A saint or a brute the certain necessity and excellency of holiness, &c. ...…

And if so, then these must be either temporal punishments and benefits, or such as are to be had in the Life to come. That Temporal punishments and benefits cannot be Motives sufficient for any tolerable (much less perfect or sufficient) Government, is a most evident Truth: For 1. de facto we see by experience, that no people live like men that be not Governed by the Belief of another life. The Nations that believe it not, are Savages almost all; living naked and bestially, and knowing nothing of virtue or vice., but as they feel the commodity or discommodity to their flesh: They eat the flesh of men, for the most part, and live as brutishly as they believe. And if you say that in China it is not so, I answer, one part of them there believe the Immortality o• ⟨p. 141⟩the soul, and most of them take it as probable, and so the Nation hath the Government which it hath, from everlasting Motives.

And if so, then these must be either temporal punishments and benefits, or such as are to be had in the Life to come. That Temporal punishments and benefits cannot be Motives sufficient for any tolerable (much less perfect or sufficient) Government, is a most evident Truth: For 1. de facto we see by experience, that no people live like men that be not Governed by the Belief of another life. The Nations that believe it not, are Savages almost all; living naked and bestially, and knowing nothing of vertue or vice., but as they feel the commodity or discommodity to their flesh: They eat the flesh of men, for the most part, and live as brutishly as they believe. And if you say that in China it is not so, I answer, one part of them there believe the Immortality o• ⟨p. 141⟩the soul, and most of them take it as probable, and so the Nation hath the Government which it hath, from everlasting Motives.

And if you say that the ancient Romans had a sufficient Government, I answer, 1. The most of them believed a life to come, and it was but a few that denied the Immortality of the soul: and therefore it was this that Governed the Nations. For those that believed another life, had the Government of the few that did not believe it, or else the Government it self had been more corrupt. 2. And yet the faultiness of their belief appeared in the faultiness of their Government. Every Tyrant took away mens lives at pleasure. Every Citizen that had slaves (which was common) at pleasure killed them, and cast them into the fishponds. The servants secretly poisoned their masters, and that in so great numbers, that Seneca saith, Epist. 4. ad Lucul. that the [Number of those that were killed by their servants, through treachery, deceit, or force, was as great, as of them that were killed by Kings]; which was not a few.