Ask a question about the passage or interpret it. Remember we are interested in liberalism (freedom is unconstrained choice), republicanism (freedom is independence from private or natural domination), and political theology (essentially political understandings of God, e.g. God is sovereign/ an absolute king, or theological understandings of politics, e.g. the government has a fundamentally moral purpose to make men good).

Here are the passages:

1. Every toleration of false Religions, or Opinions hath as many Errors and Sins in it, as all the false Religions and Opinions it tolerates, and one sound one more.

2. If you stand for your natural corrupt liberties, and will do what is good in your own eyes, you will not endure the least weight of authority, but will murmur, and oppose, and be always striving to shake off that yoke; but if you will be satisfied to enjoy such civil and lawful liberties, such as christ allows you, then will you quietly and cheerfully submit unto that authority which is set over you, in all the administrations of it, for your good.

3. It is wholesome and safe to be dealt withall as God deals with the vast Sea; Hitherto shalt thou come, but there shalt thou stay thy proud waves: and therefore if they be but banks of simple sand, they will be good enough to check the vast roaring Sea.

4 .Fifthly. All civil states, with their officers of justice, in their respective constitutions and administrations, are proved essentially civil, and therefore not judges, governors, or defenders of the spiritual, or Christian, state and worship.

Ask a question about the passage or interpret it. Again, we are interested in liberalism, republicanism and political theology, but now we are esp[ecially interested in noting how ideas have changed between the 17th and 18th centuries.

Here are the Passages:

1. The first human subject and original of civil power is the people. For as they have a power every man over himself in a natural state, so upon a combination they can and do bequeath this power unto others; and settle it according as their united discretion shall determine.

2. To consider man in a civil state of being; wherein we shall observe the great difference between a natural, and political state; for in the latter state many great disproportions appear, or at least many obvious distinctions are soon made amongst men; which doctrine is to be laid open under a few heads.

3. That the end of magistracy is the good of civil society, as such. That civil rulers, as such, are the ordinance and ministers of God; it being by his permission and providance that any bear rule, and agreeable to his will that there should be some persons vested with authority in society, for the well-being of it.

4. Whoever considers the nature of civil government, must indeed be sensible that a great degree of implicit confidence must unavoidably be placed in those that bear rule: this is implied in the very notion of authority’s being originally a trust committed by the people to those who are vested with it-as all just and righteous authority is.

Ask a question about the passage or interpret it. Again, we are interested in liberalism, republicanism and political theology,

Here are the passages:

1. You will carry our sentiments with you, but if you try to plant them in a country that has been corrupt for centuries, you will encounter obstacles more formidable than ours. Our liberty has been won with blood; yours will have to be shed in torrents before liberty can take root in the old world.

2. All rulership has its original and it’s most legitimate source in man’s wish to emancipate himself from life’s necessity, and men achieved such liberation by means of violence, by forcing others to bear the burden of life for them.

Ask a question about the passage or interpret it. Again, we are interested in liberalism, republicanism and political theology

Here are the passages:

1. The guarantee of civil liberties and of the pursuit of private happiness had long been regarded as essential in all non-tyrannical governments where the rulers governed within the limits of the law. If nothing more was at stake, then the revolutionary changes of government, the abolition of monarchy and the establishment of republics must be regarded as accidents, provoked by no more than the wrong-headedness of the old regimes.

2. It is still Europe’s poverty that has taken its revenge in the ravages with which American prosperity and American mass society increasingly threaten the whole political realm. The hidden wish of poor men is not ‘To each according to his needs’, but ‘To each according to his desires’. And while it is true that freedom can only come to those whose needs have been fulfilled, it is equally true that it will escape those who are bent upon living for their desires.