Author: Tetman Callis

“O spirit of love, how quick and fresh art thou!” – William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night; Or, What You Will 1.1

“If music be the food of love, play on.” – William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night; or, What You Will 1.1

“We cannot but wonder and grieve that we should appear so despicable in your eyes as to be thought unworthy to petition or represent our grievances to this honourable House. Have we not an equal interest with the men of this nation in those liberties and securities contained in the Petition of Right, and other the good laws of the land? Are any of our lives, limbs, liberties, or goods to be taken from us more than from men, but by due process of law and conviction of twelve sworn men of the neighbourhood? And can you imagine us to be so sottish or stupid as not to perceive, or not to be sensible when daily those strong defences of our peace and welfare are broken down and trod underfoot by force and arbitrary power?” – from “A Petition of Women, Affecters and Approvers of the Petition of Sept. 11, 1648 ” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“The truth is (and we see we must either now speak or for ever be silent), we have long expected things of another nature from you, and such as . . . That you would not have followed the example of former tyrannous and superstitious Parliaments in making orders, ordinances or laws, or in appointing punishments, concerning opinions or things supernatural, styling some blasphemies, others heresies, whenas you know yourselves easily mistaken and that divine truths need no human helps to support them; such proceedings having been generally invented to divide the people amongst themselves, and to affright men from that liberty of discourse by which corruption and tyranny would be soon discovered.” – from the Levellers’ “Petition to the House of Commons” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“It is an ordinance amongst men, and for men, that all men may have a human subsistence and safety, to live as men amongst men, none to be excepted from this human subsistence but the unnatural and the inhuman. It is not for this opinion or that faction, this sect or that sort, but equally and alike indifferent for all men that are not degenerated from humanity and human civility in their living and neighbourhood. And therefore the destroyers and subverters of human society, safety, cohabitation, and being, are to be corrected, expulsed, or cut off for preservation of safety and prevention of ruin, both public and private.” – Richard Overton, “An Appeal from the Commons to the Free People” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“Greater love and mercy cannot be amongst men than to take compassion over the helpless and destitute.” – Richard Overton, “An Appeal from the Commons to the Free People” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“All degrees and titles magisterial are all subservient to popular safety, all instituted and ordained only for it. For without it can be no human society, cohabitation, or being; which above all earthly things must be maintained as the earthly sovereign good of mankind, let what or who will, perish or be confounded. For mankind must be preserved upon the earth, and to this preservation all the children of men have an equal title by birth.” – Richard Overton, “An Appeal from the Commons to the Free People” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“The safety of the people is the reason and end of all governments and governors. Salus popidi est suprema lex : the safety of the people is the supreme law of all commonwealths.” – Richard Overton, “An Appeal from the Commons to the Free People” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“All just human powers are but betrusted, conferred, and conveyed by joint and common consent; for to every individual in nature is given an individual propriety by nature, not to be invaded or usurped by any; for every one as he is himself hath a self propriety—else could he not be himself—and on this no second may presume without consent; and by natural birth all men are equal, and alike born to like propriety and freedom, every man by natural instinct aiming at his own safety and weal. And so it is that there is a general communication amongst men from their several innate properties to their elected deputies for their better being, discipline, government, property, and safety.” – Richard Overton, “An Appeal from the Commons to the Free People” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“All authority is fundamentally seated in the office, and but ministerially in the persons. Therefore, the persons in their ministrations degenerating from safety to tyranny, their authority ceaseth, and is only to be found in the fundamental original rise and situation thereof, which is the people, the body represented. For though it ceaseth from the hands of the betrusted, yet it doth not, neither can it, cease from its being.” – Richard Overton, “An Appeal from the Commons to the Free People” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“All betrusted powers, if forfeit, fall into the hands of the betrusters, as their proper centre. And where such a forfeit is committed, there it disobligeth from obedience, and warranteth an appeal to the betrusters, without any contempt or disobedience to the powers in the least; for such an appeal in that case is not at all from the power, but from the persons; not forsaking the power, but following of it in its retreat to the fountain.” – Richard Overton, “An Appeal from the Commons to the Free People” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“The equity of the law is superior to the letter, the letter being subordinate and subject thereto. And look how much the letter transgresseth the equity, even so much it is unequal, of no validity and force.” – Richard Overton, “An Appeal from the Commons to the Free People” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“Necessity is a law above all laws. And this principle conveyeth and issueth forth authority and power, both to general and particular cases, even to the taking up of unusual and unexemplary courses for public and particular deliverances.” – Richard Overton, “An Appeal from the Commons to the Free People” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“Nothing which is against reason is lawful, reason being the very life of the law of our land; so that should the law be taken away from its original reason and end, it would be made a shell without a kernel, a shadow without substance, a carcass without life, which presently turns to putrefaction. And as reason only gives it a legal being and life, so it only makes it authoritative and binding. If this be not granted, lust, will, pride (and what the devil and corruption will) may be a law. For if right reason be not the only being and bounder of the law over the corrupt nature of man (that what is rational, the which injustice and tyranny cannot be, may only and at all times be legal, and what is legal, to be simply and purely rational, the which mercy and justice must be whensoever, wheresoever, and by whomsoever it be), all would fall into confusion, disorder, madness, and cruelty; and so magistracy would cease, and be converted into inhumanity and tyranny.” – Richard Overton, “An Appeal from the Commons to the Free People” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“God is not a God of irrationality and madness, or tyranny.” – Richard Overton, “An Appeal from the Commons to the Free People” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“Reason hath no precedent; for reason is the fountain of all just precedents. Therefore where that is, there is a sufficient and justifiable precedent. And if this principle must be granted of, and obeyed by all (as by no rational man can be denied), then the act of appeal in this nature, if grounded upon right reason, is justifiable and warranted, even by that which gives an equitable authority, life, and being, to all just laws, precedents, and forms of government whatsoever. For reason is their very life and spirit, whereby they are all made lawful and warrantable both for settlement, administration, and obedience; which is the highest kind of justification and authority for human actions, that can be, for greater is that which gives being and justifieth than that which receiveth and is justified. All forms of laws and governments may fall and pass away, but right reason (the fountain of all justice and mercy to the creature) shall and will endure for ever. It is that by which in all our actions we must stand or fall, be justified or condemned; for neither morality nor divinity amongst men can or may transgress the limits of right reason. For whatsoever is unreasonable cannot be justly termed moral or divine, and right reason is only commensurable and discernible by the rule of merciful justice and just mercy. It is gradual in its quantity, but one in its quality.” – Richard Overton, “An Appeal from the Commons to the Free People” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“The most beautiful and greatest spirits are the more universal, as the more base and blunt are the more particular. Every man calleth that barbarous that agreeth not with his palate and custom; and it seemeth that we have no other touch of truth and reason than the example and the idea of the opinions and customs of that place or country where we live. These kind of people judge of nothing, neither can they: they are slaves to that they hold; a strong prevention and anticipation of opinions doth wholly possess them.” – Hanserd Knollys, “The Ancient Bounds” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“Instead of resentment, or thinking that you can lay the blame on anyone but yourselves, know that to be free is the same as to be pious, to be wise, to be temperate and just, to be frugal with your own goods, and abstinent from another’s, and, lastly, to be magnanimous and brave; so to be the opposite of all these is the same as to be a slave. You, therefore, who wish to remain free, either instantly be wise, or as soon as possible cease to be fools; if you think slavery an intolerable evil, learn obedience to right reason and the rule of yourselves; and finally bid adieu to your dissensions, your jealousies, your superstitions, your outrages, your rapine, your lusts. Unless you will spare no pains to effect this, you must be judged, by God, man, and your very deliverers, unfit to be entrusted with the possession of liberty and the administration of the government.” – John Milton, “Defensio Secunda” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“Permit the free discussion of truth without any hazard to the author, or any subjection to the caprice of an individual, which is the best way to make truth flourish and knowledge abound.” – John Milton, “Defensio Secunda” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“Since there are often in a state men who have the same itch for making a multiplicity of laws as some poetasters have for making many verses, and since laws are usually worse in proportion as they are more numerous, I trust that you will not enact so many new laws as you abrogate old ones which do not operate so much as warnings against evil but rather as impediments in the way of good; and that you will retain only those which are necessary, which do not confound the distinctions of good and evil, and which, while they prevent the frauds of the wicked, do not prohibit the innocent freedoms of the good, which punish crimes without interdicting those things which are lawful, only on account of the abuses to which they may occasionally be exposed. For the intention of laws is to check the commission of vice; but liberty is the best school of virtue, and affords the strongest encouragements to its practice. Then, I trust that you will make a better provision for the education of our youth.” – John Milton, “Defensio Secunda” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“Absolute lordship and Christianity are inconsistent.” – John Milton, “Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“Civil power neither hath right nor can do right by forcing religious things.” – John Milton, “Of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“Colonel Hall, his regimental headquarters group, and the men of 1/8 had spent the night at the line of departure, waiting in vain for orders to land on Betio. Although division had issued such an order, on the afternoon of D-Day, the message had not reached the regimental commander. Finally, at 0200 on the morning of 21 November [1943], Hall was contacted and told to report the position of 1/8 and the condition of its men. He replied that his Marines, in boats near the control vessel, were ‘resting easy,’ a surprisingly cheerful description of men that had spent over 12 hours in bobbing landing craft.” – Henry I. Shaw, Jr., Bernard C. Nalty, and Edwin T. Turnbladh, Central Pacific Drive, History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II, Volume III, Part II, “The Gilberts Operation”

“The laws of nature and of common equity are the foundation of all laws (truly and properly so called) and whatsoever venditateth itself under the name or notion of a law, being built besides this foundation, wanteth the essence and true nature of a law, and so can be but equivocally such.” – John Goodwin, “Right and Might Well Met” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“When any two laws encounter one the other in any such exigent or strait of time that both of them cannot be obeyed, the law of inferior consequence ought to give place to that of superior, and the duty enjoined in this to be done though that required in the other be left undone.” – John Goodwin, “Right and Might Well Met” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“When religious men break out of the way of righteousness and truth, with the renitency and obmurmuration of their judgments and consciences, it is a sign that their judgments and consciences are yet at liberty and in condition to reduce them; but when these are confederate with their lust, there is little hope of their repentance.” – John Goodwin, “Right and Might Well Met” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“According to the notion of that maxim in natural philosophy, that the corruption of the best is worst, so are the miscarriages and errors of the best men of worst consequence in many cases. The digressions of men religious are many times worse than the thorough discourses of other men. When conscience and concupiscence meet (as oft they do in religious men), the conjunction is very fiery.” – John Goodwin, “Right and Might Well Met” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“It is a ruled case amongst wise men, ‘that if a people be depraved and corrupt, so as to confer places of power and trust upon wicked and undeserving men, they forfeit their power in this behalf unto those that are good, though but a few.’” – John Goodwin, “Right and Might Well Met” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“When the pilot or master of a ship at sea be either so far overcome and distempered with drink or otherwise disabled, as through a phrenetical passion or sickness of any kind, so that he is incapable of acting the exigencies of his place for the preservation of the ship, being now in present danger either of running upon a quick sand or splitting against a rock, &c, any one or more of the inferior mariners, having skill, may, in order to the saving of the ship and of the lives of all that are in it, very lawfully assume, and act according to, the interest of a pilot or master, and give orders and directions to those with them in the ship accordingly, who stand bound, at the peril of their lives, in this case to obey them.” – John Goodwin, “Right and Might Well Met” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“A contract, the conditions whereof are violated by neither side, cannot be dissolved but by the joint consent of both; and in buying and selling, and in all contracts unviolated, the sole will of neither side can violate the contract; of this speaketh the law. We hold that the law saith with us that vassals lose their farm if they pay not what is due. Now what are kings but vassals to the state, who, if they turn tyrants, fall from their right?” – Samuel Rutherford, “Lex Rex” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)