(20:82) I have thus fulfilled the task I set myself in this treatise. [20:5] (83) It remains only to call attention to the fact that I have written nothing which I do not most willingly submit to the examination and approval of my country's rulers; and that I am willing to retract anything which they shall decide to be repugnant to the laws, or prejudicial to the public good. (84) I know that I am a man, and as a man liable to error, but against error I have taken scrupulous care, and have striven to keep in entire accordance with the laws of my country, with loyalty, and with morality.
AUTHOR'S ENDNOTES TO THE THEOLOGICO-POLITICAL TREATISE
[Endnote 26]. (1) "No one can honestly promise to forego the right which he has over all things." (2) In the state of social life, where general right determines what is good or evil, stratagem is rightly distinguished as of two kinds, good and evil. (3) But in the state of Nature, where every man is his own judge, possessing the absolute right to lay down laws for himself, to interpret them as he pleases, or to abrogate them if he thinks it convenient, it is not conceivable that stratagem should be evil.
[Endnote 27]. (1) "Every member of it may, if he will, be free." (2) Whatever be the social state a man finds himself in, he may be free. (3) For certainly a man is free, in so far as he is led by reason. (4) Now reason (though Hobbes thinks otherwise) is always on the side of peace, which cannot be attained unless the general laws of the state be respected. (5) Therefore the more he is free, the more constantly will he respect the laws of his country, and obey the commands of the sovereign power to which he is subject.
[Endnote 28]. (1) "No one knows by nature that he owes any obedience to God." (2) When Paul says that men have in themselves no refuge, he speaks as a man: for in the ninth chapter of the same epistle he expressly teaches that God has mercy on whom He will, and that men are without excuse, only because they are in God's power like clay in the hands of a potter, who out of the same lump makes vessels, some for honour and some for dishonour, not because they have been forewarned. (3) As regards the Divine natural law whereof the chief commandment is, as we have said, to love God, I have called it a law in the same sense, as philosophers style laws those general rules of nature, according to which everything happens. (4) For the love of God is not a state of obedience: it is a virtue which necessarily exists in a man who knows God rightly. (5) Obedience has regard to the will of a ruler, not to necessity and truth. (6) Now as we are ignorant of the nature of God's will, and on the other hand know that everything happens solely by God's power, we cannot, except through revelation, know whether God wishes in any way to be honoured as a sovereign.