s the supreme power can certainly do ten thousand things more than
it ought, so there are several things which some people may think it can
do, although it really cannot. For, it unfortunately happens, that
edicts which cannot be executed, will not alter the nature of things.
So, if a king and parliament should please to enact, that a woman who
hath been a month married, is _virgo intacta_, would that actually
restore her to her primitive state? If the supreme power should resolve
a corporal of dragoons to be a doctor of divinity, law or physic, few, I
believe, would trust their souls, fortunes, or bodies to his direction;
because that power is neither fit to judge or teach those qualifications
which are absolutely necessary to the several professions. Put the case
that walking on the slack rope were the only talent required by act of
parliament for making a man a bishop; no doubt, when a man had done his
feat of activity in form, he might sit in the House of Lords, put on his
robes and his rochet, go down to his palace, receive and spend his
rents; but it requireth very little Christianity to believe this tumbler
to be one whit more a bishop than he was before; because the law of God
hath otherwise decreed; which law, although a nation may refuse to
receive it, cannot alter in its own nature.

And here lies the mistake of this superficial man, who is not able to
distinguish between what the civil power can hinder, and what it can do.
"If the parliament can annul ecclesiastical laws, they must be able to
make them, since no greater power is required for one than the other."
See pref., p. viii. This consequence he repeateth above twenty times,
and always in the wrong. He affecteth to form a few words into the shape
and size of a maxim, then trieth it by his ear, and, according as he
likes the sound or cadence, pronounceth it true. Cannot I stand over a
man with a great pole, and hinder him from making a watch, although I am
not able to make one myself. If I have strength enough to knock a man on
the head, doth it follow I can raise him to life again? The parliament
may condemn all the Greek and Roman authors; can it therefore create new
ones in their stead? They may make laws, indeed, and call them canon and
ecclesiastical laws, and oblige all men to observe them under pain of
high treason. And so may I, who love as well as any man to have in my
own family the power in the last resort, take a turnip, then tie a
string to