“For the other point concerning liberty, I observe a great mistake in the country about that. There is a twofold liberty, natural (I mean as our nature is now corrupt) and civil or federal. The first is common to man with beasts and other creatures. By this, man, as he stands in relation to man simply, hath liberty to do what he lists; it is a liberty to evil as well as to good. This liberty is incompatible and inconsistent with authority and cannot endure the least restraint of the most just authority. The exercise and maintaining of this liberty makes men grow more evil and in time to be worse than brute beasts: omnes sumus licentia deteriores. This is that great enemy of truth and peace, that wild beast, which all of the ordinances of God are bent against, to restrain and subdue it. The other kind of liberty I call civil or federal; it may also be termed moral, in reference to the covenant between God and man, in the moral law and the politic covenants and constitutions amongst men themselves. This liberty is the proper end and object of authority and cannot subsist without it; and it is a liberty to that only which is good, just, and honest. This liberty you are to stand for, with the hazard (not only of your goods, but) of your lives, if need be. Whatsoever crosseth this is not authority but a distemper thereof. This liberty is maintained and exercised in a way of subjection to authority; it is of the same kind of liberty where with Christ hath made us free.” (John Winthrop)
Winthrop seems have found liberty in this country to be a mistake; he described it as a twofold liberty, which was natural and civil or federal. He defined natural to be one which man do what he list or roam about as he feels free like a creature and civil and federal as one that is bind with moral law and is the covenant of politics. He further states that civil or federal liberty is exercised in a way of subjection to authority as if without civil or federal liberty man would be in his natural form of liberty free to do as pleased in this country.
I choose this quote because growing up, when asked what is liberty my first thought would be freedom from interference, obligation, restriction from anyone or authority the power of my right to do, think and speak as I would wish; however, after reading this segment of the essay I learnt that this liberty may be define as evil as well as good liberty as this would be defined as my natural liberty and not civil or federal liberty which is based on moral law along with authority over these moral law. It is strange how growing up you are thought one thing but out in the world it is a whole different meaning to life itself.
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