The Author's Preliminary Address to His Royal Pupil

PRELIMINARY ADDRESS

TO

HIS ROYAL PUPIL.

God is the Ring of Kings: to him it belongs to instruct and to rule them as his Ministers. Listen then, my Lord, to the lessons which he gives them in his Scripture, and learn of him the rules and examples upon which they ought to form their conduct.

Besides the other advantages of the Holy Scriptures, it has moreover this, that it displays the history of the world from its first origin, and makes us see by that means, better than all other histories, the primitive principles on which empires were formed.

No history so well discovers that which is good or bad in the human heart; that which sustains, and that which oversets kingdoms; that which religion does for their establishment, and impiety for their destruction.

The other virtues, and the other vices, find also in the Scriptures their natural character; and nowhere else can be seen in greater evidence, their true effects.

We here see, the government of a people of which God himself was the legislator; the abuses he repressed, and the laws he established; which comprise the most beautiful, and the most just policy that ever existed.

All that which Lacedemonia, all that which Athens, all that which Rome; to go up to the source, all that which Egypt, aud the best regulated States had, that was most wise, is nothing in comparison to the wisdom which is contained in the law of God, whence after laws have drawn whatever is best in them.

Thus, never was there so beautiful a State Constitution, as that under which you behold the people of God.

Moses, who formed it, was instructed in all the wisdom, divine and human, with which a great and noble genius could be adorned; and inspiration only raised in him, to the highest certainty and perfection, what had been but sketched in the usages and knowledge of the wisest of all the Empires and

B their greatest ministers: such too was the Patriarch Joseph, like him, inspired by God.

Two great Kings of His people, t)avid and Solomon, the one a warrior, the other pacific, both of them excellent in the art of governing, will give you not only examples in their life, but also in their precepts; the one, in his divine poetry, the other, in the instructions which the Eternal Wisdom dictated to him. +

Jesus Christ will teach you, by himself and his apostles, all that makes states happy; his Gospel renders men more fit to be good citizens on earth, as it teaches them by that means to render themselves worthy of becoming citizens of heaven.

God, in fine, by whom Kings reign, forgets nothing that may teach them to reign well. The Ministers of Princes, and those who partake in their authority in the government of states, and the administration of justice, will find in his word, lessons which God only could give them. It is a part of Christian morality, to form the magistrature by his laws: God wills to decide all; that is to say, to give decisions for all states; and more especially for that on which all others depend.

This, my Lord, is the greatest of all objects that can be proposed to men, and they cannot be too attentive to the rules upon which they will be judged by an eternal and irrevocable sentence. Those who believe that piety enfeebles politics, will be confounded, and that which you shall behold is truly divine.

BOOK THE FIRST.

OF THE PRINCIPLES OF HUMAN SOCIETY.