At all events,
whatsoever laws are here in England, are made by the men whom we
English have chosen, as the men most fit and wise to make them, and
we are bound to abide by them. If Parliament is not wise enough to
make perfectly good laws, that is no one's fault but our own; for if
we were wise, we should choose wise law-makers, and we must be filled
with the fruit of our own devices. As long as these laws have been
made and passed, by Commons, Lords, and Queen, according to the
ancient forms and constitution which God has taught our forefathers
from time to time for more than a thousand years, and which have had
God's blessing and favour on them, and made us, from the least of all
nations, the greatest nation on the earth; in short, as long as those
laws are made according to law, so long we are bound to believe them
to be God's ordinance, and obey them. But understand; that is no
reason why we should not try to get them improved; for when they are
changed and done away according to the same law which made them, that
will be a sign that they are God's ordinances no longer; that God
thinks we have no more need for them, and does not require us to keep
them. But as long as any law is what St. Paul calls "the powers that
be," obeyed it must be, not only for wrath, but for conscience's
sake.
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