The reasons of the Christian religion the first part, of godliness, proving by natural…

Answ. Only so far as they feel themselves unable to do hurt: As a man is restrained from killing Adders lest they sting him: And the advantage of their place doth usually empower them, to make desolations, if they have a mind to it. And great minds will not easily bear a popular restraint: And indeed the honester and better any people are, the more undisposed are they to rebel: And therefore Tyrants may with smallest danger and fear destroy them.

Answ. Only so far as they feel themselves unable to do hurt: As a man is restrained from killing Adders lest they sting him: And the advantage of their place doth usually empower them, to make desolations, if they have a minde to it. And great mindes will not easily bear a popular restraint: And indeed the honester and better any people are, the more undisposed are they to rebell: And therefore Tyrants may with smallest danger and fear destroy them.

Obj. But their own interest lieth in the peoples welfare; and therefore there is no danger of such miseries.

Ans. Did Nero think so, that wished Rome had but one neck; that set the City on fire, that he might sing over it Homers Poem of the flames of Troy? that ripped up his own Mother, that he might see the place where once he lay? Did Caligula think so? Did Commodus, Caracalla, Heliogabalus, think so? Did the Spaniards think so by the Indians, who are said by their own Writers, to have murdered in forty two years space, no less than fifty millions of them? Did King Philip think so, who put his own Son and Heir to death, by the Inquisition? besides so many thousands more in Spain and the Low Countries, by that and other ways? How full of such bloody instances is the World. If it were a Tyrants interest that kept him under some moderation to the people of his own Dominions, it might yet possibly leave him a bloody destroyer of other Nations, in his Conquests. The World hath not wanted men that think the lives of many thousands, a little sacrifice to a proud design, or furious passion; and are no more troubled at it, than a Pythagorean would be to kill a Bird. It hath had such as Sulla, Messala, Catiline, and the Conquerors of Jerusalem, who as Josephus saith, crucified so many thousands, till they wanted Crosses for men, and place for Crosses, besides the greater numbers famished.