Civil Magistrate Research Articles

‘Oliver Cromwell is a Devil!’ Religious Radicalism and Political Turmoil in Geneva during the English Civil Wars

ABSTRACT When King Charles I was beheaded in 1649 it incited a series of events in the Reformed city of Geneva. The Civil Wars and Regicide uncovered the political and religious tensions within Geneva during the English Civil Wars. In Geneva, two important bodies, the Small Council of civil magistrates and the Company of Pastors jockeyed for an appropriate response from their diverse members. Additionally, the leaders of Geneva had to respond to English and Continental rumours that they were to blame for England’s woes. Utilizing archival research, this article examines the transnational implications of the English Civil Wars and it shows that the Genevans had far from a unified view of the Civil Wars. Ultimately, the primary fear for the leaders in Geneva was not necessarily the death of a king, but instead that they would be associated with the worst aspects of the Radical Reformation: Anabaptism.

Church and State: The Promise of Reformed Theology for the Church Today

This article surveys the ways in which Reformed theology (particularly the Westminster Standards and subsequent generations of Scottish and American Presbyterians) has articulated the relationship between the church and civil government. It addresses two fruits of this line of reflection that are especially pertinent to the contemporary church. The first is that this doctrine makes provision for the divinely guaranteed religious liberty of all human beings, even in the face of a civil government’s attempts to abridge or usurp that authority. The second is that this doctrine provides clear guidance to the church concerning the ways in which the church, in its organized capacity, may and may not engage in matters that concern both the church and the state. KEYWORDS: Church, state, civil magistrate, religious liberty, Westminster Assembly, Scottish Presbyterian, American Presbyterian, PC (USA)

The readmission of the Jews and the power of the civil magistrate: Thomas Barlow on the Jews and natural law, 1655-1656

ABSTRACT This article sheds light upon an important but neglected context in which Thomas Barlow (1608/9–1691) and his contemporaries discussed the readmission of the Jews in 1655–56. Previous studies of readmission have shown how the English perception of the Jews evolved, but few have noticed that contemporaries saw the readmission controversy as part of a larger debate on the limit of the civil magistrate’s power in religious toleration. By recovering the specific political context in 1655–56, in which the idea of natural law played a key role, this article highlights the legal and constitutional problems of admitting the Jews and Barlow’s distinctive intellectual solution to them. Adopting Hugo Grotius’ idea of natural law and Catholic jurists’ legal method, Barlow redefined the Jews’ obligation under natural law and suggested that the civil magistrate could formally admit the Jews.

SMITH AT 300: NEGATIVE JUSTICE AND POLITICAL WISDOM

Adam Smith is known as a liberal thinker. The political system that he promotes and describes as one of “perfect justice, perfect liberty, and perfect equality” (Wealth of Nations [1776] 1981; WN IV.ix.17:669) is characterized by the primacy of the rights of non-interference and the protection of a private sphere where every individual directs her life according to her own decisions. The moral justification for the primacy of negative justice is in the second book of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, where he unambiguously states: “Mere justice is, upon most occasions, but a negative virtue, and only hinders us from hurting our neighbor” ([1759] 1982; TMS II.i.1.9:82). For the same reason, the first time I read that book, the following paragraph struck me as an inexplicable contradiction, an incomprehensible lapse in Adam Smith’s thoroughly revised text: A superior may, indeed, sometimes, with universal approbation, oblige those under his jurisdiction to behave, in this respect, with a certain degree of propriety to one another. … The civil magistrate is entrusted with the power not only of preserving the public peace by restraining injustice, but of promoting the prosperity of the commonwealth, by establishing good discipline, and by discouraging every sort of vice and impropriety; he may prescribe rules, therefore, which not only prohibit mutual injuries among fellow-citizens, but command mutual good offices to a certain degree. … Of all the duties of a law-giver, however, this, perhaps, is that which it requires the greatest delicacy and reserve to execute with propriety and judgment. To neglect it altogether exposes the commonwealth to many gross disorders and shocking enormities, and to push it too far is destructive of all liberty, security, and justice. (TMS II.ii.1.8)

Orthodoxy, Orthopraxy, and Locke’s Arguments for Toleration

A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689) comprises John Locke’s mature thoughts on religious toleration. In it, Locke offers three political arguments against state religious coercion. He argues that it is impossible, impermissible, and inadvisable for the civil magistrate to enforce ‘true religion,’ which Locke defines as the ‘inward and full persuasion of the mind’ (Works, 6:10). Notwithstanding the various internecine conflicts within Christianity, conflicts which motivated Locke’s concern with toleration, all of the many-splendored sects of Christianity nonetheless share the notion that orthodoxy (correct belief) is required for salvation. Since the early days of Christianity, orthodoxy has represented the lowest-common-denominator obligation of adherents to Christianity. Locke’s political arguments in the Letter, at least in their first instance, assume an orthodox definition of “true religion.” This is likewise true of those who have either defended or criticized Locke’s arguments in the secondary literature. In contrast to Locke and his commentators, we will argue that the dominant characterization of “true religion” globally and throughout history does not concern correct religious belief as much as it concerns correct religious practice, or orthopraxy. Even though it has not received as much attention in the literature, Locke does discuss orthopraxy–what he calls ‘outward worship’–at length in the second half of the Letter (Works, 6:29-39). We will demonstrate how versions of all three political arguments for toleration can be redeployed to constrain the power of the magistrate within an orthoprax conception of true religion.

“We wait to be true people, Christians”: An Idolatry Confession in Zapotec

Context This article presents a translation and analysis of the only extant formal confession of human sacrifice written in an Indigenous language in the colonial Americas. An analysis of this document, written in Northern Zapotec by the town officials of Yalalag in 1704, provides numerous insights about how a community deployed traditional rhetoric to seek mercy from their civil magistrate, and to provide a justification for committing acts of idolatry and child sacrifice. Rather than aligning with the canonical middle ground (nepantla), often used as a yardstick, this confession eloquently and incisively places Northern Zapotec society in tentative terrain point in terms of their knowledge of Christianity, and depicts Christianization as a long-term process, which confessants boldly tied to latent forms of negotiation.

Of the civil magistrate: John Witherspoon’s doubly religious toleration

ABSTRACTIn 1788, the newly unified Presbyterian churches in America adopted a version of the Westminster Confession which, in contradistinction to the 1647 version, prohibited the magistrate from ‘giving … preference to any denomination of Christian’. Instrumental to this change was John Witherspoon, whose views on religious toleration became encoded in the revised confession’s insistence on disestablishment. This paper discusses Witherspoon’s idea of religious tolerance, and argues that it is ‘religious’ in a double sense: Witherspoon endorses the toleration of religion for the sake of religion. This paper proceeds in three parts; first, by examining the springs of Witherspoon’s religious toleration through his life and thought in eighteenth-century Scotland; second, by turning to Witherspoon’s mature thoughts and actions in favour of religious toleration in America; and finally, by evaluating the legacy of religious tolerance bequeathed by Witherspoon to the Presbyterian Church and the United States at large.

Church, State, and Commonwealth: The Transatlantic Puritan Movement in England and America

Church, State, and Commonwealth:The Transatlantic Puritan Movement in England and America Neal T. Dugre Building a New Jerusalem: John Davenport, a Puritan in Three Worlds. By Francis J. Bremer. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2012. 436 pages. Cloth. Sympathetic Puritans: Calvinist Fellow Feeling in Early New England. By Abram C. Van Engen. Religion in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. 325 pages. Cloth, ebook. Godly Republicanism: Puritans, Pilgrims, and a City on a Hill. By Michael P. Winship. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2012. 350 pages. Cloth. Like most puritan divines, the Reverend John Davenport spent a good deal of his adult life explaining the subtleties of his beliefs. These conversations were often informal, but some, including his Discourse about Civil Government in a New Plantation Whose Design is Religion, found their way into print. Davenport wrote the Discourse around 1638 or 1639 in response to an unnamed correspondent who wondered "Whether the Right and Power of Chusing Civil Magistrates belongs unto the Church of Christ?"1 In the late 1630s, the answer to that question was of great interest to English audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. Puritans in Massachusetts Bay had recently embraced their own brand of congregationalism and adopted a radical form of civil government that entangled ecclesiastical and civil polities by restricting the franchise to male church members, moves that attracted intense scrutiny in England. Over twenty-four pages, Davenport expounded on his views of civil polities and their relationship to the church. Yet before delving into his intricate, six-part argument, he critiqued the inquiry itself. The wording of the [End Page 344] question betrayed a fundamental misunderstanding. It assumed that ecclesiastical and civil polities together constituted the basic elements of society, but the real foundation was something else entirely: "Christian Communion." In Davenport's taxonomy, "Christian Communion" was the "Genus" of society, and ecclesiastical and civil polities its "Species."2 Although church and state each had different objectives, they shared the goal of promoting the common welfare, of nurturing Christian Communion. Perhaps we too have been asking the wrong questions. Twenty-five years ago, historian David D. Hall bemoaned how out of touch the "half-truths" scholars tell about puritanism in seventeenth-century New England were with recent scholarship.3 Despite a steady stream of monographs published in the intervening decades, historians and literary scholars still grapple with that disconnect. Both Abram C. Van Engen and Francis J. Bremer, for example, promote their studies in part as rebuttals to the tenacious half-truth of stern and unfeeling puritans. All three of the books under review advance a recent revival in puritan studies that is beginning to close this gap. Examining institutions, intangible feelings, and the lived experiences that knit puritans in England and America together, the authors take puritan theology and the intricate bonds between New England's ecclesiastical and civil polities seriously. In recovering the face-to-face interactions and dialogues between individuals from various points on the spectrum of puritan orthodoxy, the authors suggest how puritans moved toward the larger goal of fostering Christian Communion by negotiating relationships among themselves. In Godly Republicanism, Michael P. Winship returns to the beginnings of the puritan movement following the ascension of Queen Elizabeth I and the restoration of Protestantism to England. Described as a "study in applied sacred political theory" (4), the book examines the republican foundations of church and state in seventeenth-century Massachusetts. Winship builds on recent English scholarship that locates the roots of republicanism not in the mid-seventeenth century but in Tudor and early Stuart England. Religion has not factored prominently in that historiography, but Winship brings to light "assumptions and webs of concern" (5) that linked puritanism to secular political ideals that we recognize as republicanism. Godly ecclesiastical republicanism and secular republicanism shared common "priorities and anxieties," namely "the dread of the corrupting effects of power, the fear of one-man rule, the emphasis on the consent of the people and on balanced government" (5). Throughout, Winship highlights the surprising and significant [End Page 345] ways that separatists, "black sheep" (7) among puritans and their historians, interacted with radical...

A State Within the State: The Inquisition in Enlightenment Thought

ABSTRACTEnlightenment thinkers wrote many pages against the Inquisition. In particular, they widely criticized the Spanish and Portuguese inquisitions, which they regarded as the epitomes of cruelty and fanaticism. Both inquisitions were established at royal request and remained subjected to the authority of the kings until they were abolished at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Indeed, therein the kings nominated the grand inquisitors, who were invested with civil jurisdiction for reasons that were at least as much political as religious. However, Enlightenment writers almost always portrayed the Inquisition as the ultimate example of the many ills derived from clerical authority, ecclesiastical autonomy and monastic despotism. Kings and civil magistrates were, in fact, usually depicted as victims of inquisitorial power. This common portrayal of the Inquisition reveals that the Enlightenment idea of toleration was essentially constructed for reducing the power of churches to disturb public peace and challenge civil authority. Thus, this idea of toleration was in effect less capable of denouncing political intolerance, let alone of promoting the separation of church and state.

The Civil Magistrates of Geneva and the Placement of Pastors in France on the Eve of the First War of Religion (1562)

Abstract This article analyses excerpts from letters sent by French Reformed congregations and politically-engaged Calvinist laymen in 1562. In these dispatches, the churches, lay notables, and local magistrates of Montpellier, Grenoble, Gap, Nîmes, Issoire and Rouen requested pastors to Geneva or thanked the town’s authorities for ministers previously sent there. However, these six letters were not addressed to the Venerable Company of Pastors, but specifically to the syndics and Small Council of Geneva. While the role of the Company in the sending of Geneva-trained pastors to France on the eve of the Wars of Religion is known, the participation of the Republic of Geneva’s political authorities in these activities needs more scholarly attention. This article seeks to offer a discussion of this topic through analysis of correspondence and other sources held in the Archives d’État de Genève.

Radical Orthodoxy: Irish Covenanters and American Slavery, circa 1830–1865

This article analyzes the views of Reformed Presbyterians (Covenanters) in relation to the subject of American slavery. Popular mythology, especially that propagated by the exponents of Neo-Confederacy, would have us believe that all those who criticized the system of chattel slavery that existed in antebellum America were either secularists or adherents to heterodox religious opinions. In order to debunk this myth, this article seeks to demonstrate the solid antislavery credentials of this theologically conservative group of Presbyterians by examining the writings of various Covenanters on chattel slavery. As this agitation against slavery took place in a context of significant internal strife between the Covenanters over the issue of the civil magistrate's power circa sacra, this paper will consider how the antislavery arguments of Thomas Houston and John Paul diverged in order to suit their respective positions on civil magistracy. Related to this is the Covenanters' critique of the US Constitution, which Reformed Presbyterians rejected owing to its proslavery sentiments. Hence this article provides us with an important insight into antislavery ideology and developments within Reformed theology in relation to the state during the nineteenth century. Finally, consideration will be given to understanding the complex response of the Reformed Presbyterians to the American Civil War and to debates between the Irish Covenanters and their American brethren on the proper reaction to the conflict.

The civil magistrate: the Scottish Office and the anti-Irish campaign, 1922–1929

The Church of Scotland's anti-Irish campaign in the 1920s was largely concentrated in persuading the Unionist government of the merits of legislation to restrict immigration from the Irish Free State. The accepted view has been that this campaign failed in its objectives due to overriding imperial concerns and the indifference, in some cases the hostility, of the Unionist party to the Church's case. This article seeks to re-examine the relationship between the Unionist party and the Church in the 1920s and to demonstrate how successful the Church actually was in persuading influential figures, notably Sir John Gilmour, secretary of state for Scotland and his deputy Major Walter Elliot, of the necessity to restrict immigration. It has also been the view that the Glasgow Herald, in a series of five articles in 1929, was pivotal in the public demolition of the Church's position. It will be shown here that there is evidence to suggest that these articles may have been inspired and possibly materially assisted by figures within the Scottish Office.

Taming “The Tyranny of Priests”: Hume’s Advocacy of Religious Establishments

This paper aims to explain why David Hume supported the religious establishment despite his anti-clericalism. First, the Church of England could be regarded as a happy medium between two forms of false religion: superstition and enthusiasm. Second, Hume’s concern over “the tyranny of priests” led him to advocate a spiritual establishment bound to secular authority. Hume’s Erastianism does not contradict his opinion that civil magistrates should maintain impartiality in religious matters: both views reflect his thoroughly secular attitude towards religious institutions. Despite alleged differences between Hume and Adam Smith, they shared much common ground in their approach to religious institutions.

“Your Petitioners Are in Need”:

n 1947 residents in the northern wards of Jefferson Township in Allegheny County voted, subject to court approval, to secede from the township in a bid to create a more responsive government. The resulting court approval allowed the Borough of Pleasant Hills to incorporate. Pleasant Hills became another element of local government in a county already fragmented by local governments. Incorporating a new borough raises several questions. Why was it necessary to form another borough in a county with a number of boroughs already? What would the citizens of the new borough gain? Where do boroughs fit in the structures of local government in Pennsylvania? This article will endeavor to answer these questions. The scholarship on boroughs in Pennsylvania is limited. There are studies on the historical and political aspects of Pennsylvania’s boroughs, but little describing the process and reasons leading to their formation. 1 Boroughs have a long history in Pennsylvania, beginning with the incorporation of Germantown in 1691 and continuing until the present day.

Food allergy, a summary of recent cases in the criminal and civil courts of the UK

Food allergy, a significant public health concern in the developed world has developed a forensic context where allergy related personal injury, fatality or criminal non-compliance on the part of a food supplier are issues that have recently come before the UK courts. EU General Food Law (178/2002/EC) and Directive 2000/13/EC (to be consolidated into the proposed Food Information Regulation) address allergen avoidance risks relating to composition, labelling and food safety. The European Framework Directive on Safety and Health at Work (Directive 89/391 EEC and daughter legislation) may also be deployed. Compensation in civil law for loss or damage caused by an allergic reaction to a food supplied, not as requested, or with misleading or incorrect information has also been sought. The authors describe recent such cases dealing with prepacked retail and non prepacked catering situations where contraventions of food law could have resulted in fatalities, and health and safety and civil litigation following deaths from food allergy. The cases came before the civil (including appeal) courts, magistrates and coroner’s courts. In the absence of a current cure, health protection depends on accurate diagnosis, informed food allergen avoidance and the effective management of symptoms. These strategies depend in turn on the multilayered approaches adopted by clinicians, scientists, food suppliers, allergic consumers (and those who care for them), and regulators. Effective food allergen avoidance depends on the diagnosed consumer knowing what to avoid, being able to access correct ingredients information and to rely on the absence of allergen cross-contamination. Access to ingredients information may be via a label, menu or other printed means, or by enquiring of a staff member who may not always appreciate the implications of such a request or be competent in managing food allergy risks. Lapses in any of these areas may have forensic consequences beyond even their initial (sometimes severe) personal impact.

THE JURIDIFICATION OF NATURAL LAW: CHRISTOPH BESOLD'S CLAIM FOR A NATURAL RIGHT TO BELIEVE WHAT ONE WANTS

ABSTRACTLuther's early statements, such as that belief is a ‘free work’ and must not be coerced, gained crucial relevance in the juridical debates about the meaning of the Augsburg Peace of Religion in the empire. Christoph Besold was among those transforming the reformers' message into a legal claim of subjects against their governments, based on an alleged natural right to believe what one wants. He thus transferred Luther's claim based on the reformer's trust in the work of the divine word into a juridical claim for subjects against their civil and ecclesiastical magistrates. Besold's argument is thus an example of the important changes in political and religious thought developing within the genre of the German politica during the first half of the seventeenth century.

An Abundance of Witches: The Great Scottish Witch-Hunt

An Abundance of Witches: The Great Scottish Witch-Hunt

Native American Popular Religion in New England’s Old Colony, 1670–1770

AbstractIn recent years, historians have turned their attention to the continued presence of Native Americans living “behind the frontier” in eighteenth-century New England. Where a previous generation of scholars once wrangled over the benignity of seventeenth-century Puritan “praying towns” and equated conversion with cultural suicide, current studies of Native religion in the decades preceding the American Revolution suggest that Indians preserved traditional culture by grafting Christianity onto a preexisting grid of beliefs and practices. A case study based on the writings of a lay missionary and civil magistrate named Josiah Cotton, this essay contributes to revisionist scholarship by examining Native American spirituality under the broader and more inclusive category of popular religion. Most Wampanoag families in New England's “Old Colony” lived between cultures—neither fully integrated into English society nor fully traditional in their identities or worldview. The ambiguities of their colonial situation, in turn, facilitated the emergence of a diverse spectrum of religious beliefs and practices that, at times, transcended racial categories. English settlers consulted Native American shamans and cunning folk; rumors of witchcraft, ghosts, and spirits permeated all ranks of society; and Indians and their white neighbors shared a preoccupation with spiritual healing. A few core families aspired to all the trappings of English life; they internalized Puritan doctrine, engaged in sophisticated devotional routines, and joined local Indian churches. Others continued to live in traditional ways and simply ignored the pastoral labors of regional missionaries. But for the majority of Native Christians who lived and worked side-by-side with their English neighbors, religion remained an eclectic affair as they deployed a variety of spiritual resources to combat the vicissitudes and uncertainties of everyday life.

Religion a Threat to Morality: An Attempt to Throw Some New Light on Hume's Philosophy of Religion

Religion a Threat to Morality: An Attempt to Throw Some New Light on Hume's Philosophy of Religion* Gerhard Streminger At the beginning ofhis Natural History ofReligion Hume writes that two questions in particular ... challenge our attention, to wit, that concerning its foundation in reason, and that concerning its origin in human nature. The first challenge is taken up by Hume in the Dialogues ConcerningNatural Religion, and the second in hisNatural History ofReligion. In this paper I will try to show that there is a third fundamental problem discussed by Hume with regard to religion, namely its relationship to and influence on morality. Although he never wrote on this topic in as systematic a way as on the above-mentioned two questions inparticular, I am convinced that his thoughts about it were not just casual. The passages in Hume relevant to this third central question about religion are to be found in "Of Superstition and Enthusiasm ," in Essays Moral, Political, and Literary; in section 11 ofAn Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding; in Appendix 4 and "A Dialogue," in An Enquiry Concerning the Principles ofMorals; in the History ofEngland; in Part XII of the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion ; and, in particular, in the Natural History ofReligion. Why Hume never wrote about the relationship between religion and morality in a more systematic way is not entirely clear. He may have decided not to provoke the orthodox any further than he already had. That Hume changed the title ofsection 11 ofhis first Enquiry from the original "Of the Practical Consequences of Natural Religion" to the rather non-committal "Of a Particular Providence and of a Future State" may support this conjecture. Before going into more detail as to Hume's view on the relationship between religion and morality, I want to make a few remarks about Hume's opinion of religion in general. Hume made a distinction between one 'true' and two forms of 'false' religion. His most explicit description of true religion is to be found in a preface to the second volume of his History ofEngland: Volume XV Number 2 277 GERHARD STREMINGER Theproper Office ofReligion, Hume wrote in terms which have a Quakerish flavour, is to reform Men's Lives, to purify their Hearts, to inforce all moralDuties, & to secure Obedience to the Laws & civil Magistrate. While it pursues these useful Purposes , its Operations, tho' infinitely valuable, are secret & silent; andseldom come under the Cognizance ofHistory ... The Idea ofan Infinite Mind, the Author ofthe Universe seems ... to require a Worship absolutely pure, simple, unadorned; without Rites, Institutions, Ceremonies; even without Temples, Priests, or verbal Prayer & Supplication. This preface, however, was not printed in the words quoted above. Instead it was reduced by Hume to a footnote at the end of the second volume of his History of England in a shortened and toned-down version. Even this footnote was removed in later editions ofthe History ofEngland. But in the Dialogues Hume repeated his idea of the effect of true religion on morality almost verbatim: The proper office of religion is to regulate the heart of men, humanize their conduct, infuse the spirit oftemperance, order, and obedience; and as its operation is silent, and only enforces the motives of mortality and justice, it is in danger of being overlooked, and confounded with these other motives. This form ofreligion, however, although without anypernicious consequences with regard to society (D 223), is extremely rare. Religion, as it has commonly been found in the world (D 223), is a threat to morality. The corruptions of true religion, namely superstition and enthusiasm , are the popular forms of religious worship. Whenever Hume talks about religion without qualifications, he has this false religion in mind. Coming back to my original thesis, Hume, I think, sees three main negative influences of false religion: (1) The clergy has an interest in setting bounds to human knowledge; (2) The God offalse religion is no moral authority; (3) False religion corrupts the natural moral sentiments and promotes an 'artificial, affected' life. I. False Religion and Human Knowledge To see the force of Hume's argument concerning the threat of false religion to morality, one has to take into account some general assumptions of Hume...

John Selden, the Law of Nature, and the Origins of Government

Selden has long been regarded as one of the foremost scholars in seventeenthcentury England. Milton described him as 'tthe chief of learned men reputed in this Land',1 while David Ogg claimed, with little exaggeration, that Selden sought 'not fame but truth in an erudition more vast than was ever garnered by any other human mind'.2 His phenomenal learning extended over the whole range of civil and ecclesiastical history and law. Until recently, however, his work as a political theorist suffered from a sad neglect. But in I979 this state of affairs was amply remedied with the publication of Richard Tuck's .,atural rights theories: their orizgin and development. Dr Tuck argues that Selden played a crucial role in the development of modern natural-rights theories, decisively influencing the royalist writers of the Tew Circle, and paving the way for the work of Thomas Hobbes.3 In a brilliantly argued account of Selden's theory, Dr Tuck portrays him as a thinker of startling originality. While previous political theorists had accepted that the natural law defining the obligations and rights which all men have in common was intuitively obvious, it was Selden's view, according to Dr Tuck, that it had been revealed by 'God's pronouncements to the Noachidae '4 (that is to say, Noah and his sons), and he 'assumed that somehow societies had passed that information on to posterity; God had given it to man at a point in historical time, and it was the historical continuity of human societies that kept it alive. The attack on the theory that the natural law consisted of innate rational principles thrcw into prominence its historical dimension, and made Selden's life-work a consistent whole.'5 Selden, Dr Tuck continues, argued that the obligation which men possessed to obey the command of a superior (that is to say, the civil magistrate in the case of human law and God in the case of natural law) was 'constituted by fear of a prospective punishment administered by such a superior'.6 In adopting this position Selden 'had moved to a completely individualistic and hedonist view of moral obligation, the development of which in later English moral philosophy was to be of central importance '. His 'extreme scepticism about the possibility of' moral