Lawson's Politica is a systematic treatise on politics in church and state and is arguably the most significant work of political theory to have been printed during the Restoration crisis of 1659-60. It was widely discussed during the seventeenth century and particularly the revolution of 1688-9. This new modern edition is based on, and corrects the first printed editions of 1660 and 1689, and contains an extensive introduction and notes designed to make this significant work accessible to both students and specialists.

Excerpt from Politica Sacra and Civilis, or a Model of Civil and Ecclesiastical Government: Wherein, Besides the Positive Doctrine Concerning State and Church in General, Are Debated the Principal Controversies of the Times Concerning the Constitution of the State and Church of England, Tending to Righteouseness, Truth, and Peace I further took notice oth Civil and deliver mine he particular yetfi that I07037266105 the reafon 15. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Focusing on major political and legal theorists whose work on constitutional theory had a significant impact, this book unearths an untold story of the development of constitutional thought in the context of the broader political environment.

Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan is the greatest work of political philosophy in English and the first great work of philosophy in English. Beginning with premises that were sometimes controversial, such as that every human action is caused by the agent’s desire for his own good, Hobbes derived shocking conclusions, such as that the civil government enjoys absolute control over its citizens and that the sovereign has the right to determine which religion is to be practiced in a commonwealth. Hobbes’s contemporaries recognized the power of arguments in Leviathan and many of them wrote responses to it; selections by John Bramhall, Robert Filmer, Edward Hyde, George Lawson, William Lucy, Samuel Pufendorf, and Thomas Tenison are included in this edition. This revised Broadview Edition of Hobbes’s classic work of political philosophy includes the full text of Part I (Of Man), Part II (Of Commonwealth), and the Review and Conclusion. The appendices, which set the work in its historical context, include a rich selection of contemporary responses to Leviathan. Also included are an introduction, explanatory notes, and a chronology of Hobbes’s life.

In the common law world, Albert Venn Dicey (1835–1922) is known as the high priest of orthodox constitutional theory, as an ideological and nationalistic positivist. In his analytical coldness, his celebration of sovereign power, and his incessant drive to organize and codify legal rules separate from moral values or political realities, Dicey is an uncanny figure. This book challenges this received view of Dicey. Through a re-examination of his life and his 1885 book Law of the Constitution, the high priest Dicey is defrocked and a more human Dicey steps forward to offer alternative ways of reading his canonical text, who struggled to appreciate law as a form of reasoned discourse that integrates values of legality and authority through methods of ordinary legal interpretation. The result is a unique common law constitutional discourse through which assertions of sovereign power are conditioned by moral aspirations associated with the rule of law.

An extensively revised edition of a classic of modern historiography.