greatest; but especially, to be tenderly affected in the loss or harm likely to befall their choicest statesmen of the best account and quality, against whom the enemies of the state do chiefly bend their malignant intentions, 
The enemies bend most against the best.  even as in our private combats & affraies, the deadly minded foe watcheth to wound the dearest and vital parts.  
From this fountain of natures so wise distribution and distinguishment of the parts, in sorting them so orderly to their several functions, this consideration also floweth and offereth itself; that as there must be a proportionableness and a kind of unanimity of the members, for the aiding and adorning of the public comprehending all: so that foul daughter of darkness and Chaos confused and all disturbing Anarchy, is to be exiled, or rather excluded out of this compaction of the body politic each part is to know and administer his own proper work, without entermixing or intermeddling in the offices of any other. Shall the foot be permitted to partake in the point of pre-eminence with the head? 
Each part to be appointed to his own works.  or were it seemly for the head, leaving his state, to abase himself to a toil manibus pedibusque in the trading businesses? For each member to take upon him all works, as it hath in nature an impossibility, so hath it in governance as great an incongruity. And for any part to neglect the duties properly to it allotted, or to run forth of the circle within the which it is fixed (as quartering itself into a new division, by undertaking dispatches of another nature) as it agreeth not with that so well parted, yet uniform frame of God's workmanship, so is it not to be suffered neither in any well contrived policy of the governing wisdom. The eye is nor ordained nor apted to any other work, than to make use of the light by seeing; and to every singled part there is assigned some more peculiar operation or administration, from the which as if in possessionem suam venerit excludit alios. To the like confusion it tendeth if the parts be prodigiously dislocated or transferred from their proper to other unfitting places, 
Parts disordered, maketh the body to seem monstrous.  whereof oftentimes the whole body getteth the name of a monster misshapen and distorted. The senses must hold their station like to Sentinels, and attend their general in and about the head, where they be settled. And in brief, no parts inward or outward can either do duties, or be endured elsewhere, than where both for comeliness and use they be by nature's order placed. The civil body may hereby be admonished how to dispose of the several conditions and degrees of the people, according to the difference of their breed, education, conversation, or habitation; that employments or advancements be not unmeet or preposterous, but properly and advantageously accommodated. 
Against conspiracy of the parts in the state civil.  But of all other the loathed imps of tumult and disorder, let this be taken for the deadliest and most detestable; If any parts disdaining the rule of their soul, and disliking their subjecteth condition, shall not only neglect their duteous performances, but also conspiringly complot against the head, heart, and other the noblest viols of life, to the utter destruction of the whole body, by such their horrible commotions and violent convulsions: which if it were never yet attempted, or once intended by any natural members ruled by the law of their creation, how cometh it to pass, that any parts of the political body should so outrageously and seditiously betake themselves to an Anarchy, most unnatural and rebellious? 
Of the late intended Treason.  I could exhibit unto the well discerning eyes of all loyal subjects, a right representing pattern hereof, by relating the true historical narration of the late most execrable enterprise and cunningly contrived treachery, that ever any subjects, of any Nation, though never so heathen or barbarous; of any age, though never so earthly or ironlike; of any religion, though never so erroneous or schismatical; upon any occasion, though never so extremely moving, did against their Sovereign and Rulers, once imagine, much less with envenomed and obdurate minds intent & undertake: which nevertheless I rather choose to leave naked and undilated to the Readers well appliing meditations, as well because I refrain to use any unnecessary excursions, as also because I do find any my faculty much too feeble to express (of so inhuman and bloody a project) the right shape or substance: for where Hell itself hath employed an whole council of devils to devise an hateful and unheard-of villainy; there unless heaven should afford the tongue of Angels to declare and paint out the abomination thereof, all the oratory of man must needs fail and be defective. What (though never so passionate) exclamations can raise sufficient admiration of Treasons so damnable? What contestations or accusations by straining all the strings of art, can reach the height of so heinous and most abhorred conspiracies? what use can there be of any aggravating or amplifying, when the plainest tale that can be told, may be thought to be but an Hyperbole beyond belief? My conceit telleth me, that (notwithstanding any the best sincerity or integrity not possible to be controlled) the report thereof to foreign Countries, or after ages, will seem uncredible, and that it will require a great dexterity and perfection of art, so to deliver it over, as not to have it censured rather a malicious fiction, than a true story. I must confess that it is not for every vulgar verbalist to handle or set forth such a damnable purpose of murdering a King, and that by such a murder, and such a King, and so accompanied with his decrest Queen, sweet Prince, and his whole state of Nobility; the very relating or mentioning whereof, affrighteth and dawnteth my heart with horror, even shaking the very pen in my hand, whilst I think what a shake, what a blast, or what a storm (as they termed it) they meant so suddenly to have raised for the blowing up, shivering into pieces, and whirling about of those honourable, anointed, and sacred bodies, which the Lord would not have to be so much as touched. I have heard of one so far affected to poverty, as that he wished all the treasure and jewels of the world in one room, that he might at once set tehm all on fire: Such a wish had these men so devoted to Popery, that they would in an instant, and in one room, have destroyed the true riches, jewels, the majesty and glory of our whole state at one clap. It was a memorable cruelty of that tyrannous Emperor, that wished all the Romans to have had but one head, that he might with one stroke have chopped it off. Their purpose was full of the like heathenish immanity, That having all the heads of this Nation assembled in honourable consultation into one place, would even then and there have as it were beheaded the whole Realm, and so have induced upon the land a miserable desolation. The tyrannous Massacre of France, (being an elder issue of that same mother Church the harlot of Rome) was inferior in fury & wickedness to this plot: They had an excuse from the warrant of authority; these out of their private dislikes, conspired the overthrow of all authority: They designed those only to the slaughter whom they accounted and condemned as offenders in their state, these bundled up into their butchery the innocent, and some of their own friends also, whom they could have no colour so to confound and ruinate: They meant the mending of their state present, and the securing of their future; these not only the subversion of that which now is flourishing, both in riches ●●rituousnesse, but also a future precipitation into a swelling surge of ensuing and unavoidable calamities. I cannot tell whether their obdurate hearts and brazen foreheds will not contradict my position, if do but say this their designment to be a sin: This in despite of them all I will maintain, That the very nature of man, not seduced by the man of sin (who by his aucthorizing dispensations, and pickpurse pardons hath made himself the great patron of sin) acknowledgeth the same to be a foul and unexcusable, a cursed & most shameful sin: a sin and shame that will for ever cleave to their Religion, even as close as the venomed shirt of Hercules, till it eat and consume the same to the hard bones: a sin and shame that no conscience (though steeled over with the Romish metal) can make so much as any colourable defence for: a sin and shame that God himself of his miraculous mercy, for the honour of his name, and the love of his truth, so happily discovered, that they might not say, Where is now their God: A sin and shame, that we shall not need to call Divines by any their dispute to convince them of; but which the very Humanists and Moralists out of the grounds of reason and learning, will make the whole world to wonder, hiss, and gnash their teeth at. And which my poor self (as the meanness of my wit and erudition affordeth) even by the comparative respects of the parts in the body, which I have undertaken to set forth, do condemn to the deepest dungeon of hell, whence the fathers and factors of the Romish faith hath first fetched it. 
Against idle, vagrant, or unptofitable people.   
In the body there is not any part so weak, so little, or so base, which God hath not framed and appointed to some good use; and shall there in the state be cherished, or suffered, any so loose, idle, vagrant, and unprofitable people, as that no use can be made of them for the public behoof? nay, that be noisome, pernicious, cumbersome, and contrarious thereunto? Let us but observe nature, who because she would be sure to make nothing in vain (thereby teaching us in the order of government, to allow no needless or fruitless parts) hath endued and designed some one part unto many uses. I will propound only one instance of the hand, which serveth for so many purposes, as I think to resemble thereunto, sometimes the soldier that fighteth, sometimes the husbandman that laboureth, sometimes the merchant that reacheth and fetcheth far and near, sometimes the artificer, who wholly practiseth the handiecraft, sometimes the purveyor, that feedeth and relieveth our lives with needful nutriment. This so provident accommodating of the parts unto many employments, disproveth our heedless tolerating of these begging and shifting mates, who swarming every where, be so far from doing any good in the State, as that they will do nothing for their own living.  
Nevertheless, I would not be so mistaken, as if by this precedent of nature's work in bestowing of manifold abilities upon one part, 
Against engrossing of offices.  I should make way or proof for the over-greedie engrossing of too many offices into the hands of some one man; which neither the business of the state may well bear, nor the stomachs of other men with contentedness endure, nor himself perhaps with sufficiency undergo. Therefore I must cross any such conclusion with an apparent difference, 
No need to put many offices upon one man.  disavow the similitude in that point, sith in the larger body politic there is greater store and choice of well-fitting servitors for the many diversities of affairs, that there is no need to huddle or heap too much upon any one man: wherein it seemeth that nature hath trodden us a path for our practice, and that way also hath for our imitation manifested her intention. We do find, that the most industrious and instrumental parts are given us by couples, as if one (though for one work) would not serve the turn: for example, She hath given us two hands, & each of them divided & adorned with several fingers; as if she meant in so narrow a compass to couch and compact a variety of helps, for the more easy and certain dispatch of so diversly occurring works.  
This allotting of two parts to one function might cause in our so little bodies a great faction, 
A concordance of the parts of the body politic in their common works.  if the foreseeing care of nature had not also conjoined them in consent, as well as in operation. We see both the eyes to look both one way, the ears to conceive alike one and the same sound, the nostrils to be affected alike with one and the same smell, the hands jointly labouring at one work, and the feet by equal paces locally moving the body by even length & strength uprightly supporting it, and by their good agreement jointly acting and lovingly aiding one the other: the two sides, and the two shoulders, which bear up the high castle of the head, do with the like matchable equality, and the like willing agreeableness entertain their task. I wish from my heart (though I show but by a simile) that in the realm likewise by such concordance of the parts in each degree, might fasten so their faith each to other, as that the disposing of many to one service, did tend to a more full & more sure performance of the same: so should both the civil and the spiritual side, together with the honourable shoulders on both sides, equally part between them the common care, and much importing work of upholding the majesty of supreme authority, without any fainting or interruption: so should the eyes of the wise, and the senses of the learned be bend all one way, for discerning and increasing of truth and goodness, without any erroneous mistaking, or wilful reluctations: so should the meaner and ministering sort, like to the feet and hands run the race, and catch the goal to them proposed, in making a happy kingdom through an happy people, without any either rubs in their way by unruliness, or desisting from their duties by a retrogradation: And so should every part become pliant and apt to their places and callings (receiving like wax from a seal the impressions of the Governor) to execute his designments, without either distraction by jars, or perverseness of opposition, or the carelessness of a neglecting sloth.  
I must yet infer one observation more of nature's providence, 
In the work of ruling, but one head.  whereupon I will set my mark as chiefly to be remembered: That albeit for the ordering and effecting of other businesses concerning the body, she hath assigned and conjoined more parts unto one work: yet for the supremacy of governing over all, she hath but one head; as if it were utterly unpossible, or unsufferably mischievous, to admit any partnership in the regal dignity. Let us imagine a body so monstrous, as whereunto two heads were at once affixed, shall not that body receive much damage by the division and confusion of those two heads? must not the body in that case either be divided by alloting of one side to the one, and the other side to the other head? or else be wholly dissevered by a promiscuous and contentious shuffling of the several sinews, forces, and operations from each head proceeding? What we as by fiction do imagine might be done in the natural body: Man (that imagineth nothing but evil) and therefore can produce more prodigious errors than nature in her escapes hath ever patterned, hath indeed often brought to pass (though with most cursed success) in the body politic. Have we not had within this one land of England, the hideous Heptarchy of seven heads at once? nay hath not the whole Island of Britania, 
Britania one body needing but one head.  being a body perfectly shaped, rounded, and bounded with an environing sea, been a long time thus dissevered, and disfigured by that unlucky duality the author of division? until at the last the mighty and only wonder working hand of God, wiping away the deformity (not by any violent cutting off, but by a new moulding as it were of the two heads into one) hath restored it again to his first right, imperial, and most monarchial greatness.  
Here I find the matter of Union to lie so full in my way, 
Proofs for Union.  that even it stoppeth my passage, forcing me (notwithstanding the exact handling thereof by others) to give it some little touch by the addition of proof from these my comparisons also: for doubtless, if in the former times two heads caused the dividing and halfeing of the body; the same reason now requireth, that this one so virtuous and powerful head should reunite and draw again into one, the distracted and long repugning parts. And can any of this entire and complete body be either so unnaturally hard hearted, or so unconsiderat of his own good, as finding this so happy and long desired reducement thereof unto one head, will not seek to be conjoined (even in all the offices of kindness and relief) rather with the whole body, than with the parts of one side only? or is it fit that there should be any dissevering, siding, or disuniting by different orders, laws, customs, and other such points of government, where necessity of communion in all the parts, enforceth a firmness of love, a likeness of life, and an equality of condition? Surely such as do not gladly entertain this good opportunity to reunite that which hath so long been sundered, seemeth to be better pleased with the imperfection, the weakness and misshapen form of the body under two heads, and with disagreeing parts, than that the whole strengthening of itself with a comely concordance, and uniform subjection, should be brought under the righteous government of one only sovereign head. Therefore if they will not be thought to dislike, that one head should rule all; let not this offend them neither, that all be collected and incorporate into one and the same political government.  
The body may have many imperfections and deformities, yea may be bereaved of whole parts, 
Imperfections in the body politic, yet a body.  and yet retain still the name and nature of a body: And sundry shifts be devised (though not to cure) yet to cover such defects. In the steed of the natural leg, or arm, we stick not to fashion and affix a wooden arm, or leg, very necessity constraineth us to make that simple supply, when we find not otherwise any substantial remedy. The Commonwealth likewise, may (by the loss or want of her true subjects) become stark lame, or by some foul disorders made deformed and misshapen; 
Shifts to supply defects.  yet hold still the style and rights of a Commonweal. Howbeit to redress such abuses, blemishes, impotencies, or enormities, she is lightly driven to betake herself unto some mercenary helps, 
Mercenary soldiers and strangers.  as to her crowches; yea to take unto her new limbs, and lineages of strangers, like wooden legs to be planted amongst her own people. The body when upon any quarrel it is to combat with his enemy, useth for more advantage to combine with a friend: 
The use of leagues betwixt different Countries.  So when one kingdom is at variance with an other, it seemeth a wisdom not to be neglected, to enter leagues, alliances, and confederacies, with some other well chosen Nation; though it often cometh to pass, as in particular bodies: so in whole Realms, that as well the friendship begun for such purposes, doth prove but feeble and fickle, as also those other additaments of foreign aid, do in the end by their failing falsehood give the fall to them that trust entirely to them.  
There is a time when the body's constitution is thought perfect and at the height, as settled in the middle point between redundacies, and deficiencies, having neither any distemper within itself, nor disturbance by outward wrongs: which soundness of welfare, is manifested in external seem also; as in a lively cheerfulness, a fresh colour, an active lustiness, and such like fair blossoms of a prospering plant: The State also hath such a time, 
Perfection in the State.  of his good estate; the absolute happiness whereof requireth an happier wit than mind, for the exact describing of it in all his compliments: nor Plato; his imagined Idea, nor Aristotle's sharp discussings doth fully discover so much thereof, to my apprehension, but my wishes may exceed the same, by addition of some further good. When I speak of perfection, I would pattern it by paradise, or the jerusalem of God; but we must be fain now to account that perfect, which bewrayeth least imperfection, and cometh nearest to that goodness which may receive allowance. 
Signs of being in good estate.  Therefore without reducing our conceits to any exquisite perfectness, (imitating the Physicians, who will never yield the body to be in perfect health) we may with them take our conjectures, from the signs of health: So as where we see public concordant joying, peace, and plenty kissing each other, sumptuous shows, triumphant exercises, magnificent solemnities, and such other appearances of good liking; there it seemeth that health and good temper hath attained the golden mean, prevailing against all, either homebred or foreign injuries. But as that rule in Physic is not to be lightly regarded, though it be not generally believed, 
The best plight most to be mistursted.  That when health is at his height, then is the body nearest to decline into diseases: so lightly when any kingdom is in his flowing, and flourishing fortunes, and in the pride of his prosperity, than the more eminent is his happiness, the more imminent is his danger, and such his fullness is fuller of fear than it can give security. And again, as the Physicians (notwithstanding) do confess good signs to be deceivable, 
Signs infer no certainty.  and that themselves be often illuded by the imposture of such beguiling shows: So let it also be acknowledged, and considered, that in the state, there may be sometimes a well carrying or setting of a face upon the matter, where inwardly it is fretted with the festering of some swelling and foul Impostume.  
Now (me thinketh) I have opened a fit passage for my pen into a discourse very large, and scantly to be limited; Of the health requisite, the diseases incident, and the remedies, appliable to a Commonweal, that herein also, I may make good my comparison thereof to the body natural. There is none either so witless, or so careless, that considereth not of the necessity of health, 
Health, how necessary in both bodies.  which where it wanteth, there can neither be forthinking of affairs, nor courage to attempt, nor strength to persorme, nor cheerfulness in show, nor manfulness in deed; but in the steed of these a drooping dismaiednsse, dejected weakness, and a yeedling faintness, delivereth over the body into a very evil, if not forlorn condition. And surely where the body politic hath not his health, as being either tainted with infectious corruptions, or infested with public grievances, there all things quickly runneth awry, for want both of council to contrive, and power to do, what in such cases is behovable: The haughtiness of valour is turned all to timorousness the care of the common good, to a heedless negligence; the forwarding of just actions, to a languishing in his own afflictions; and his joint force of peace & love, into a dissevering and tearing a sunder of all his joints. Then herein let both the bodies agree, that without health, they have neither mind of their businesses, nor use of their abundance, nor means of well doing, nor joy of themselves. The body is not said to be in health, if any part thereof be grieved; 
Grief in any one part, putteth the whole out of health.  in so much that sometimes a pain in the finger, or toe, so outrageously disquieteth the whole body, as that we could be content to forego all the wealth or joys we have, to be freed from that one torment. This may give proof unto the State, not to neglect, but rather to redeem by the dearest means, the welfare of his members, lest in the anguish of them, itself do feelingly far the worse. 
Aristotle Ethic. lib. 3.  Chiron that wise centaur, overcome with the pain of an ulcer, (renouncing immortality) wished rather to die than to endure, In subjects such an ulcer is discontentedness, 
discontentedness.  the sting whereof is so sharp, as pricking them on in perplexities and despairs, maketh them utterly careless of life or living, and so to attempt the recovery of their comforts, though it be with hazard of a universal ruin.  
That health which the body hath by the strength and goodness of nature, 
Original orders, the best preservatives of health in the State.  is firmer and to be preferred before that, which by a shift of art is peeced and procured: so each kingdom is in better case when it holdeth his original constitutions by his own Laws and customs, than when by the swerving from them it is corrupted, and then constrained by extremity unto new provisions. 
Alterations, how dangerous.  Hence it is that all alterations (especially in the chief and substantial points) be accounted very perilous, because the imutation of that which is inate and primitive, is intended to tend to the decay and destruction of nature. How full of danger changes be, may be showed by the difference we do find in our diet; the meat, drink, and air, whereunto we have not been used, offendeth our bodies, and subverteth our health.  
Those things whereunto we have been most accustomed do less harm, and are not to be exchanged, no not for the better; 
Nature best brooketh things accustomed.  daily usage agreeably apting the one unto our like (though not of so commendable a quality) where the other (though in reason it may seem more appliable) yet is both distrustfully entertained as unacquainted, and hazerdable to disturb by his newness: whereof the Physicians have made this rule, Si assuetis mederi possis non tentanda nova. And the reason why the seasons of the spring and fall are aptest to bring sickness, is only the interchangeable variety of weather then working upon our tenderness and chillness.  
There must be a leisurely and advised proceeding in every alteration: 
Alterations must not be sudden or wholly, but by degrees and by parts.  nature hath left us a pattern thereof in the whole course of our life, who from infancy to strength, and from thencè again to feebleness & age, and from one complexion to another, do proceed by softly steps, and so stealingly, as the change cannot presently be discerned: admonishing us, that when we be disposed to alter any thing, we must let it grow by degrees, and not hast it on too suddenly. It is well noted of some Philosophers, That if a Scythian were in an instant transported into India, he could not possibly live: so if without an orderly passing by a mean, the state from on extremity should be altered to another, it would certainly infer a dissolution and dissipation of that it was before: wherein the proportion of the perils that may befall, suiteth with the proportion and degrees of the alteration; in so much, as the more or less violent and unnatural the change is, the more or less the danger thereof is to be misdoubted; even as the taking of the more or less cold, after more or less heat, doth more or less endanger our health.  
The mutability of this earthly state stirred by the diversity of causes, 
Cases of alteration.  admitteth no such certainty or stability in either of the said bodies, as can quite keep off or exclude alterations. Let us then as in the natural, so in the political body govern the question of change with such choice & discretion, as unless either urgent necessity constrain, or evident utility do entice our assent, we may still retain our wont orders and usages with all permanent firmness, not affecting or enduring any novelties: which besides their misdoubted harmfulness at their first entering, will ask a continued time of trial, for their gaining of authority and acceptation. But where these respects of an enforced compulsion, or of a gainful consideration shall prevail; how can it be gainsaid, that the fear of the one, or the love of the other, (even of a tender sense in nature) should not persuade a voluntary condescending to so well warranted immutations?  
I hold it better physic to preserve health, than to restore it; and a more commendable care to prevent, 
Better keep health, than recover it.  than to cure diseases: so it is a greater wisdom to keep a kingdom in his good government, than to amend it when it is out of order; and to provide aforehand against mischiefs, than to redress what is become amiss. We do vsualy account it good wisdom in our health to provide for sickness; 
To provide in prosperity, for adversity.  and then to furnish ourselves with all such necessaries as may best bestead us, when we shall be either threatened or assaulted therewith. Hereof also the civil body doth make this use, as in the seasons of the plenty, to store up against scarcity, and in the times of peace to get and gather together more plentifully the many preparations of war. To discern an approaching evil betimes, 
Time prevention.  and to stop the spread thereof before it become through continuance uncurable, is a like in either of the said bodies, a foresight most necessary. We see that a very whelk doth often breed into a great sore, a small bruise into a grievous fistula, 
Of small beginnings, great mischiefs.  and a little distemperature into an extreme fever: Such shaking fits and horrible commotions have been felt in the body of the Realm, and have risen from contemptible beginnings, to uncorrigible confusions; which who so well weigheth, must be forced to conclude a necessity of timely care and circumspect prevention, for avoiding or resisting thereof. He that neglecteth dangers, because the means that importeth or threateneth the same be but small, forgetteth what great plagues, the frogs, lice, flies, and grasshoppers, brought upon the land of Egypt; nay, let him not account so slightly of any evil (though never so little in show) as not to watch it well, for fear of the worst. We have a common saying, That an evil weed groweth apace, and as usual a practice to root it out as soon as it showeth: when one is out of the way, if he be not straight reduced, it is hard to say how far he will straggle; and when the body is but a little crazy, if help be not sought, who can tell what extremity may ensue. Such petite evils (reckoned of as scant regardable) do often (because their venomous quality is not presently perceived) advantage themselves by the foolish sufferance of such as should suppress them; whereby 
Against Toleration.  the way hath been made for the introducing of the toleration of them, even when they have grown more untolerable: for, such their underpropping Patrons, as in their first springing, and (as it were) in the supposed harmlessness thereof, afforded them perhaps some little countenancing favour, will still be presumed of to bear towards them a certain tender and relenting fancy, tending to their defence. And in very deed, such as compassionately do incline their affections to bear with evils, cannot readily find a degree of stay; but are likely enough to hold on with them, as well in their offensive and excessive, as in their unespied or neglected naughtiness; like to Milo that had carried the calf so long, as that he still carried it when it was become an Ox. I know it to be propounded by some Politicians, that some evils must be tolerated in the State, like as dregs and gross humours be intermixed with the blood, which they affirm to be better for health, than if the blood were all pure and clean without them. But (by their good leave) this their instance is idle and impertinent; for if it be better for the blood so to be, than it is no evil, but merely good: and so out of this question of toleration, I will fetch my ground from a far more aucthorized principle, which is: Tollite malum e vobis, and libera nos a malo, And will confess myself in this point a Stoical statesman, by avouching no evil to be so small, (cloak it or extenuate it never so much) but that the (Tollite) barreth it of Toleration; and the (Libera) setteth us at liberty, to have nothing to do therewith. I know not what nice mitigations, or constructions (by their favours) they may apply to this word (Evil) but well I wot, that in the prescribed prayer taught us by Christ, in that very term of (evil) is included and contained the Devil himself: And therefore whatsoever we assuredly resolve to be evil, is as absolutely unsufferable, as any the limbs or derived issues of the devil. Now (lest I should be charged by following of a bypath) to have digressed and ranged from my theme, I will revert to the proofs and appliances borrowed from the body. Let me know of them, whether their stomachs be so strong, as when they be clogged with heavy meats which they cannot digest, yet will hold and still detain the same, never once striving to cast them up? or is there any of them, that in his own body will with his tolerating patience endure a disease or grief, if it lieth in his power to remedy and rid the same? nay more, admit he be thereby but a little troubled, and not endamaged at all, yet will he not (for that trouble only) seek redress thereof? let it be but the itching of some salt humour, or a fleabiting (by a sleight touch of the skin, starting all the spirits) can he be so contented, as not to attempt to ease himself of such disquieting? Then, from the warrant of God, the sense of nature, the directions of wisdom, the necessity & dignity of the State, (which is not only to remove his opposites, but to advance itself to all perfection) let us abandon all such particoloured and ambidexter tolerations, not fitting the justice or dignity, or good of the Commonwealth. Nevertheless, lest I should too much lay open my weakness, both in discretion by a presumptuous asseveration, 
Cases admitting some sufferance of evil.  and in judgement by propounding that for absolute, which may perhaps be thought to accept of some exceptions and conditions; I must annex hereunto unto some respective mitigation, if not a seeming retractation. It cannot be obscure, but that in a case of unavoidable necessity, to avoid thereby the extremity of a greater evil, the lesser may (though not likingly yet permittingly, though not absolutely yet in some manner, though not perpetually yet for a season) receive a bearing or forbearing conveyance, though not an authorizing approbation. And I must impute it wholly to our impotency, that is so overladen with the manifold cumber of evils, and those often of opposite natures, as that we be forced by the repulsing of the worst, to make a seeming show of electing of lesser; scant reckoning that to be any evil at all, which by freeing of us from a deadlier mischief, may be deemed to have wrought unto us our wel-accepted good. And sith I have reduced my reason to this degree of relenting, I must seek to make some probability of farther proving this point, by the looking also upon my first propounded pattern: Our natural bodies do willingly and with a kind of choosing, endure some diseases, because they find the same to free them from other more extremely dangerous. The opening of an issue stoppeth the entrance and breed of many grievous sicknesses: and nature seemeth oft pleased to suffer, yea and to entertain some enemies contentedly, for the obtaining and purchasing of an ensuing founder welfare. Therefore for a resolving conclusion whereupon to insist, I will reconcile any my surmised repugnances with this explaining distinction: Such evils, as either through an impossibility of removing are grown necessary, and so require rather fortitude to endure them, than any prudency to make choice of them, or that by any helpful use whereunto they serve, do seem to have put off their former nature, as becoming physic unto us, partly may, and partly will have our sufferance. But as I take it, in the very term of toleration, is meant and implied, a dispensing with and upholding of such evils, as being confessed to be merely and altogether of that quality, yet neither so forceth us by the restraint of our power, but that we may suppress them; neither induceth us by the appearance of any behoof or helpfulness, to yield them favour. The discerning of which differences in any particular instances, is fitlier recommended to the advisedness of the discreet governors, than to be left to the temerity of any over venturous and peremptory preiudicator.  
To conclude this point of health: It is so precious and of so unvaluable a worth, 
We may hurt to heal.  as that when it is not so perfect as we would have it, or when it is somewhat impaired, we do not stick willingly to do to ourselves farther hurt, to the end to heal our infirmities the more sound. Yea, when we have no cause at all to complain, as being of a constitution not to be disliked, yet do we then take physic for a purpose to prevent sickness that may ensue, and to confirm the continuance of our health: So in our body of the Commonweal it is not to be disliked, that (though there be no great fault found, and all things seem to stand in good order) yet now and then physical courses be used, by opening some vein, by purging of superfluities, and putting to pain some part thereof, for the more certainty of the general good: that not only diseases themselves be avoided, but even all fear and suspicion may be prevented to the preserving and assuring of an inviolable stabititie of the public quietness. Nevertheless as in the body it is a safe regard not otherwise to move the humours, than there is likelihood to rid and conquer them: so in the state it requireth a judicious and ponderous consulting when and how to stir and attempt such medicinal trials. Advisedness adventureth not without advantage, knowing that the awaked Dog (not well awed or overmatched) will the more insultingly be enraged.  
The diseases that may annoy or endanger the state, are more than I am able to recount, 
The diseases of the State.  much less can tell how to cure; neither would I (by a more single comparing thereof to the diseases of the body) give cause to be censured, as either superstitiously curious, or superfluously busy-headed. This field is spacious, and encloseth a large circuit of plentiful matter for discourse: and I take it to be no less difficulty succinctly to comprehend, under any heads of division, the discrepant multiplicity of diseases in the politic, than it is in the natural body; wherein (as daily experience propoundeth it unto us) notwithstanding the almost innumerable and most industrious discoveries of the learned, in so many revolutions of ages, yet still more and more diversities do start up and occur to consideration. I see the pathway and method for an orderly entrance into a treatise of that nature, by the distinct rehearsal of every the several diseases, either general to the whole, or proper to any part: but as I must confess my feebleness, standing confounded by the very sight of the immensity thereof, so do I humbly yield my meanness to be far unapt to intermeddle, where the pains and exquisiteness of some greater Patriot may be well bestowed. So much only (as in passage) must needs be mentioned, as may serve for a conductor or leader to help the rest forward.  
Diseases arise as in the body natural by distemper of humours; 
How they do arise.  so in the political, by disorder of manners: and as in the body natural they do hinder, pervert, and corrupt the orderly actions of nature; so in the political they do impeach, infringe, and resist the proceedings and regiment of a just governance. But as all diseases are not alike either for sharpness of pain, 
Differences in faults.  or likelihood of danger: so neither are all offences equal, either for the heinousness of crime, or for the harm that can thereof ensue; a stitch in the side, a pricking in the eye, or a shooting in the sinews, are eager and extreme griefs, yet not so dangerous as the dropsies, palsies, or appoplexies: so be the fierce and smart contentions of the learned (in matters not of greatest moment) exceeding troublesome to the State; yet no way comparable for danger to Atheism, Popery, and disloyalty. 
Against equality of sin. Punishment must be proportionable to the offence.  The inequality of diseases condemneth the Stoics equality of sin, and where the faults be not equal, it seemeth reasonable, that the magistrate also must proportion his corrections with like inequality, even as the Physician must vary his cure according to the greatness or smallness of the grief. The diseases of the skin though they require remedy (because they be diseases) yet they need not so much tendance, plying, or looking unto, as the gnawing and tearing pangs of the heart.  

Outward evils not so dangerous as inward  The hurts or diseases which the body receiveth by any outward means, as by heat, or cold, by wounds or bruises, or by overheavie loadings, or labouring, and such like; as they may more easily be before avoided, so they may more readily be after cured; likewise hath each kingdom against foreign dangers, both better provision to prevent them, and more advantages to repel them: but griefs springing, spreading, and rankling within, being both long in growing, as hidden and unespied, and also settled in the entrails and vital parts, surpriseth more suddenly, vanquisheth more violently, and tormenteth more untollerably.  
As against all diseases of the natural body the skill and application of Physic is ordained; 
Laws the physic of the state, & dependeth of the sovereign authority.  so against the corruption of manners in the political body, wholesome laws be provided: whereof where the more be made, the more it argueth the sinfulness of that people, as the use of much physic argueth much distemper. And as physic rightly used is but an assistant, or coadjutor unto nature, by the stirring up and strengthening of the oparative vigour and powers of the soul, who then having his potential faculties so helped and relieved, digesteth, repulseth, and overcometh his annoying foe, performing the cure and conquest himself: So the laws and provisions against offences in the State (like to a well directed Physic) are to range under the regiment of the Sovereign with a serviceable subalternation, recognizing him as the principal Physician for the redressing or remedying the maladies of the body politic. Nevertheless nature, reason, and all good order admitteth or rather enjoineth all the parts, as well by their duties, as by a certain tenderness and sympathy, to conjoin any their kindest and soundest aids both for the repelling of all impediments or oppositions against authority, and for the adding of strength thereunto, to perfect the work of suppressing vice, and of advancing the justice, the safety and preservation of the Commonweal. Let it then be allowed, that all laws, as well in their first enacting, as in their daily execution; and all magistracy, as well in decreeing as in governing, is dependent and secondary to the sovereignty. Such undergovernours or subphisitions of the commonweal, having under their charge so worthy a subject as the state's happiness, and enabled by their Sovereign with a portion of his power, to reform disorders, and rectify what is perverted; ought regardantly to their place of so great a trust, to be the more painful, faithful, & careful in their cures. 
The meanest officers do minister physic to the state.  Not so much as the meanest ministers and servitors under authority, no not the Constables, bailiffs, jurors, and such like (being smaller sprigs and twigs in the stock of justice, and used for the inquiry, attaching, presenting, and convicting, in trial of transgressors and malefactors) but be to know, that their employment in their several attendances, tendeth to the necessary amending, purging, phisiking, and reforming of the civil body, and that therefore they are to make a conscience, & to stand upright in their diligence and duty.  

The cause why magistracy is oft repugned at.  The negligence, naughtiness, and unskilfulness of some Physicians occasioneth many to be both afraid to deal with them, & to condemn their profession and practice, as unnecessary: So, many there be that taking offence at the unsufficiency or corruptions of some magistrates and officers of justice, 
Necessity of magistracy.  either utterly deny the lawfulness of their calling, or at the least spurn and repine at their administration; in so much as the Recipe of the Physician, and the Precipe of the Magistrate, be lightly alike irksome and displeasing. Howbeit, as he that looketh into natural Philosophy must needs find pregnant proofs for the upholding of Physic, so he that studieth moral Phllosophie, will acknowledge his very Alpha and Omega, 
Magistrates not to be discouraged, or give over their cure.  to be the setting up of magistracy. And as it is but the peevishness and queasiness of the diseased that will abide no Physic, so is it the wilfulness and malecontencie of the wicked, that will not come under laws. But the Physicians do not therefore give over their patient because he is unruly, but rather handleth him more roughly: So Magistrates must not desist from the duties of their offices for the waywardness and unaptness of the people, but the more stir up their spirits & forces against them with all austerity.  
The whole work of Physic is either to continue health when we have it, 
The likeness of the work of magistrates and of Physicians.  or to restore it when it is wanting: So the Magistrates function is either to hold all upright when the state is in a good case, or to recover and recure that which shall become unsound. They both in each of their professions, and in every of their particular practices, do (consonantly to nature's rule) prescribe as well the hurtful to be eschewed, as the helpful to be taken; and they both be furnished at all points with good choice and variety of medicines appliable occasionally to the sundry sorts of griefs. 
Sundry sorts of medicines in the state civil.  They have some that be Panchresta, general for all assays, accommodable to any disease; they have some that be merely peculiar for one or very few infirmities, and be respective to some one part; they have some, which for their as well safeness as virtue be termed Benedicta by the help whereof they both conceive hope of helpful success, and assurance from all endangering: They have some extremely forcible, even Eradicativa, pulling up by the roots the firmly implanted, and predominantly prevailing humours: They have some which be preparatives, serving but to make way, and work an aptness for the stronger ensuing remedies: They have some comfortative and cordial, to assist the softness of nature against overcharging assaults: They have some restorative, to repair the decay, and raise again the dejected estate of health: They have some consuming corrosives, to eat out what is become dead and unsensible: They have some soporiferous to induce a sleeping dullness and stupidity, whilst cures of great adventure must be effected: They have some lenitive, to assuage excessive and raging pains: They have some exasperating heaters, to digest and draw out the cores of corruption: They have some drying consumers, to waste away the superfluous confluence of any annoying matter: They have some attractive openers, to lose and draw forth any inwardly infixed festerings: They have dispersers & dissolvers of any gathered together or swelling putrefactions: They have repercussives, to suppress and repel all beginning outrages: They have expellers of all that is hurtful and burdenous, cleansing the very fountains of evil: They have preservatives against all venomous and infectious contagious: They have substantial consolidators of the dissolved and apostumed parts, reducing all again to the health and unity of nature; and they both do enterchangingly use or administer all or any of these, according to the many different qualities, malice, degrees, disposition, state, and condition of diseases.  
The Physician is not so strictly tied to the usual form or composure of his receipts and prescriptions, 
In altering of punishment, what may be left to the Magistrate.  but that he doth often alter the same in particular persons, as he is induced by the observation of sundry circumstances, signs, and accidents: Such a discretion (some thinketh) the Magistrate might be trusted with, that all offences coming under one head of law, should not receive alike the same unalterable censuring; but that upon advised consideration of diversities, sometimes there be used qualifications, dispensations, and mitigations, and sometimes again an increase and addition of pain should be devised, as the quality or manner of the fault shall deservedly give occasion: For example, doth not justice require that where one felony is of a more heinous nature than an other, or one Treason more foul and horrible than another, the same should be condignly rewarded with an extraordinary severity, beyond the letter of the law? except we should respectively to such inequality make more, and these different laws, which should distinguishingly set forth diversities of punishment, as the heinousness of desert shall give cause, and not wrap up all alike under one general title, binding them to one and the same recompensing condemnation. But whether is the better to make more choice of prescribed physic, (which by the multiplicity of divers respects might grow too infinite) or to allow more liberty to the Physicians in sorting their appliances to the inequallities aforesaid, Id Deus aliquis viderit, This is proponed for a truth perpetual, universal, and unresistible, that where difference of considerations maketh a Maius and Minus in any fault, the punishment also should be proportionable by the intention or remission of lenity or austerity.  
The State's Physicians after the order and skill of physic natural, 
Points to be observed of the states Physician, and first of the manner of the disease.  be diligently to observe, in what manner each disease taketh or settleth, and how the same may be particularly encountered; that he may the better (for Militat omnis Medicus) so with Ambuscadoes beset the way, and prepare resistance to intercept or interrupt it in his courses, that in what sort soever it shall approach, or give the onset, it may be strongly met withal, and fitly confronted with his contrary: for right sagely doth their wisdoms discern, 
Curing by contrary.  that as in the natural, so in the politic body, the remediing of any maladies is the more readily performed, by the repelling thereof with their directest opposites. But for as much as without a discovery of the right cause of any disease, it cannot be well discerned or resolved, where or how to set foot to make head against it; it is behovable studiously to find out the beginnings, 
The cause must be first known.  the enterings, the breed, and the first occasioning causes of each sickness, that in the contriving of the cure thereof, it may be combated correspondently. Neither is it to be thought less necessary, exactly to know the constitution and complexion of the body politic, 
The complexion to be known.  that in the right applying of remedies, it may undeceiveably be conceived how (according to the diversities thereof) medicines may be ministered either stronger, or weaker, speedier or flower, oftener or seldomer, for the advantage of prevailing. Yea it seemeth also requisite that the be well seen in the observation of times and seasons, 
Seasons to be observed.  for the more fortunate effecting of his intended cures: for like as in private, so in public grievances there is a certain point of opportunity to be watched, and taken hold on, sorting more fittingly to the furtherance of such good endeavours. Besides I do not see but (for the manner of his ministering) it may unto him as unto the Physician be allowed to use (to gain an acceptation of his receipt) a kind of beguiling love, 
To minister the medicines in pleasing manner.  by sweetening and giving of a more pleasing relief to his remedies, that the same so kindly accommodated, may have rather the welcome of a friend, than be abhorred as an enemy. One skill more he is yet to borrow of the Physician, which is, the diligent noting and distinguishing of each part from other, by the extent of their nature, 
To know perfectly the body and all the parts.  by their proper place, by their different workings, by their adherence and mutual respects, or by any other their discrepant proprieties; lest he do through such ignorant mistaking unaptly misapply, to the hurt of one, what he had considerately prepared for the good of another: he is to have as penetrating an insight, as careful an overlooking, and as particular a knowledge of each thing considerable in the civil body, as the Anatomist hath in the searching and severing of every vein, artery, or sinew, or in the describing and bounding out of every the parts, passages, offices, or actions, in the body natural. In his tendance and care though he be to have the whole in a general survey, espying and amending whatsoever requireth the correction of any remedies; yet is he more circumspectly, and with all watchfulness, to look unto such diseases which harmeth and distresseth the best and vital, yea those royal parts of Nobility and Magistracy, 
To have greatest care of the best parts.  (where the soul in sort seateth and showeth itself) not only because the indwelling (as it were) of so great a guest, deserveth a well cleansed purity and soundness; but for other also no less remarkable respects, of the consequential mischiefs thereof, 
Great men's faults most perilous, and most to be respected.  arising to the residue of the body, (sith when any tender or noble part is ill affected, or out of order) all the rest be therewithal afflicted; as both partaking heavily with the unrest, grievances, and passions thereof, and also filled with the annoying fluxes upon them unburdned. Let us for the clearer demonstrance of this matter; cast our eyes and imaginations yet more markingly, upon the body natural, wherein when the distemperature of unequally sorted humours have invaded and possessed any chief part, the disease therein bred, or settled, becometh general, extending a touch and taint over all; the helping functions thereof be withheld, as restrained by such obstructions. In the steed whereof his infection is sucked and derived all abroad, to the corrupting and perverting of whatsoever hath any dependency or affinity therewith; yea so far forth, as not only the common sense by such disturbance misconceiveth his apprehensions, but also that reason itself is wholly beguiled and misled; with some raving error, allowing the surmised, in steed of the real good: so as the whole body thereby is vexed with giddiness and tumults: So when great men of a better condition, and higher degree, shall grow humorous, opinionate, and factious, (besides their withdrawing of their faith, allegiance, and former good services) they do not only seduce the unskilful and unruly Commons, but also train on with their suggestion of colourable causes, some officers of public trust (as parts of the reasonable power) to adhere unto them in their misconceiving adventures, till all be endangered by such mutinous confusion.  
But having dwelled too long in the description of this disease (for the remedying whereof, prevention is the best prescription) what I have farther to deliver touching the diseases of the State, or the likeness which they have with them of the body, or how to carry or direct the manner of tendance or ordering of them; I must be fail more compendiously to couch the infiniteness thereof within the compass of some short positions, lest ranging too far, I be offensively tedious, orseeking to match all, I mar all by making more a do than I need. 
1 1 Diseases in the nobler parts most to be looked to.  The forenoted diseases settled in the nobler parts, are the more principally to be provided for, and it is ordinary to withdraw the anguish thereof, to some of the less principal, yea though it should be with torments of incision, burning, or ligature. 
2 2 Where the cause is inward.  Where the grief is outward, and the cause inward, it is the surest course of curing to begin at the removing of the inward cause, whereby the fountains of supply may be dried up, 
3 3 Where the cause is unknown.  and the branching evil more easily withered away. When the disease proceedeth from unknown causes, it is more to be suspected and feared, because it mateth and amazeth the Physician himself, finding either no appearance of reason, 
4 4 Where the disease feedeth itself from other parts adjoining.  how to make resistance or applying hazardably with likelihood of as well hurting as helping. It is usual that a disease settled in one part, feedeth itself by sucking the corruption from other parts adjoining; wherein for the timely cutting off of such a confluence, to make a strong faction, it is likewise usual to comfort and make good the parts adjacent, that the grief more singly accompanied, may the more sound be encountered. The diseases that be inveterate & oflong continuance asketh a long healing, 
5 5 Diseases inveterate.  and be seldom so sound remedied, but they will revert, and join with any new grievance, and be lightly than more exasperated and cumbersome than before, or than the new itself. The relapse into a disease from which we have been lately recovered, 
6 6 Relapse into any disease.  doubleth the peril of the first sickness, being advantaged by the weakness and poor case which it had formerly brought us unto. Some diseases taken in time are easily helped, 
7 7 To apply cure in time.  which if they be suffered to run on, and through our heedlessness confirm themselves, do as easily grow uncurable; and where a small matter at the first might restore health, there after some continuance the medicine will come too late. Such diseases as be infectious, 
8 8 Infectious diseases.  and do spread far and near, are to be avoided by all means, as scant to be helped by any means, seeing that they force the Physicians themselves to flight, not daring to intrude venturously into the thickest danger, and when they be chased away, or hide themselves, upon whom our hope of help relieth, what can be expected but remediless misery? The diseases that bring with them a deprivation of sense, 
9 9 Diseases depriving sense.  without any feeling or acknowledging of sickness, argueth a great vnlikelyhood of recovery, because nature yieldeth herself as contented, 
10 10 Diseases coming suddenly.  and no ways opposing thereunto. When sickness cometh suddenly and unexpected, the very violence of that surprise so daunteth the heart, as that the fort will be lost before the forces be assembled. The disease that haunteth us, and whereunto we be accustomed, 
11 11 Diseases whereunto we be accustomed.  we do watch and observe very diligently, that we may meet with it at every turn, and turn away his rigour, before it can get the mastery, and against it we be better prepared, with usual applications. The disease that is universal, affecting the whole body, 
12 12 Diseases of the whole body.  awaketh & stirreth all the parts to bring together their concordant aid, and is the more caringly to be withstood, because it adventureth the whole at one stake. Where the diseases seemeth remediless, and of desperate condition, 
13 13 Diseases desperate.  there it is permitted and advised to minister desperate medicines. uncurable diseases shame and foil the Physicians, and then doth it go hard with them, 
14 14 Diseases uncurable.  when the patient wholly depending upon their help, jaieth the blame upon their unsufficiency; where contrariwise, if they help at a pinch (all seeming past help) then do they (as it were) play their prizes, & make themselves well esteemed, and much renowned. In the diseases of great men, 
15 15 Diseases of great men require more help and advise.  and those grievous and dangerous, the whole college of Physicians is consulted with; for the greater the cause or person is, the more will the attendance and assistance of Council, judges, and Magistrates concur for the suppressing of such raging fits, by timely remedies. Many diseases have an eager appetite to those meats which are fittest to increase their force, 
16 16 Diseases made worse by feeding on that they desire.  and it is a part of the cure appertaining thereunto, to restrain the patient from the use of such hurtful food; as if a mad man were to be kept from a sword, he that is aguish from wine, the seditious from seducing books, and traitorous complottors, and the ungoverned from riches and honour. Such diseases as detecteth and discovereth themselves by some certain signs whereby they may be known, 
17 17 Diseases discovered in their signs.  may be sooner suppressed; and the very assuaging or altering of those signs, doth often weaken, vanquish, and drive away the disease itself. Where a disease is particular only to one part, 
18 18 Destruction of members in any disease, when to be used.  as to the eye, the hand, foot, or such like, the loss whereof inferreth not the destruction of the whole; there, rather than a continual molesting & annoying grievance should encumber the joys of life, the part whereunto such pain sticketh & is so affixed, as that it cannot be removed or remedied, were better to be pulled out, cut of, & dissevered from the body: howbeit much extremity is to be abidden, and many ways for healing are to be tried before it come to so hard a pass, as to harden the heart to endure such violence. Many diseases are dissolved and overcome merely by the strength of nature, 
19 19 Diseases oft dissolved by nature.  that the physicians aid is not implored at all: and many again because their nature hath been too much trusted unto, and Physic hath been neglected or loathed, maketh a conquest over both. The excess of humours, will seek either to settle in some principal part, 
20 20 Diseases to be forced to break outwardly.  as in a fortified place, entrenching the same with strong obstructions; or else outwardly to get an head, which (if they cannot by scattering be dispatched) are to beeforced to break out rather than to fester within. Some diseases have a property like the Adder that turneth to be a Serpent, being changed after a while from being the same it was into an other new and different worse than itself. 
21 21 Diseases growing to a worse nature than they were.  Most diseases have certain degrees & standing points of either increase or declination, and according as nature is comforted and seconded by the helps of Physic, so they either slack their sharpness, 
22 22 The state or standing point of a disease.  or become outrageous, after they have once touched and attained to those points. Yet there resteth one rule that ruleth all the rest, which is, That every disease desireth his proper cure; 
23 23 Every disease must have his proper cure.  wherein if there be any missing or mistaking, the mischief will be this, That the weakening of nature by that which is wrong applied (for such physic not fitting the disease, worketh upon nature) must necessarily augment the power and peril of the sickness. This position is of a much importing consequence, and (howsoever I leave all the former to the applying and moralising of the Reader) this I may not so suddenly forsake, or lightly pass over: it concerneth the skill of the Physician, who hath our lives in his hands.  
There be sometimes such nimble headed Pragmatickes, 
Against unskilful Pragmatickes  that taking upon them to be great entermedlers in state affairs, do for want of grounded knowledge in the political science, make many foul escapes: whom I may resemble to the empiric Physicians, who having been brought up only in an experimental prenticeship, do seldom apply that which is proper, but wholly trusting to their ordinary receipts, & not able to look into the right nature of the disease, or the divers variations thereof, or the complexion & strength of the patient, or the fitness of the season for ministering, or the proportion of the medicine to the quality of the sickness, and thereunto ignorant also of the method for orderly proceeding, or judiciously to mark or observe the right prognostica; do daily by their desperate dealings endamage and weaken, if not cast away such as be so hazarded under their charge. Such blind adventuring without rule or art to be used in the needful occasions of the Commonweal, who seeth not how hurtful and pernicious it may prove? and therefore forbearing (as I have bound myself to do) to enlarge this discourse out of other learning, I will only serve my turn with stretching of this one comparison thus far farther: That as the profound and rational Physician is for certainty of cure, 
The learned fitter for government than the unlearned.  and direction in the regiment of health, to be chosen and used before the rash unskilful Empiricke: So the learned and well seen in the principles of political doctrine, is fitter to be employed and trusted with the public dispatches and affairs, tending to the preservation and amendment of the state, than any bold busy bodies that either creep in at unwares, or thrust in by shoving and shouldering; their agencies being too dangerous, where the body of the Realm must become their patient: For where their skill is all but by tradition, and not attained by the study and inquiry after causes and reasons, how be they able in the midst of so many deceivable differences to find for each particular occurrance, 
Unperfect curing.  the proper and right requisite application, without the which whatsoever is or seemeth remedied, breaketh forth anew, waxing raw and sore again. Thenceit cometh, that oftentimes the medicine is worse than the disease, and the Physician becometh the heir unto his patient; because where we most repose ourselves in a confidence of help, there through an unadvised carriage in the party trusted (affecting his own end) and wandering from his right way, we be most seduced and left succourless, exposed to all calamities. Discretion is the Limbeck that extracteth to his right use all kind of learning, 
Discretion in state business.  without it nor the Physician in his manifold variety of diseases and medicines, nor the Politician in his multiplicity of causes and cases, can affect any thing, either with certainty to good, or laudably to reputation. If this be not his best guide, like the thread of Ariadne, to lead him through the labyrinth of so many intricat diversities, how shall he be able to rule the matter, when he standeth enwrapped, and even overflowed with the contrariety of rules? 
Severity.  One rule telleth him that Nulla remedia tam sunt salutaria, quam quae faciunt dolorem: The best medicines do most pain us: by the imitation whereof the State Physician will perhaps trust most to his sharp and austere remedies. Another rule adviseth such application as is Secundun naturam, et quod cuiusque natura desiderat. Hereof it cometh, that what delighteth and pleaseth (though it be not for goodness comparable) yet for his familiar agreeableness to our stomach and nature, is to be preferred unto that which is offensive, unsavoury, or churlish. This consideration prevaileth in government also, 
Lenity.  to have all the business of correction and reformation transacted quietly without contrarious conflicting; and by such means as may rather give contentment, than make conquest: because what is loathed or not brooked, may more hurt or molest in recoiling, than avail by an unwilling and painful retention.  
Aristotle propoundeth as a Probleame, That the self fame inflammations by some be cured with cooling, 
Contrary ways to cure the same disease.  and by others are ripened and digested by heating. This physic hath also been wisely put in practice in the tendance of the raging ulcers and impostumations of the body politic, when the hot humour of haughtiness in great men hath sometimes by gentleness and counsel been allayed, and other sometimes by urging and more heating brought to a rupture & running out. What encumbreth or annoyeth nature, is sometimes at his first gathering (before it getteth an head) dissolved and dispersed, 
Diversities in curing, upon divers respects  and sometimes again is suffered, yea and forced to show his uttermost virulence, and to get unto him his full strength, before it be once meddled with. The same medicines that easeth us of grief in one part, may annoy us in another, that help at one time, may hurt at another, or that heal one may dispatch another: We use not the same course in Summer as we do in Winter, nor the same when the body is too full, as when it is brought low, nor the same to children and old folks, as to men of confirmed strength; nor the same in the height or amendment, which we do at the beginning of the disease. Such respectiveness we may expect from the political Physician, that he be not pragmatically tied to the Idem, or Eodem modo, but that from the axioms & conclusions of learning, he do so apply his cogitations to the discrepancy of occasions, as that (being usque quaque sapiens) he accommodate his cures rather by certainty than at adventure, and even therein to show himself regular, by varying of his proceedings from his rules, as the variableness of conditions, circumstances, and considerations shall with reason overrule him. And he doth oftentimes (as a well skilled physician doth) finding any imperfection or unaptness in the first remedies repeal and cast aside them by providing and ordaining new. 
Repealing of some, and making of new laws.  Yet in one point more let us note the effects of skill in a Physician, who is able to make even poisons medicinable; which showeth, that when Magistrates shall upon occasion make use of wicked men, 
Magistrates may make use of the wicked.  we should be so far from charging them with the objection of ungodly policy, as that we should rather for such their property & power liken them unto God, who himself infinitely good, extracteth good out of evil.  
Such expert Physicians of the Realm, do (like far darting Apollo) spread abroad their golden rays and happy influence, 
Good magistrates praised.  as well for preserving of public health and prosperity, as also for the subduing of all poisoned Pithon's, and miscompounded monsters, that infect the air, or defile the land of the Commonweal.  
Some other good requisites in our State-phisitions may not be pretermitted. It is needful, that they be of a grave staidness, and free from fickleness or flexibility. I yield, that a Physician may by occasions and circumstances be moved to dispose himself to change both his opinion and his practice: yet I hold it requisite that such his change may appear to proceed rather from deliberation than lightness, from judicious discerning of right causes, rather than from a vain affectation of new courses; so he be constant to his propounded end of effecting the safety & health of the body, resting upon his skill and best endeavour, to make trial of sundry different means likely, and serving thereunto, is no unconstancy at all. The same may be affirmed of Governors: It cannot but be hateful and scandalous to any Magistrate, to play the light headed temporizer, by the exchange and oft shifting of his opinion, still to conform to every accidental alteration in the State: for howsoever it may be allowed unto him (upon prevailing considerations) to change his medicines rather than his mind, retaining still his integrity and constancy towards the state: yet is it made a note of common observance, that such as be either carried about by every tempest of the time, or be swayed by their own levity to entertain diversities in the order of government; as they do but affect Latebram male fidei, so they give place and passage to every stirring & upstart spirit (as the heedlessness or giddiness of the body's physician oft doth) with force & fury to conquer all. I know that a remediless necessity may constrain the skilfullest Pilot (being beaten from his intended haven) to take into the next harbour that fortune shall offer, rather than with extreme peril to contend with the storm: Such a kind of compelled alteration no indifferent observer will debar any provident Politician of, That whensoever he shall vary from his first well grounded resolution, his relinquishing of the former, or his pursuing of any new intention, may be judged rather necessary than voluntary, more reasonable than fashionable, and for the performing of farther good rather than to follow the inclination of his own unsteady humours. They must be loving and compassionate, 
The Physicians loving of the patient.  the proof and demonstrance whereof maketh their patients comfortably and readily to swallow any their prescribed receipts, and it is one step towards cure, when the sick holdeth a good thought of his Physician, persuading himself, that his labours are undertaken out of an honest and hearty desire of doing good, rather than to enrich himself by undeserved gettings. The overmuch regard of fees or gains in some Physicians, 
Covetousness in getting of fees.  maketh good the saying of Philemon an old Poet, O quam male medicus se habet, cum neminem male seize habere contigit, 
Desire of gain in some lawyers  medicus valere amicos ne suos quidem cupit: which (howsoever perhaps it may be touchingly applied to some Lawyers also, whose profession is to find physic to redress particular wrongs, and therefore that they may be set a work with the case, wisheth their friends sometimes in an ill case) yet far be it that any the higher magistrates of justice and government, should be shamefully stained with the black note of so foul an imputation, as out of the diseases, sores, and corruptions of the people, to enrich and advance his own estate. And against that sort of Lawyers which shall seek to make us such fools, as by continual lawing to keep us still to that play at foils, to fill them thereby with fees, let us learn this physical lesson, 
To be never out of law, a great misery.  That as Medice vivere, est misere vivere, so to be never out of law, is never to know any happy days: for as too much physic weakeneth and wasteth health; so to be overlaid with law, is the utter loss and confounding of all comforts of life.  
But leaving such purse-purging Lawyers, 
Magistrates may have private faults, yet good magistrates.  I must return to the pursuit of considerable respects, for the Physicians of the civil body. As one may be a good Physician though an evil man; so may he be a good Commonwealths man, 
Magistrates to be chosen for their skill in government.  though otherwise for his private faults reprovable. As in choosing a Physician, we take not the wealthiest, or that can make best friends, but him that is best skilled, and likeliest to cure: So magistracy and offices of justice be not to be bestowed upon the richest or most favoured, 
Magistrates rather to be native than foreign.  but upon the wisest and worthiest. As we like better a Physician that is our own Countryman, or of some nearness in blood unto us, than a foreign borne, or nothing allied unto us: so is it well and lovingly provided for, where the Sovereign (according to such desire) ordereth each people to be governed by their own natives. As the Physicians to encourage and induce their patients to take more cheerfully their prescriptions, do readily foretaste the same themselves: so the Magistrates for the drawing of the people to the more willing observance of the laws, 
Magistrates must not desist from their duties for abuses offered unto them  aught to make themselves examples of integrity in the outward show of a just conversation. Besides, as the Physician though he be oft times by the wayward demeanour of the patient, much abused, yet doth he persist in his purpose of performing of the best help by any course that his skill affordeth: So the Magistrate, albeit in the execution of so busy, 
Magistrates must give good example.  envious, and troublesome a charge, he must often meet with mischievous intentions against him, be thwarted with oppositions, and endure indignities, yet must he with a manly and virtuous constancy consecrate his whole endeavours to the resolute following of his necessary function. Further, as the Physician too much set a work or called upon, cannot give to each patient a sufficing attendance: So where there be too many busy employments cast upon one magistrate or officer (or too many clients cloying of one Lawyer) the very distraction or dividing of his pains amongst so many, 
Magistrates not to have too many offices or employments.  applieth against him the proverbial verse: Ad plura intentus minor est ad singula sensus.  
Lastly, I will bestow upon our political Physician that complement of qualities, which we usually look for in a Surgeon; that is an Hawks eye, a Lady's hand, 
Compared to a Surgeon in three properties.  and a Lion's heart: his eye must piercingly spy into all sores and disorders reformable, his hand must not be carried too heavy, but rather tenderly and mercifully; and his heart is to be held up undaunted, and unflexible, when it hath uprightly conceived of the right, rejecting from him all remissness, or timorousness of execution. The Physician doth not always follow the preciseness of his own rules, 
Magistrates do sometimes offend the law themselves.  he doth often offend against his own health, (as others do) and then is disdainfully mocked with Curate ipsum. I would not advise any man to be so saucy, as to bid the Magistrate look to his own faults; but it must be confessed, that such as be seated in places of authority, may as basely and as badly misgoverne themselves as inferior persons, and thereby not undeservedly fitted with that frump, That the greater thieves hang up the lesser. 
Magistrates offending, to be punished by other Magistrates.  Yet when the Physician is sick, other Physicians are provided to minister unto him; so the vices of the Magistrates, must undergo the censure of other Magistrates, to be dealt withal as the quality thereof requireth. Nevertheless, as the Physicians misdieting of himself, is no good pretence for the diseased to refuse to be healed by his endeavour: So the objection of the Magistrates misbehaviour or reproach must not withdraw our subjection from abiding and yielding to any his orders or judgements concerning our emendation. 
Magistrates fault's no pretence to disobey them.  It is observed in the nature of Man, that when he is pressed by sickness to pray aid of the Physician, he holdeth nothing too dear for him, rewarding him with rich recompense; but when he findeth himself recovered, and no more to need him, he will scant afford him any his least favours; as if he had concluded, that as God created him, so he would honour him, only for necessities sake. Such also is the fortune of those, who spend their spirits, cares, and industries, in the attendance of the State's health; 
Magistrates deservings soon forgotten.  when it is discerned, that they have advised, procured, and ministered the good of the weal public, then be they extolled by applause, advanced to honour, and rewarded with bounties; but if the occasion of their meritings be cut off, then forgetting the forepast helps, Aesculapius must thence forth lose his sacrifice of Cocks. Nay, their case is somewhat worse, for if that which by them is contrived and intended rightly, 
Magistrates care and wisdom is judged of by the events.  faileth of effect, or falleth out sinisterly; then as if the Physician had either mistaken his cure, or misbehaved himself, he maketh a purchase of blame and shame, losing both the kernel for which he took pains, and the credit of his art, which notwithstanding he exactly followed. Further than this, he findeth one other grievance much exceeding the former, which is, That when he hath with his earnest study and best circumspection decreed and enacted what is to be done, 
Magistrates discouragement for the want of execution of laws by them made.  his prescriptions will not be received, nor his directions followed; without the use and applying whereof, the making of such receipt was a bootless labour. He that will see the right image of that wrong offered to the State-Phisitions, let him but search into his own heart, 
Reasons resolve vain, if there be no will to perform.  where when reason hath assembled the Senate of his best understandings, and hath by their discussings resolved what is best to be done, if there then should want a will to obey and perform such decrees, might not reason and his fellows as well have been a sleep: so verily when wholesome laws are devised and enacted, for the general benefit of an whole Realm, it is an untolerable abuse offered to the lawmakers, when for lack of due administration, to concomitate the consulting power, the same shall not have their execution. Yet were it the shamfullest injury of all, 
laws often by cavils illuded.  and that no ways standeth with the Patients own safety, if the receipts or prescriptions of the Physician, should be illuded by shifts and cavilled at, of purpose to mistake and pervert the true meaning thereof: So standeth the case with good Statutes, when ill disposed people, will by subtle scanning seek evasions, and alter the sincerity of them by wrested interpretations. But virtuous Subjects holding obedience to be their essential and habitual property, 
Obedience the chief virtue of Subjects.  and having such Physicians as both zealously loveth them, and are best acquainted with the state of their body, will heartily abhor and abandon such miscreant corrupters of the governing justice.  
It is now time to find some means for the observing of a mean, lest tediousness banish delightsomeness: I have reserved yet one comparison more, wherewith at the last to close up all, and to reduce this discourse to my promised period, of the entire embracements between Sovereign and Subject. 
The Subjects chief care to content the Sovereign.  The bodies hoping after health, or affecting of felicity, is no other, or to any other end, than to rejoice the soul with fullness of comfort and satisfying pleasures; So let the desires and endeavours of the body Politic, and each part thereof, in the acquiring for the State any supposed or desirable good, be directed and tend to the making happy of their Sovereign, by working on all sides his abundant contentation. Then (sith at their first meeting they began with a profession and conjunction of love) their departure shall not want a reciprocal kindness, with the exchange of all mutual offices of faith and assuredness. The Prince's contentment must be the happiness of the Subject, & the subjects welfare the security of the Prince: And so shall the Commonwealth be completely blessed, by the firmness of that concording union, having Mentem sanam in corpore sano, the tranquillity of the mind, with indolence of the body.  
Thus having adventured to propound unto public view (like as Appelles did his picture) this portraiture of the body Politic, though not so completely shaped in all the lineaments, as may either allure the lookers on to liking, or may suffice to equal the dignity and majesty of the matter represented: I must entreat of the wise and expert Politicians, their favourable interpreting, and encouraging entertainments thereof; unto whom I have reason (with all reverent regard) to dedicate these endeavours; Them hath the conjunction of learning and acting, well intermixed, 
Political governors are to be made famous by the praises of the learned.  exactly accomplished; and from the observance of their good labours, hath been bred the collection of book lessons: What they broiling in the heat of affairs, and even sun-burned with the business of the State, do daily effect for the public benefit; that we (the contemplators of their merits) in our solitary privateness at our unemployed leisures, and from our shady studies, ought gladly, for the establishing of their authority, and for the eternising of their glory, to recount & recommend to the undecaying succession of future times. It was right worthy council which Demetrius gave unto Ptolemie, advising him diligently to read the books written of Political government: but his reason is sharp pointed and toucheth to the very quick; 
The benefit which a Sovereign shall have by the studying of political books.  for (saith he) there shall you find that which none dare or will tell you. To say the truth, such works advisedly & faithfully compiled, be unpartial informers, and uncorrupted councillors, acquainting their readers with the generality of right and reason, to be applied to use in particular considerations. From thence may all governors draw their directions, for the framing and plotting of their most important purposes: and what they thence shall suck will be simple and sincere, without admixture of either deceitful drifts, or affectionate inclinations. As in the act or ability of right understanding, the soul doth manifest his greatest force and goodness: 
Proverb. 24.  so in the multitude of them that can give council, is strength. To such Atlas-like governors, that be the supporting Arches of a civil State, all political learning, and whatsoever industry or discoveries, in that subject doth properly belong, and aught in them to be treasured up for store at all times to bestead the State; even as the light created on the first day, was after transferred into the bodies of the Sun, Moon, and Stars of the firmament, to enlighten the whole world. 
The dedication of Political works due to the governors of the State.  The view of my weakness and unworthiness, together with the awful respectivenes whereto I stand bound in all duty, stayeth me from presumptuous assuming to myself of any such clearness of conceit or judgement, as may any whit increase the fullness of understanding in our great and superior lights. Yet if by the propounding of this pair of bodies, so equally matching in fashion and likeness, civil consultations upon any occurrance may (by such correspondence) receive help, I hope it will not be disliked, that I have endeavoured to set open for their light a broader and larger passage. I may not make myself ignorant, that it is easy to offend in the curiosity of enquiring into State-secrets; 
Curiosity of looking Into state business.  there is even in that kind also a forbidden Apple. And it hath ever been reckoned an audaciousness not to be digested, to intrude with timerity, where restraint hath placed a cross bar. If every body must know all, counsel were no counsel. The body politic as the natural, is whole and close chested, there is not in his breast (no more than in the others) any glass windows or casements placed, for meddling Momus to look into the reserved occultanda of the heart. Such as have an itching desire to peer within the curtain of those undiscoverable secrets, besides their offensive and unmannerly sauciness, against the reverend and sage Senators of the State, do apparently detect themselves to be but babbling and seducing news tellers. Cato censureth fitly of them percunctatores garruli, and Plautus amply describeth their natures, 
In Trinumo.  terming them by an old but significant name of famigeratores, as filled both in the ears and in the mouth, with a certain saleable windy matter of rumours and reports.  
There is a sobriety to be observed in the gaining of knowledge by inquisitive; 
Inquisitivenes.  for such as overfill themselves, and do drink too deep of hearkening and hearsays, will likewise incur the other extremities, both of reeling as disied by untruths; and of casting up again, by the publishing of all they hear. But when this searching and piercing presumption shall get up to the highest step, and fall to pry into the Prince himself, to make discoveries and dinulging of his dispositions, intentions, affections, qualities, 
To pry into the princes dealings or dispositions, how dangerous it is.  weighty businesses, and serious actions; than it hath the resemblance, and is a very spice of the heat of Phaeton, of the lightness of Icarus, of the treachery of Tantalus, of the blabbing of Sisyphus, of the lust of Ixion, of the immodesty of Actaeon, and of the sly surreption of Prometheus, and is worthily punishable with some of their tortures. Solomon compareth the unsearchable heart of the King, to the height of heaven, and the depth of the earth; arguing thereby as well the presumption as the impossibility of discovering the same, Pro. 25.  
Against this odious injury of the subjects overmuch inquiring and spying into their Sovereign, 
A caveat from nature's work.  I have one arrow or argument left me, to be taken out of the same quiver: Nature hath so provided, that no senses of the body doth penetrate into the essence or inwardness of the soul; they be espials for him, not spyers into him: for Animus oculorum effugit obtutum. Then in the same sort, as well for a warning to myself, as for a reproof to any other that way offending, let me set it down for a positive truth, that even herein also our manners and duty should contemplate and imitate nature, as with a modest reverence to forbear to intromit our animaduerting curiosity into the bosom of sacred and unsearchable Majesty: which who so doth with an humbled spirit well understand what it is in his very altitude and latitude, 
In sovereignty a great mystery  shall certainly find it to be as great an Arcanum in policy, as the soul can be in nature: So (with all beseeming reservation of my duteous submission to superior powers) I do to the residue of Readers offer a petition of indifferency, That if they shall light of any thing defective or wanting weight, I may be bold to borrow some few grains of their good favour, wherewith perhaps the scales may be held upright. If they meet with any matter seeming an Ulcer, tender of touch, and subject to construction; I may only challenge them to be charitable, than which (I hope) there will need no other healing. Finally, if to the dainty ear of this all-scanning age, my simple and unpolished work shall give no satisfaction, yet the scope of my honest intentions, and the loyalty of my well meaning, may at the least acquit me of blame, if not merit acceptation.  
FINIS.   

Errata.  
In the first page of the Brief, line penult. leave out (of resolution.) In the next page, line 16. for, loveth all, read, loved of all. Folio 22. line 15. for excellentest, read excellent fifth. F. 28. l. 15. for heat, t. head. F. 33. l. 4. for If, r. of. F. 61. l. 2. for mind, r. mine. F. 69. l. 7. for conveyance, r. connivance. F. 76. l. 1. for proponed, r. propounded. F. 87. l. 5. for affect, read effect.