4. The fourth opinion adversary to civil society, is their’s who hold, _that they who bear rule are subject also to the civil laws_. Which hath been sufficiently proved before not to be true, in chap VI. art. 14, from this argument: that a city can neither be bound to itself, nor to any subject; not to itself, because no man can be obliged except it be to another; not to any subject, because the single wills of the subjects are contained in the will of the city; insomuch that if the city will be free from all such obligation, the subjects will so too; and by consequence she is so. But that which holds true in a city, that must be supposed to be true in a man, or an assembly of men who have the supreme authority; for they make a city, which hath no being but by their supreme power. Now that this opinion cannot consist with the very being of government, is evident from hence; that by it the knowledge of what is _good_ and _evil_, that is to say, the definition of what is, and what is not against the laws, would return to each single person. Obedience therefore will cease, as oft as anything seems to be commanded contrary to the civil laws, and together with it all coercive jurisdiction; which cannot possibly be without the destruction of the very essence of government. Yet this error hath great props, Aristotle and others; who, by reason of human infirmity, suppose the supreme power to be committed with most security to the laws only. But they seem to have looked very shallowly into the nature of government, who thought that the constraining power, the interpretation of laws, and the making of laws, all which are powers necessarily belonging to government, should be left wholly to the laws themselves. Now although particular subjects may sometimes contend in judgment, and go to law with the supreme magistrate; yet this is only then, when the question is not what the magistrate may, but what by a certain rule he hath declared he would do. As, when by any law the judges sit upon the life of a subject, the question is not whether the magistrate could by his absolute right deprive him of his life; but whether by that law his will was that he should be deprived of it. But his will was, he should, if he brake the law; else his will was, he should not. This therefore, that a subject may have an action of law against his supreme magistrate, is not strength of argument sufficient to prove, that he is tied to his own laws. On the contrary, it is evident that he is not tied to his own laws; because no man is bound to himself. Laws therefore are set for Titius and Caius, not for the ruler. However, by the ambition of lawyers it is so ordered, that the laws to unskilful men seem not to depend on the authority of the magistrate, but their prudence. [Sidenote: That the supreme power may be divided, is a seditious opinion.]