Fourth Dialogue

Summary

Third Court Maxim: That absolute and hereditary monarchy where the government is wholly left to the will and all power trusted only in the hands of the monarch is most conformable to and warrantable from the Scripture

Philalethes: my business is dispatched for this day and I desire to employ the leisure in the continuation of our last discourse.

Eunomius: I am willing to continue if | you please to retire into some place where we may be free from noise and interruption.

Philalethes: the shadow of these trees will be as good a defence to us against the heat as the solitariness of the place against the importunity of company. So I will resume the discourse where we left and the doubt that remained with me. From a political and moral consideration of government, you may remember, we passed unto a religious ^*one^*. For though I could not well answer your arguments in the way they were proposed, I was not convinced by them, because I think it expedient in the case rather to examine what God has commanded than what we, according to our imperfect reasonings, may fancy to be good for ourselves. Whatever God commands is just and good.

Eunomius: but what makes you believe that in civil things God has not left us a liberty of choosing and constituting such a government as according to the time and nature of the place and people we find most convenient?